pig to be burnt under a person who has a sore in the arms, or the fat of a black serpent with a red neck and the gall of a pig to be applied to the anus, or the dung of a white dog. The person who has gas in the stomach should drink this mixed with sugar and water "and his insides will be loosened and he will have relief."

Such remedies are clearly remnants of Babylonian-Assyrian medicine, preserved perhaps for centuries by oral tradition until they were embodied in the collections made by native "quacks," who continued to flourish by the side of the better educated physicians.

The rival of Babylonian-Assyrian medicine in point of age is Egyptian medicine, of which we now know a great deal, thanks to the discovery and publication of several medicinal papyri of various periods.110 The possible relations between the two systems is a question which must be left to a further paper. That the drugs used in the Euphrates Valley should have passed to Egypt at an early period, and vice versa, is exactly what we should expect to have happened at an early date, now that we have ascertained that the intercourse between these two regions reverts to the second millennium before this era. In the plant and drug lists drawn up by Babylonian-Assyrian scribes, we find specific mention of substances brought from other countries— Canaan, Magan, Elam, etc. I have pointed out 112 that ammonia was probably introduced into Egypt through intercourse with Babylonia. Beyond such interchange, however, it may be questioned whether the Egyptian medicine had anything to learn from Babylonia, for medical practice ap

110 The latest publication of them by Wreszinski (a) "Papyrus Ebers," Berlin, 1913; (b) "Berlin Papyrus," Berlin, 1909; "London Papyrus," Leipzig, 1912. To these is to be added "The Hearst Medical Papyrus," edited by Reisner, Univ. of California Publications (1905). See also Budge's Introduction. to his edition of the Syriac "Book of Medicines,"

pears to have reached a much higher plane in Egypt. The oldest medical papyrus of Egypt-the Papyrus Ebers-dates back to the 16th century B. C. and is remarkably free from magic rites and incantations, though we do find, as in Babylonia-Assyrian medicine, substances like dung, the uterus and vulva of various animals introduced as drugs which suggests that the purpose of such drugs was originally, likewise, to drive the demon out of the body. No doubt Egyptian medicine started out from the same primitive theory of demoniac possession, but it appears to have cut itself loose from the theory to a large extent at an early age. Strangely enough in medical papyri of the new kingdom, magic practices and the recital of incantations reappear as prominent factors in the treatment of disease. It is tempting to conclude that this recrudescence of primitive methods, in striking contrast to the more rational manner in which diseases are handled in the papyri of older date, was due to the influence of Babylonian-Assyrian culture, whereas the advance to more scientific methods in BabyIonian-Assyrian medicine, so far as this is to be noted, may be ascribed to Egyptian influence as a factor, by the side of the natural progress which must also be assumed.

At all times, however, and despite the recrudescence of magic incantations, Egyptian medicine appears to have been far more scientific in character, and if in the case of Greek medicine, which marks the foundation of medical treatment on a basis more closely approaching that of modern days, we are to seek for any outside influence, we must turn to Egypt as a possible

pp. cxxx-cxliii, for a general survey of Egyptian medicine and the further references there given.

111 I reserve for a special article to be prepared for the Bull. Soc. Med. Hist. of Chicago a fuller discussion of the relations between Babylonian-Assyrian Medicine and that of the Jews and Egyptians.

112 See above, p. 242, note 55.

factor. Homer, it is interesting to note, refers to Egyptian physicians, and we find Egyptian herbs mentioned in the pharmacopoeia of Greek physicians. With Hippocrates, however (460-375 B. C.), an entirely new epoch in medicine is ushered in, and no doubt in the first instance it was the native scientific spirit of Greece that had manifested itself even before the days of Hippocrates, in mathematics and astronomy and in the development of philosophical thought that brought about the systematic study of human anatomy and philosophy and laid the foundations for the rational treatment of disease as against purely empirical methods, based on tradition and crude popular beliefs.

But popular beliefs and time-bound traditions have a tenacious life and survived even in Greece long after the attempt was made to convert medical treatment into a science. Just as we have down to the threshold of modern science, astrology flourishing by the side of astronomy and the exorciser plying his trade side by side with the spiritual guide, so we have the BabyIonian-Assyrian Asu surviving by the side of the Greek iatros. Indeed, in our own days we still have the astrologer as the successor of the Babylonian-Assyrian barû,113 and likewise the medicine-man and the herb doctor and "quack" as the direct descendant of the Asu, supplying remedies that have been handed down from a hoary antiquity, dealing with disease in purely empirical fashion and introducing all kinds of hocus-pocus that suggest the old theory

113 The "seer," used for the one who inspects the liver, equally with the priest who searches the skies for omens.

of demoniac possession as the source of disease.

It is an observation that may frequently be made, that after a civilization passes away, its weaker aspects continue to exercise a more or less pronounced influence. There is a strange fatality in the manner in which "the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." Babylonian-Assyrian civilization can point to great achievements in art, literature, trade and government that exerted a strong and wide influence for good in the ancient world; but after it passed away-leaving scarcely any visible traces until the spade of the explorer dug up the remains of the civilization out of the mounds that formed over the places where once great cities stood-the beliefs and theories of a purely primitive character, which were carried along in the waves of influence that flowed from the Euphrates Valley, continued their sway. These beliefs and theories became in the course of time unofficial appendages to astronomy, religion and medicine; they were degraded to the rank of superstitions; they were finally denounced as heterodox, but their vitality remained unimpaired. And so the BabyIonian-Assyrian Asu may still be found in the by-ways of American and European cities. In these times when we are living under the sign of the germ theory of disease, there would be a certain poetic justice in the apparition of an old Asu of BabyloniaAssyria rising out of his grave, and exclaiming with his bony finger directed to the ultramodern pathologist, “There, I told you so thousands of years ago—it's all due to the demons.'

I

'N the Library of St. John's College, Oxford, is a large folio volume (MS. 17), containing an encyclopædia of secular knowledge, perhaps the earliest medieval work of its kind that has yet come to light. It is composed under the strong traditional influence of Bede. We have described the MS. elsewhere and have shown that it was written between 110 and 1112 by an English speaking monk who was ignorant of Norman French.1 The MS. contains numerous glosses nearly all of which are in the same hand as the text.

A rather surprising feature of this encyclopædia is the acquaintance with Greek that it betrays especially in the medical sections. The knowledge of Greek is, it is true, little more than vestigeal, but even that degree was unusual in Western Europe during the profound intellectual depression of the 10th, 11th, and early 12th centuries.

The interest in the Greek language taken by the author, or rather the compiler, is shewn in various ways. Thus there are several Greek alphabets scattered through the volume. Again, derivation from the Greek had the same fascination for the English monk as was exhibited by St. Isidore of Seville and by Bede. He tells us, for instance, that the name of the month April is derived from Aphrodite. "Aprilis pro uenere dicitur quasi afrodis grece enim uenus dicitur." 2

1 Charles Singer: "A Review of the Medical Literature of the Dark Ages with a New Text of about 1110," Proc. Roy. Soc. Med., London, 1917, vol. x (Section of History of Medicine, pp. 107-160) and "A Medical Compendium of the First Half of the Twelfth Century" in the Bull. Soc. Med. Hist. Chicago, 1917.

2 Fol. 17 verso.

"April is named after venery or Aphrodis for Venus is called in Greek Aphrodis." Afrodis is for appoons, an adjective formed from após = foam. Again "Eliotropium id ἀφρός est intuba a grecis sive solsequia uel sponsa solis." "The heliotrope of the Greek, that is intuba, either the sweetheart or the bride of the sun." In one instance, also, the Greek script is used, namely for the legends of a circle of Petosiris.1

In the medical section the author has borrowed largely from the contemporary Salernitan writings, and from them he may have derived a number of medical terms of Greek origin, such as anastomo, plagiotimo, anacarsis, malanma, dissentericus, emotoicus, cephalica. In some cases, however, there is a suggestion of a more intimate contact with Greek sources, and a correspondingly greater degree of misunderstanding of them. Thus in a section on bloodletting we read:

Inciditur autem de flebotomo optimo rectam percussuram catatixin. habet hoc est in iussum primere flebotomum rectum. & sursum leuare. Quod si male incisa fuerit. collectionem in altum facit. & uulnera insaniosa facit. insaniamque plurimam. & spissa nutrit uulnera. & deducit ad omnem perniciem.5

"[The vein] is best incised with the lancet catatixin, that is with a direct cut, and it is the practice to raise the lancet with the point passing it straight and upwards. For if

3 Fol. 176 recto column b.

Eliotropium is, of course, λτρómov. Intuba is the Virgilian intibum, endive or some such plant. The interpretation of solsequia is more difficult. I have regarded sequia as equal to secia a mediæval form of sexa. Possibly it is falsely derived from

sequor.

4 Folio 8 recto.

5 Folio 2 recto col. b.

it should be badly cut, a deep gathering is formed which makes the wound extremely unhealthy, generates chronic lesions and gives rise to all kinds of trouble."

This catatixin is clearly the κατ ̓ ἴξιν of Hippocrates who uses it as describing the same side and distinguished from the opposite side. Hippocrates says that if a person with enlarged spleen has hæmorrhage from the same (that is the left) nostril, it is a good sign, but if άvánaλiv from the opposite (that is the right) nostril, it is bad, an idea which afterwards gave rise to the famous controversy as to "derivation" or "revulsion." Galen uses the expression xat' tv in a commentary on this very passage of Hippocrates. He there takes the view that venesection should be performed xat' the same side as the disease. The author of our MS. has misunderstood Galen's phrase and takes him to mean that venesection should be performed with a straight up and down cut. The error may have arisen from the use of the ambiguous Latin word recte, to translate κατ ̓ ἔξιν.

tv on

ΣΤΩΜΕΝ ΚΑΛΩΣ ΣΤΩΜΕΝ ΜΕΤΑ ΦΟΒΟΥ

The scribe has transliterated the Greek with two exceptions. He has written calcos for kalos and fofu for fobou. How did these errors arise? There is a complete explanation for them.

8 I have to thank my friend Dr. E. T. Withington for drawing my attention to Galen's true meaning and for pointing out to me some errors in my previous interpretation of this passage.

[Folio 175 recto.] As will be seen from Fig. I the MS. gives Wid. We have restored the cross stroke to the d, as seems required by the context.

In early MSS., the letter kappa often takes a form something like IC, the stem of the κ being completely separated from

T1YÊNATIOICH PCHMŴNI WANNOY
APXIENICICITOVICWNCTANT!
Αρχιεπισκόπο
NOYNONE WET XXPY COCTOM
остой
EPMANETA EICTÙICATAMATON

ONEYAPPEALONBIBALIN B:

TOY ENATIOIC_П(x)P(2)C HMWN IWANNOY

ΑΡΧΙΕΠΙΣΚΟΠΟΥ ΚΩΝΣTANTI
ΝΟΥΠΟΛΕΩΣ ΤΟΥ ΧΡYCOCTOM
ΕΡΜΗΝΕΙΑ ΕΙΣ ΤΟ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΤΘΑΙ
ΟΝ ΕΥΑΓΓΕΛΙΟΝ ΒΙΒΛΙΟΝ Β:

the rest of the letter. We give here (Fig. 2) a facsimile with transcription from the title of a 9th century MS. of the sermons of St. John Chrysostom10 which illustrates well this tendency. The second line of this facsimile shows two kappas either of which could easily be read IC.

10 The facsimile is from a MS. found in a secret crypt in the Monastery of the Transfiguration at Meteora. It is the earliest dated Greek MS. that has yet come to light and is described in "Un Manuscrit des

The third line of the same facsimile similarly shows an w that can be mistaken by a careless reader for CO. Thus KAANE in the original became CALCOS in transcription. The passage of POBOY into FOFU is equally simple. The F as a representative of the letter beta is by no error but is a true presentation of the Byzantine pronunciation. The U of the word FOFU is an ignorant error for the usual MS. method of writing the diphthong OU (cp. Fig. 2, line 3).

We thus have the very remarkable phenomenon of a passage in the Communion Service of the Greek Church in actual use as a charm in England in the 12th century and probably earlier. The source of this remedy for nosebleeding was doubtless unknown to the scribe who has preserved it for us. The fact may, however, suggest to the folklorist a new field of research into the origin of other apparently gibberish charms and folksayings, and to the medical historian further reflexion on the continuity of Greek influence during the darker age of his science.

Météores de l'an 861-2" in the Revue des Études Grecques xxvi, p. 53, Paris, 1913. Our fig. 2 is taken from this work.

In the brilliant reign of Hadrian lived Soranus, who had been the tutor of Atticus. He devoted himself chiefly to the diseases of the female sex, and wrote the only complete treatise on the subject which has come to us from antiquity. His work, remarkable for its fulness of knowledge, shows him to have been something of an enthusiast; and we can think of him in his evening walks near the splendid walls of high-turreted Rome,-the altæ mania Romæ that Virgil loved, or returning from the Athenæum, as wondering what were to be the developments following his labors and the instruments he had invented. Had his eye

penetrated into the future, there would have appeared to him, standing on a platform in what would have seemed a most singular garb, but with features similar, because as regular in outline as those to which he was accustomed, a youth with a roll in his hand, and, attracted by the look of genius in his face, be might well have wished him strength to carry out resolves that were to lead to immortality: Macte nova virtute puer; sic itur ad astra.

And that wish would have been fulfilled in the creation of a science that owes everything to him, to him, Marion Sims.

J. M. DaCosta (1891).