Part 4

The medicine-men of the Eskimos were called angekoks, and enjoyed the unlimited confidence of the people. They were said to have equal power over heaven and earth, this world and the next. This made them useful as friends and dangerous as enemies. The Eskimo, therefore, set out upon no enterprise without consulting the angekoks, who granted blessings, exorcised demons, and gave charms against disease. These medicine-men have a profound belief in themselves, and though they resort to jugglery and ventriloquism to deceive their visitors, they appear to have no idea that they are perpetrating an imposture. Their particular powers, they think, are derived from more than human sources. Dr. Nansen, in his "Eskimo Life," points out that it has always been to the interests of the medicine-men and the priests to sustain and mature superstitions or religious ideas. "They must therefore themselves appear to believe in them; they may even discover new precepts of divinity to their own advantage, and thereby increase both their power and their revenues." The Greenlanders believe that the angekoks work with the help of ministering spirits, called _tornat_, who are often none other than the souls of dead persons, especially of grandfathers; but not infrequently the _tornat_ are supposed to be the souls of departed animals, or of fairies. The angekok is assumed to have several of these councillors always at hand. They render help in the time of danger, and may even act as avengers or destroyers. In the latter case they show themselves as ghosts, and so frighten to death the persons against whom vengeance is directed. Therefore, as Dr. Nansen reports, the angekoks are the wisest and also the craftiest of all Eskimos. They assert that they have the power of conversing with spirits, of travelling in the under-world, of conjuring up powerful spirits, and of obtaining revelations. "They influence and work upon their countrymen principally through their mystic exorcisms and _seances_, which occur as a rule in the winter, when they are living in houses. The lamps are extinguished, and skins hung before the windows. The angekok himself sits upon the floor. By dint of making a horrible noise so that the whole house shakes, changing his voice, bellowing and shrieking, ventriloquising, groaning, moaning, and whining, beating on drums, bursting forth into diabolical shrieks of laughter and all sorts of other tricks, he persuades his companions that he is visited by the various spirits he personates, and that it is they who make the disturbance." They cure diseases by reciting charms, and "give men a new soul." He demands large fees, not for himself, he explains, but for the spirits whose agent he is. Apparently these spirits have similar ideas to the London consulting physician.

Mr. Theodore Bent, in his "Ruined Cities of Mashonaland," gives a specimen of the credulity excited by the medicine-men. The explorer desired to interview a chief, Mtoko by name, but permission was refused. The reason, he afterwards ascertained, was that the chief's father had died shortly after another white man's visit, and the common belief was that he had been bewitched. The chief thought that the "white lady" who ruled over the nation to which Mr. Bent belonged had sent him purposely to cast a glamour over him. It may be remembered that the ill-fated Lobengula refused to have his portrait taken because he believed that by means of the image of himself he could be magically infected with a dread disease. This idea of substitution, which has already been referred to, is akin to that of the belief in witchcraft during the middle ages--namely, that the witches could, by sticking pins into the wax image of a person, bring upon that person agonising maladies. The dreadful results of such beliefs among savage tribes is told by the two hospital nurses who a year or so ago produced a lively book, "Adventures in Mashonaland." One morning a native entered their camp, bringing a tale of horror. A chief called Maronka, whose kraal was about forty miles away, had boiled his family alive. He had been convinced by the native doctors that after death the souls of the chiefs passed into the bodies of lions. His medicine-men had "smelt out" his own family as witches, and boiling alive was the requisite punishment. Mr. Rider Haggard has told many such stories as this in his books on South Africa. The Zulu doctors were in the habit, not only of "smelling out" witches and evil spirits, but of sprinkling the soldiers with medicine, in order to "put a great heart into them," and ensure their victory in battle.

Customs like these gave Charles Dickens his opportunity of writing two of his most scathing satires "The Noble Savage" and "The Medicine Man of Civilisation." He refused to subscribe to the popular and amiable sentiment that the African barbarian was an interesting survival, or that the Ojibbeway Indian was picturesque. After a severe indictment of them, Dickens instanced their customs in medicine as a proof of their irremediable depravity. "When the noble savage finds himself a little unwell," he wrote, "and mentions the circumstance to his friends, it is immediately perceived that he is under the influence of witchcraft. A learned personage, called an Imyanger, or Witch Doctor, is sent for to Nooker the Umtargartie, or smell out the witch. The male inhabitants of the kraal being seated on the ground, the learned doctor, got up like a grizzly bear, appears and administers a dance of the most terrific nature, during the exhibition of which remedy he incessantly gnashes his teeth, and howls,--'I am the original physician to Nooker the Umtargartie. Yow, yow, yow! No connection with any other establishment. Till, till, till! All other Umtargarties are feigned Umtargarties, Boroo, Boroo! but I perceive here a genuine and real Umtargartie, Hoosh, Hoosh, Hoosh! in whose blood, I, the original Imyanger and Nookerer, will wash these bear's claws of mine!' All this time the learned physician is looking out among the attentive faces for some unfortunate man who owes him a cow, or who has given him any small offence, or against whom, without offence, he has conceived a spite. Him he never fails to Nooker as the Umtargartie, and he is instantly killed." This is no burlesque, and I have given the record in Dickens's inimitable language because it most vividly sets before us the custom of the medicine-men of barbarous races. But the medicine-men of Longfellow's description, the men who came to appease and console Hiawatha, who

"Walked in silent, grave procession, Bearing each a pouch of healing, Skin of beaver, lynx, or otter, Filled with magic roots and simples, Filled with very potent medicines,"

--these may be accepted as the milder type of magicians who, among a primitive people, claimed not only to be able to heal the living, but to restore the dead.

Mr. Austine Waddell, in his exhaustive work on the Buddhism of Tibet, tells us that a very popular form of Buddha is as "the supreme physician" or Buddhist AEsculapius, the idea of whom is derived from an ancient legend of the "medicine-king" who dispensed spiritual medicine. The images of this Buddha are worshipped as fetishes, and they cure by sympathetic magic. The supplicant, after bowing and praying, rubs his finger over the eye, knee, or particular part of the image corresponding to the affected part on his own body, and then applies the finger carrying this hallowed touch to the afflicted spot. Mr. Waddell says that this constant friction is rather detrimental to the features of the god; whether it is beneficial to the man's body is of course largely a matter of faith and circumstances. As might be expected, talismans to ward off evils from malignant planets and demons, whence come all diseases, are in great request. The eating of the paper on which a charm has been written is considered by the Tibetan to be the easiest and most certain method of curing a malady, and the spells which the Lamas use in this way are called "za-yig," or edible letters. A still more mystical way of applying these remedies, according to Mr. Waddell, is by the washings of the reflection of the writing in a mirror, a habit common in other quarters of the globe. In Gambia, for instance, this treatment is relied upon by the natives. A doctor is called in, he examines the patient, and then sits down at the bedside and writes in Arabic characters on a slate some sentences from the Koran. The slate is then washed, and the dirty infusion is drunk by the patient. In Tibet, Chinese ink is smeared on wood, and every twenty-nine days the inscription reflected in a mirror. The face of the mirror during the reflection is washed with beer, and the drainings are collected in a cup for the patient's use. This is a special cure for the evil eye. The medicine-men of Tibet can also supply charms against bullets and weapons, charms for the clawing of animals, charms to ward off cholera, and even charms to prevent domestic broils. This is surely evidence of high civilisation.

It would be hopeless to endeavour to exhaust this subject. Only a few selected instances can be given to illustrate how large a part magic has played, and still plays, in the healing art. Medicine is by no means freed of its superstitions yet, and the success of quack advertisements of the day abundantly proves that the civilised public is still prone to believe that universal remedies are obtainable, and that miracles can be wrought.

Modern medical science, as one of its great exponents has pointed out, plays a waiting game when miracles are spoken of, and when magic is claimed to supersede specific remedies. "When it is asked to believe in the violent and erratic violation of laws of matter and force, science stands on an impregnable rock, fenced round by bulwarks of logical fact, and flanked by the bastions of knowledge of nature and her constitution." And as exact knowledge spreads, Prospero will have no alternative but to break his staff, and bury it fathoms deep.

Chaucer's Doctor of Physic.

BY W. H. THOMPSON.

In the "Canterbury Tales" we have an inimitable gallery of fourteenth century portraits, drawn from life, with all a great master's delicacy of finish and touch. And in none of these pictures does Chaucer excel himself more than in that of his "Doctor of Physic." We may take it for granted that the portrait is no mere fanciful one, with its pre-Raphaelite minuteness of detail, sketched with the poet's own peculiar skill. With what mischievous and yet altogether playful and good-natured humour is the man of medicine presented to us!

"With us there was a doctour of phisike In all this world ne was there none like him To speak of phisike and of surgerie."

What manner of man was this paragon of medical knowledge? In personal appearance he was somewhat of an exquisite. "Clothes are unspeakably significant" saith the immortal Teufelsdrockh, and every practitioner who has his _clientele_ largely yet to make knows the importance of being well dressed. Chaucer's grave graduate was apparelled in a purple surcoat, and a blue and white furred hood.

"In sanguine and in perse he clad was all Lined with taffata and with sendall,"

and yet no luxurious sybarite by any means was he,

"Of his diet measureable was he, For it was no superfluity, But of great nourishing and digestable."

A man of simple habits, even perhaps given to holding his purse strings somewhat tightly.

"He was but easy of expense, He kept that he won in pestilence."

For, as the poet adds with his characteristic merry sly humour,

"Gold in physic is a cordial, Therefore he loved gold in special."

The science of medicine since Chaucer's day has made extraordinary advances, and it is only fair to judge his doctor by contemporary standards. To-day, we fear, he would be largely regarded as little better than a charlatan and a quack. It is true, he was acquainted with all the authorities, ancient and modern, from AEsculapius and Galen down to Gaddesden, the author of the "Rosa Anglica," the great English book of fourteenth century medicine. But this last named luminary of physic would aid him very little on the road to true knowledge. This medical "Rose," which Leland calls a "large and learned work," only serves to illustrate the impotence of the professors of the healing arts at that period. This is the recipe of Gaddesden for the small-pox. "After this (the appearance of the eruption) cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in red scarlet cloth, and command everything about the bed to be made red. This is an excellent cure. It was in this manner I treated the son of the noble king of England when he had the small-pox, and I cured him without leaving any marks." To cure epilepsy, he orders the patient "and his parents" to fast three days, and then go to church. "The patient must first confess, and he must have mass on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday the priest must read over the patient's head the gospel for September, in the time of vintage after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this the priest shall write out this portion of the gospel reverently, and bind it about the patient's neck, and he shall be cured." If epilepsy was to be exorcised by such a remedy as this, we venture to assert that it must have been largely a case of faith-healing.

Seeing then that such was the condition of the science of medicine in Chaucer's days, we must take with a good deal of reservation his statement that his doctor

"Knew the cause of every malady Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry, And where engendered, and of what humour."

Anyhow, some of the remedies prescribed for the "sick man," and the "drugs," which his friends the apothecaries were so ready to supply, would have seemed extraordinary enough to us.

The poet tells us the doctor's study was but "little in the Bible," and that though a "perfect practitioner," the ground of his scientific knowledge was astronomy, _i.e._, astrology; the "better part of medicine," as Roger Bacon calls it. In dealing with his patients he was guided by "natural magic."

To this practice Chaucer alludes in another of his poems, the "House of Fame."

"And clerks eke, which con well, All this magic naturell, That craftily do her intents, To make in certain ascendents, Images--lo through which magic, To make a man be whole or sick."

So that in spite of what appears to us the charlatanry in his make up, the doctor was supposed to be a person of importance in the eyes of his fellow pilgrims, with quite the standing of an accredited medical man of to-day, is evidenced by the manner in which mine host Bailly addresses him. Master Bailly was no particular respecter of persons, indeed, on the contrary, he was somewhat of a Philistine; yet he was all respect to this man of medicine. It is as "Sir" Doctor of Physic, the host addresses him; also declaring him to be a "proper man," and like a prelate. After the story of chicanery related by the Canon's Yeoman, it is to the physician he looks to tell a tale of "honest matter." Such is his bearing towards him throughout.

The doctor's contribution to the "Canterbury Tales," too, is of a serious, sober kind, in keeping with his character; and concludes with some sound moral advice. Therefore, whatever foibles he may have, the "doctor of physic" is presented to us as a sterling gentleman, no unworthy predecessor of those who to-day, on more modern lines, still follow in his footsteps.

The Doctors Shakespeare Knew.

BY A. H. WALL.

"O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies In herbs, plants, shrubs, and their true qualities. For nought so vile that on the earth doth live But to the earth some special good doth give; Nor ought so good, but, strained from that fair use Revolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse." --_Romeo and Juliet._

"By medicine life may be prolong'd."--_Cymbeline V. 5._

In Walckenaer's "Memoirs of Madame de Sevigne," and in the amusing, interesting volume which Gaston Boissier devoted to her works and letters, we have glimpses of the medical profession in France, which show us it was in her time and country, just what it was in England in the same century when it was known to Shakespeare. For one more or less genuine physician there were thousands of charlatans and quacks, and the contempt which our great dramatic poet frequently expresses in his works for medical practitioners must, in fairness, be regarded as applicable to the latter, not to the former. In 1884, an American writer on this subject (Dr. Rush Field, in his "Medical Thoughts of Shakespeare") strove to show that our great philosophic poet and playwright's opinion of all the medical practitioners was a low one. "He uses them frequently," he says, "as a tool by which deaths are produced through the means of poison, and generally treats them with contempt." That he might fairly do this, and that in doing it he rather displayed respect and regard for the genuine, more or less scientific professors of the healing art, can be very readily demonstrated by anyone at all familiar with his plays. But to return to Madame de Sevigne. At a time when she was growing old, when her letters speak so sadly of the dying condition of Cardinal de Retz at Commercy, of Madame de la Fayette's being consumed by slow fever, and La Roche confined to his armchair by gout, of Corbinelle's threatened insanity, and of his taking "potable gold" as a remedy for headache, she writes also of small-pox and other fevers having permanently settled at Versailles and Saint-Germain, where the King and Queen were attacked, and ladies and gentlemen of the Court were decimated, and cases of apoplexy and rheumatism were rapidly increasing in every direction. "Fashionable folk, used up with pleasure-making, sick through disappointed ambition, fidgetting without motive, agitating without aim, tainted with morbid fancies and suspicion," found themselves in the doctor's hands, and were far more ready to select practitioners who promised magically swift and easy cures, than those who spoke of slow and gradual recovery by means which were neither painless nor pleasurable. "Everybody," says Boissur, "women included, battled with one another to possess marvellous secrets whereby obstinate complaints should be immediately cured. Madame Fouquet applied a plaster to the dying Queen, which cured her, to the great scandal of the Faculty unable to save her; and the Princess de Tarente served out drugs to all her people at Vitre.

Madame Sevigne wrote of her as "the best doctor in the upper classes; she has rare and valuable compounds of which she gives us three pinches with prodigious effect." When writing to her daughter, she begs her not to neglect taking such medicines as "cherry water," "extract of periwinkles," "viper-broth," "uric acid," and "powdered crab's-eyes." She says the extract of periwinkles "endowed Madame de Grignam with a second youth." Writing to her daughter, "If you use it, when you re-appear so fair people will cry, 'O'er what blessed flower can she have walked,' then I will answer 'On the periwinkle.'" She tells, too, how the Capuchins, who still retained their ancient medical reputation, treated the rheumatism in her leg "with plants bruised and applied twice a day; taken off while wet twice a day, and buried in the earth, so that as they rotted away her pains might in like way decrease." "It's a pity you ran and told the surgeons this," she says to her daughter, "for they roar with laughter at it, but I do not care a fig for them." In like way Madame de Scudery tells Bassy, "There is an abbe here who is making a great bother by curing by sympathy. For fever of all kinds, so they say, he takes the patient's spittle and mingles it with an egg, and gives it to a dog; the dog dies and the patient recovers.... They say he has cured a quantity of people."

Turning from these illustrations of medical practice in France to see how identical it is with that adopted in England when Shakespeare lived, we recall the advice of that eminent gentleman, Andrew Rourde, who recommends people to wash their faces once a week only, using a scarlet cloth to wipe them dry upon, as a sure remedy in certain cases. In other instances we find that certain pills made from the skulls of murderers taken down from gibbets, and ground to powder for that purpose, were popular as medicine, that a draught of water drunk from a murdered man's skull had wonderful medicinal properties, and that the blood of a dragon was absolutely miraculous in the cures it effected. The touch of a dead man's hand was another ghastly remedy in common use, and the powder of mummy was a wonderful cure for certain grave complaints. Love-philtres were also regarded from a medicinal point of view, and the strange doings of quack _accoucheurs_ are not less absurdly terrible. That the seventeenth century physician himself was not always proof against these products of ancient ignorance and superstition, is abundantly apparent. Van Helmont, the son of a nobleman, born in Brussels, and very carefully educated for his profession, practised both medicine and magic medicinally. He rejected Galen, inclined to that illiterate pretender Paracelsus, and determined that the only way by which he could defy disease, and utterly destroy it, was through what he called _Archaeus_. Speaking of digestion, for instance, he denied that it was either chemical or mechanical in its nature, but the result of this _Archaeus_, a spiritual activity, working in a very mysteriously complicated way, for both evil and good. It has been said that he was one of Lord Bacon's disciples, but for that assertion there certainly is no sufficient foundation, for Bacon, if a mystic by inclination, was logical in reasoning. In England Van Helmont had an English follower in the person of another physician, Dr. Fludd, a disciple of the famous inventor of the camera obscura, and conjecturally the first photographer. His grand quack remedy was "the powder of sympathy," which was the "sword-salve" of Paracelsus (composed of moss taken from the skull of a gibbetted murderer, of warm human blood, human suet, linseed oil, turpentine, etc.). This was applied, not to the wound, but to the sword that inflicted it, kept "in a cool place!" Certain plants pulled up with the left hand were regarded as a sure remedy in fever cases, but the gatherer, while gathering, was not to look behind, for that deprived the plants of their medicinal value.

Amongst other physicians of Shakespeare's century was Mr. Valentine Greatrake, who came to London from Ireland, where his supposed magical cures had been awakening a great sensation. He hired a large house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, to which vast crowds of patients of all kinds and conditions crowded daily, all clamouring to be cured. He received them in their order, says an eye-witness, with "a grave and simple countenence." For, as Shakespeare wrote, "Thus credulous fools are caught." ("Comedy of Errors," 1, 2.) Greatrake (afterwards executed for high treason) asserted that every diseased person was possessed by a devil, and that by his prayers and laying on of hands the devil could be cast out. Lord Conway sent for him to cure an incurable disease from which his wife was suffering, and even some of the most learned and eminent people of the time were amongst his patrons. St. Evremond wrote, "You can hardly imagine what a reputation he gained in a short time. Catholics and Protestants visited him from every part, all believing that power from heaven was in his hands."