intent on the part of their owners. In quite a large number of cases when
boys were playing together a knife would fall out of its sheath and
inflict a mortal wound. And then, if the owner were over twelve, he would
have, theoretically, to go to prison and stay there till he received a
formal pardon from the king for accidental manslaughter. I say
'theoretically' because in practice the culprit usually 'fled,' which, I
suspect, meant that he went round the corner while the village constable
carefully looked in the wrong place for him. An unusual incident connected
with a knife occurred in Dorset in 1280, when a girl, clearing the table
after dinner, picked up the tablecloth with a knife inside, and as she
went out of the room tripped and fell so that the knife stuck into her. It
was about the same date that a Suffolk peasant, William le Keu, flung a
knife against the wall of his house and it bounded off and killed his
infant daughter, lying on her mother's lap in front of the fire. Why he
should have thrown his knife at the wall does not appear, but people were
always throwing things about and hitting inoffensive passers-by. For
instance, a man would fling a rake or a flail at some chicken and hit his
own child. Children, in fact, had an unhappy knack of coming round the
corner with disastrous results to themselves, especially when their
elders were playing quoits or pennystone down the village street. One of
the most curious cases of what we may call an indirect accident was when
two small boys went into an orchard to get apples; one of them threw a
stone up into a tree, but instead of bringing down an apple it hit a stone
that some one had thrown up long before, and this fell on his cousin's
head and killed him. Another case of the unforeseen happened in
Nottinghamshire in the thirteenth century, when Richard Palmer was
climbing a tree in a churchyard to take a crow's nest. He was standing on
a bough when suddenly it broke; but the result was not what might have
been expected, for Richard got his arms round a branch and after hanging
for a long time came down safely, but the broken bough fell on the head of
a man standing down below, and 'the dog it was that died.'
[Illustration: '_The broken bough fell on the head of a man standing down
below._']
Fire, the second of Fitz Stephen's 'plagues,' played its part in
preventing over-population, as might be expected when the framework of the
huts was of wood, the roof of thatch and the floor covered with straw or
rushes. If a woman went to bed leaving a lighted candle stuck on the wall
it was hardly surprising if she paid for her carelessness with her life,
but as a rule the victims were children or very old people, and as often
as not the immediate cause was some chicken, or pig, or calf getting on to
the open hearth and scattering the fire on to the straw-covered floor. For
the mediæval peasant shared his hut with his live stock, though it would
not be often that a man would be called upon to separate two horses
fighting in his kitchen; this did actually happen to a man in Winchester,
and as usual the peacemaker got the worst of it. Fire, again, acting
indirectly through the medium of water, was another frequent cause of
disaster, a most astonishing number of cases occurring of persons, usually
children, scalded to death. I can only suppose that the cauldrons were
large and insecurely balanced; that they were large may be concluded from
the frequency with which people fell into them. But cold water was perhaps
as deadly an agent as any. In Yorkshire in particular the coroners' rolls
suggest that the number of people that fell off bridges and out of boats
into streams and down wells must have seriously interfered with the purity
of the water supply; but, fortunately, water was very rarely drunk in
those days. The most frequent cause of drowning seems to have been falling
off a horse, and the mediæval version of the well-known proverb ought to
have been 'One man can ride a horse to the water, but nine out of ten
can't stay on when he drinks.' Taking the number of cases in which men
watering their horses did get drowned, and allowing that a reasonable
percentage of those thrown into the water scrambled out again, the
standard of mediæval riding must have been about equal to that of the
White Knight, who, when his horse stopped fell over its head, and when it
went on again fell over its tail.
Occasionally the propelling agent, so to speak, was human, as in the case
of a clothworker of Tadcaster, who, 'being annoyed with his wife,' flung
her into the Wharfe and drowned her. The measure seems extreme, and he
could not plead peril of shipwreck, the excuse of the Syracusan, who,
'when all ponderous things were to be exonerated out of the ship,' flung
his wife into the sea 'because she was the greatest burden.'
In spite of a verdict of 'misadventure,' I cannot help feeling a little
sceptical about an incident which took place at Bedford in 1220, when
William the miller was driving certain Jews in his cart, and at the bridge
the cart fell into the water and three Jews were drowned. As I read the
story there came into my mind Sam Weller's conversation with Mr. Pickwick
about his father's remarkable accident with the voters: '"Here and there
it is a wery bad road," says my father. "'Specially near the canal, I
think," says the gentleman.... You wouldn't believe it, sir, but on the
wery day as he came down with them woters his coach was upset on that 'ere
wery spot and every man on 'em was turned into the canal.'
Occasionally, also, the victim was a voluntary one, as in the case of John
Milner, who, with the contempt for consequences which we might expect from
one of his name, jumped into the Ouse. The consequence for him was that he
became what Mr. Mantalini called 'a demmed, moist, unpleasant corpse,' and
the jury decided that he had acted 'by temptation of the Devil.' While
they displayed a certain boldness in thus arraigning the Devil for
procuring, aiding, and abetting a felony, they showed more discretion in
another quarter, for when a man and his wife were found struck by
lightning, where a modern jury would have declared it an 'act of God' the
mediæval jury preferred the less dogmatic and more reasonable verdict that
'no one is suspected.' It is pleasant to note that in another instance,
where the body of a man struck by lightning was first found by his wife,
the jury expressly exonerated her, saying 'she is not suspected' (of
having done it).
I am not quite certain of the force of a verdict of 'by temptation of the
Devil' in a case of suicide, but it seems to have been the half-way house
between _felo-de-se_ and madness, to have been, in fact, the mediæval
equivalent of that 'temporary insanity' which is the invariable verdict in
modern times. The idea that a man must be mad to take his own life, and
that therefore all suicides were insane, had not occurred to the mediæval
mind, but they evidently felt that there were cases in which the suicide
was not himself, although he was not sufficiently outside or beside
himself to be considered an absolute lunatic. There are strange and grim
little stories of madmen in some of these old records. One of these, not
wanting in pathos in its evidence of good intentions diabolically twisted,
tells how Robert de Bramwyk, a lunatic who had some lucid intervals (and
was, therefore, probably not so closely guarded), in a fit of frenzy took
his sister Denise, who had been deformed and hunchbacked from her birth,
and, wishing to make her straight, cast her into a cauldron of hot water,
and taking her out of this bath trampled upon her with his feet to
straighten her limbs.
[Illustration: '_... cast her into a cauldron._']
With the exception of this madman's empiric bone-setting I only remember
to have come across one instance of an operation being mentioned in this
particular class of coroner's records. This was in 1330, when Richard de
Berneston, a surgeon of Nottingham, cut a 'wenne' on the arm of William de
Brunnesley and William afterwards died of heart failure. It is rather
remarkable that doctors seem hardly ever to have been held responsible
for the death of their patients, though in 1350 we do find Thomas Rasyn,
leech, and Pernel, his wife, pardoned for the death of John Panyers,
miller, of Sidmouth, whom they were said to have killed through ignorance
of their art; the inclusion of the wife seems to point to a mediæval
nursing home. As a rule, probably, when a patient died under a doctor's
care, his relations took the matter philosophically and assumed that the
treatment had been correct and that he would have died in any case. It was
the patients who survived that made all the fuss. For instance, there was
Thomas Medewe, the vicar of a Hertfordshire parish in the fifteenth
century, who 'by goddys visitacion had an infirmyte in his throte.' The
local practitioner, or his equivalent, who would probably have been a
'wise woman,' being unable to deal with it, the vicar came up to London
and consulted John Dayvyle, surgeon, who gave him a plaster for his throat
which did him much good and only cost 4_d._ Unfortunately for both
parties, the surgeon finding that his patient was 'nygh hole' as a result
of his first experiment insisted upon his having another plaster, for
which he charged 20_d._ to make him 'thurgh hole.' The result was
disastrous, as the patient 'felle in suche infirmitye that he might not
speke and was like therby to have dyed' if he had not called in another
doctor. It was, in the circumstances, perhaps natural that the vicar
expressed his feelings strongly when Dayvyle sent in a bill for 20_s._ for
attendance. There was the case also of Edmund Broke, of Southampton, who
came up to London to undergo an operation, and put himself in the hands of
Nicholas Sax, who stipulated for a fee of 33_s._ 4_d._, of which 13_s._
4_d._ was paid in advance. The patient, according to his own account, was
in jeopardy of his life through the 'defaute and unkunnyng' of Dr. Sax,
and had to call in John Surgeon, 'dwelling at Powlez cheyn,' who cured him
and to whom he paid the 20_s._ which his incompetent attendant claimed was
due to him.
Of course there was another side to the question, patients then as now
being more ready with promises when ill than with fees when well. There
was William Robinson, for instance, a haberdasher of Lombard Street, who
fell ill with pestilence and sent for William Paronus, promising that if
he would only save him 'he would reward him as well as ever he was
rewarded for any cure'; but when, after a month's attendance, he was well
again, he declined even to pay the doctor's out-of-pocket expenses
incurred for drugs. And sometimes there were cases in which it was
difficult to decide who was in the right. One such case came into court in
1292. Mauger le Vavassour, a member of a leading Yorkshire family, fell
ill; his wife, Agnes, and other friends, including his uncle, Henry le
Chapeleyn, sent for Master Otto of Germany, evidently a doctor of repute,
promising him one mark to come and see the invalid, and further six marks
if he would undertake his treatment. So Master Otto paid his visit and
then went off to York to the apothecary's and compounded various medicines
and healing drinks, which he gave to Mauger, with excellent effect. When
the patient was convalescent Master Otto put him on a very strict diet,
so strict that Mauger grew restive, and his wife, who sympathised with his
feelings, gave him various forbidden foods. The doctor, finding his orders
disobeyed, declined to accept responsibility, washed his hands of the case
and withdrew. The question then arose whether he was entitled to his fees
or whether he had shown neglect by leaving his patient before he was fully
cured. The jury decided that Master Otto ordered the strict diet for
Mauger's good, and not, as had been suggested, with the object of keeping
him weak, and so increasing the bill for attendance, but they also found
that as a matter of fact the extra food did the patient good and not harm.
The verdict being thus for both parties the judges were puzzled and
reserved their decision.
Another rather curious point cropped up about the middle of the fifteenth
century. Eryk de Vedica, one of the brethren of the Grey Friars of London,
was a physician of skill and reputation, and was sent for by Alice, wife
of William Stede, a vintner. She seems to have been in a very bad way, and
when Brother Eryk saw her and understood her 'grete age and jubertous
sikeness' he was with difficulty persuaded to attempt her cure. However,
after five weeks' attention he 'had soo doon hys parte vnto her that she
thought herself wele amended in her body, she cowde hym grete thancke and
gave hym 20_s._ for his labour.' And then her curmudgeon of a husband, who
was possibly not particularly pleased at her recovery, sued Brother Eryk
for taking the money, and technically the unfortunate friar had no
defence, as 'the common law supposeth every receiving of the husband's
goods or money by the hands of his wife without his licence or command to
be a wrongful taking away of the same from him.' We will hope that the
Court of Chancery, whose assistance was invoked, over-ruled the Common Law
and did the friar justice.
It was not unusual for friars to have a knowledge of science and medicine,
but a statement that I read the other day in a book recently published,
that most (I believe my author said 'all') mediæval doctors 'were, of
course, monks' is singularly wide of the truth. On the contrary, in even
the largest monasteries it was customary to call in a doctor from outside
in any case of serious illness, and the greater houses frequently retained
the services of a secular physician. The cathedral monastery of
Winchester, for instance, in the fourteenth century, made an agreement
with Master Thomas of Shaftesbury that he should attend the convent in
return for his board and lodging, the board, it may be noticed, including
a daily allowance of one and a half gallons of the best ale and a gallon
of a smaller brew. It is probable also that Master Adam of St. Albans,
surgeon, who came from the priory of Ely to attend King Edward I. in his
last illness at Lanercost, was the cathedral doctor. There were, of
course, medical attendants attached to the court; their salaries were not
large, the surgeons of the first two Edwards being paid only from one to
two pounds a year, but there were perquisites in the shape of furred
robes, gifts of money, or silver goblets from grateful patients, and
substantial pickings in the shape of ecclesiastical benefices--the
favourite way of pensioning a court physician being to give him one or
more prebends or rectories. Occasionally the pension took the form of
landed estate, as when Edward III. gave land in Kildare to his surgeon,
John Leche, a grant which proved rather a white elephant, for early in the
next reign Parliament, seeing the evils of absenteeism, ordered that all
owners of estates in Ireland should reside on them in person or else pay
for an able-bodied man to assist in policing the country, two alternatives
equally trying to the old surgeon's feelings. With such slender and
precarious remuneration it was excusable that the royal doctors should
sometimes have an eye to the main chance, and Fabyan tells a story against
one Master Dominic, physician (very much) in waiting to Elizabeth, Queen
of Edward IV. Before the birth of her first child (the Princess
Elizabeth) Master Dominic had been very positive that it would be a boy,
and so, when the time came, he stood outside the queen's room 'that he
myght be the firste that shulde brynge tydynges to the kynge of the byrth
of the prynce to the entent to have greate thanke and rewarde of the
kynge; and lastly when he harde the childe crye, he knockyd or called
secretly at the chamber dore, and frayned what the quene had. To whom it
was answeryd by one of the ladyes, "what so ever the quenes grace hath
here wythin, suer it is that a fole standithe there withoute." And so
confused with thys answere, he deperted wythoute seynge of the kynge for
that tyme.'
[Illustration: '_... called secretly at the chamber dore._']
The position of the medical man who was not attached to the court or to
some nobleman's suite is rather obscure. In London during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries the surgeons of the city were under the control of
two or more master surgeons who acted as universal consultants; any
surgeon undertaking a case involving risk to life or limb being obliged to
call in one of the masters to see that his treatment was correct. In the
same way the veterinary surgeons were at liberty to call in the advice of
a master farrier, and if through conceit or negligence they did not do so
and the horse they were treating died, then they would be responsible to
the owner for its value. As to the country practitioner, it is not quite
clear who licensed him to take the title of 'leech' or whether he merely
assumed it. There were, no doubt, a certain number of men of learning in
the provinces, and in 1478 Sir John Savage was able to find a 'connyng
fisission' for Robert Pilkington in Macclesfield. He certainly required
such a one, for, as a result of eating a mess of 'grene potage' containing
poison he was 'swolne so grete that he was gyrd abowte his bodye in iij
places with towells and gyrdylls' to prevent him bursting. When a man is
in such a state it is 'a thousand to one if he lives the age of a little
fish,' as Nicholas Culpeper would say, but the physician 'dyd grete cures
to hym' and he recovered. As a rule, however, it is probable that the
country leech had little more knowledge of the healing art than many of
his patients. It must be remembered that a knowledge of simple herbal
remedies was pretty widely diffused, and an acquaintance with more
elaborate preparations formed part of the education of the upper classes.
Did not the lady of the manor almost to our own days dispense home-made
medicines with moral stimulants to her tenants, whose simple minds and
_dura ilia_ received therefrom much benefit? Yea, 'kynges and kynges sones
and other noble men hath ben eximious phisicions,' and there is in the
British Museum a book full of recipes for plasters and ointments, composed
by Henry VIII. Half a century before that bluff but gouty monarch 'the
gude Erl of Herforth was holden a gud surgen,' though he seems to have had
a tendency towards extravagant multiplication of ingredients in his
prescriptions. In humbler ranks of life every monastery had an Infirmarian
who, though dependent on outside assistance in serious cases, was expected
to treat the ordinary illnesses of his brethren, and at least to see that
there was always ginger, cinnamon, and peony (this last most effectual for
the incubus or nightmare) in his cupboard. It is noteworthy that in all
the hundreds of hospitals founded prior to the Reformation, from St.
Leonard's at York with its two hundred beds downwards, there appears to
have been no provision for medical attendance. The wardens were rarely
medical men; Master Thomas Goldington, one of the surgeons of Edward III.
was made warden of two hospitals, at Derby and Carlisle, but the only
result was that he attended to his private practice and neglected the
hospitals. Clearly the rudiments of nursing were assumed to be known to
the resident chaplain or some of the inmates--more particularly the women.
Wise women have doctored the country-side time out of mind, and in the
reign of Elizabeth we even find one, Isabel Warick, practising surgery in
York and requiring protection from her male rivals. A century earlier
Alice Shevington, servant to William Gregory of London, 'pretendyng
hirself to have had connyng in helyng of sore ighen,' spent much of her
time attending to her neighbours' eyes instead of her master's house,
wherefore he docked her of part of her munificent wages of 16_s._ a year.
[Illustration: '_... gyrd abowte his bodye in iij places with towells and
gyrdylls._']
But, of course, this lay knowledge of herbs and so forth was not enough,
for, as Andrew Borde, that man of wit and sound learning, said, quoting
Galen, '"If Phisicions had nothing to do with Astronomy, Geomatry, Logycke
and other sciences, coblers, curryars of lether, carpenters and smythes
and al such manner of people wolde leave theyr craftes and be Phisicions,"
as it apereth nowe a dayes that many coblers be; fye on such ones!'
Without a knowledge of astronomy how could Culpeper have discovered that a
certain French quack was 'as like Mars in Capricorne as a Pomewater is an
Apple,' and that therefore he was a fool? It was important also to
comprehend the mystical properties of gems, many of which exercised as
healing an influence as any herb. So well was this recognised that in
1217, when Alice Lunsford, a member of an old East Sussex family (whose
later descendants endeavoured to extend its antiquity by forging Saxon
ancestors with the delightfully improbable Christian names of David and
Joseph), fell ill, she sent to Philip Daubigny and borrowed three rings
from him, and when he asked for them back begged him, for the love of
God, not to take them away, as without them she could not recover.
Unfortunately the troops of Louis the Dauphin plundered her house shortly
afterwards, and although she did recover Philip lost his rings, one of
them being a sapphire for which he would not have taken 50 marks.
Gems were not only held to exercise a beneficent influence when worn in
rings or held in the mouth, but were also administered internally. Amongst
the long list of medicines made for Edward I. during his last illness, in
1307, is 'a comforting electuary made with ambergis, musk, pearls, and
jacinths, and pure gold and silver.' Lower down in the list occurs 'a
precious electuary called Dyacameron,' and a fifteenth-century book of
prescriptions shows that this was composed of ginger, cinnamon, clove, and
other spices, black, white, and long pepper, musk, ambergris, 'the bone of
a stag's heart,' coral, pure gold, and shavings of ivory, amongst other
things. This same book shows a still more elaborate preparation, called
'The Duke's Electuary,' containing fifty ingredients, but mostly herbal,
and not so precious or indigestible as these others. These electuaries,
which were a kind of medicated sweetmeat, seem to have been taken in large
quantities, as Richard de Montpelier, King Edward's apothecary, prepared
over 280 pounds of electuaries made with sugar. These cost a shilling the
pound, while Dyacameron ran up to 13_s._ 4_d._ the pound, and four ounces
of rose comfits (_sucurosset_) flavoured with pearls and coral cost £3,
13_s._ 4_d._ Oriental ambergris to put in the king's food and in his
claret was another expensive item. But all these drugs and all the care of
Master Nicholas de Tyngewyk, his physician, of whose skill the king held a
high opinion, proved unavailing.