The ceremonies of blessing cramp-rings on Good Friday, called the Hallowing of the Cramp-Rings, is described by Bishop Percy in his Northumberland Household Book,858 where we have the following account:—
“And then the Usher to lay a Carpett for the Kinge to Creepe to the Crosse upon. And that done, there shal be a Forme sett upon the Carpett, before the Crucifix, and a Cushion laid upon it for the King to kneale upon. And the Master of the Jewell Howse ther to be ready with the Booke concerninge the Hallowing of the Crampe Rings, and Amner (Almoner) muste kneele on the right hand of the Kinge, holdinge the sayde booke. When that is done the King shall rise and goe to the Alter, wheare a Gent. Usher shall be redie with a Cushion for the Kinge to kneele upon; and then the greatest Lords that shall be ther to take the Bason with the Rings and beare them after the Kinge to offer.”
In the Harleian Manuscripts there is a letter from Lord Chancellor Hatton to Sir Thomas Smith, dated Sept, 11th, 158-, about a prevailing epidemic, and enclosing a ring for Queen Elizabeth to wear between her breasts, the said ring having “the virtue to expell infectious airs.”859
Andrew Boorde, in his Introduction to Knowledge (1547-48), says: “The Kynges of England by the power that God hath gyuen to them, dothe make sicke men whole of a sickeness called the kynges euyll. The Kynges of England doth halowe euery yere crampe rynges, the whyche rynges, worne on ones fynger, dothe helpe them the whyche hath the crampe.”860
Concerning the king’s evil, which Boorde explains is an “euyl sickenes or impediment,” he advises: “For this matter let euery man make frendes to the Kynges maiestie, for it doth pertayne to a Kynge to helpe this infirmitie by the grace the whiche is geuen to a Kynge anoynted.”861
In Robert Laneham’s letter862 about Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Kenilworth Castle, it is told how on July 18th, 1575, her Majesty touched for the evil, and that it was “a day of grace.” “By her highnes accustumed mercy and charitee, nyne cured of the peynfull and daungerous diseaz, called the kings euill; for that Kings and Queenz of this Realm withoout oother medsin (saue only by handling and prayerz) only doo cure it.”
Sir John Fortescue, in his defence of the House of Lancaster against that of York, argued that the crown could not descend to a female because the Queen is not qualified by the form of anointing her to cure the disease called the king’s evil. On this account, and more especially after the excommunication of Elizabeth by the Pope in 1570, it must have been eminently comforting to all concerned to find that the power to cure disease by the royal touch had not been affected by the change of religion or any other cause. The practice was at its height in the reign of Charles II.863
Lord Braybrooke says,864 “In the first four years after his restoration he ‘touched’ nearly 24,000 people.” We find that Dr. Johnson was touched by Queen Anne. “The Office for the Healing” continued to be printed in the Book of Common Prayer after the accession of the House of Hanover.
The custom evidently arose from the fact that Edward the Confessor was a saint as well as a king. William of Malmesbury gives the origin of the royal touch in his account of the miracles of Edward: “A young woman had married a husband of her own age, but having no issue by the union, the humours collecting abundantly about her neck, she had contracted a sore disorder, the glands swelling in a dreadful manner. Admonished in a dream to have the part affected washed by the king, she entered the palace, and the king himself fulfilled this labour of love, by rubbing the woman’s neck with his fingers dipped in water. Joyous health followed his healing hand; the lurid skin opened, so that worms flowed out with the purulent matter, and the tumour subsided. But as the orifice of the ulcers was large and unsightly, he commanded her to be supported at the royal expense till she should be perfectly cured. However, before a week was expired, a fair new skin returned, and hid the scars so completely, that nothing of the original wound could be discovered; and within a year becoming the mother of twins, she increased the admiration of Edward’s holiness. Those who knew him more intimately, affirm that he often cured this complaint in Normandy; whence appears how false is their notion, who in our times assert, that the cure of this disease does not proceed from personal sanctity, but from hereditary virtue in the royal line.”865
Many other miracles of healing were attributed to St. Edward. Jeremy Collier866 maintains that the scrofula miracle is hereditary upon all his successors. The curious fact, however, is that the hereditary right of succession was repeatedly interrupted, yet the power remained. In connection with this royal touching, pieces of gold were given by the sovereigns to be worn by the patients as amulets. They were called “touching pieces,” and though not absolutely requisite for the cure, some persons declared that the disease returned if they lost the coins. We can only account for the great efficacy which in some cases seemed to have attended the royal treatment, by the confidence and exalted expectation awakened in the sufferers by the ceremony, which acted as a tonic to the system, and roused the patients’ imagination to contribute to their own cure.867
Chips and handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of King Charles I. are said to have been efficacious in curing sick persons in hundreds of cases.
The College of Physicians of Edinburgh was created by the king’s letters patent in 1581, one year after the foundation of Edinburgh University by James VI.
In the reign of Elizabeth, when physicians rode on horseback, they were seated sideways; many of them carried muffs, to keep their fingers warm when they had to feel their patient’s pulse. Twice a year everybody was bled—a system which must have caused many disorders.
Fifteen centuries after the age of Celsus, with the revival of learning and science came the revival of human vivisection. Vesalius, as above mentioned, is known to have vivisected men; and in the Storia Universale of Cesare Cantù there is an account of the Duke of Florence giving a man for vivisection to Fallopius. This incident has been disputed; but the following series of cases, extracted by Professor Andreozzi from the Criminal Archives of Florence, and published by him in his book Leggi Penali degli antichi e Cinesi, are beyond question. Cosmo de Medici seems to have taken the anatomists of Pisa under his special favour, and to have sent them the miserable convicts from the prisons at his option. The following examples are a selection from the cases extracted by Signor Andreozzi from the Archivio Criminale:—
“1. January 15th, 1545.—Santa di Mariotto Tarchi di Mugello, wife of Bastiano Lucchese, was condemned to be beheaded for infanticide. Under the sentence is written, ‘Dicta Santa, de mente Excellmi Ducis, fuit missa Pisis, de ea per doctores fieret notomia.’[No notice to be found of any execution of the woman, such as would have appeared had she been put to death before she was sent to Pisa.]
“2. December 14th, 1547.—Giulio Mancini Sanese was condemned for robbery and other offences. Sent to Pisa to be anatomised. ‘Ducatur Pisis, pro faciendo de eo notomia.’
“3. In the record of prisoners sent away, dated September 1st, 1551, occurs this entry:—‘Letter to the Commissioner of Castrocaro, that Maddalena, who is imprisoned for killing her son, should be sent here, if she be likely to recover, as it pleases S. E. that she should be reserved for anatomy. Of this nothing is to be said, but she is to be kept in hopes. If she is not likely to recover, the executioner is to be sent for to decapitate her.’ The end of the horrible extract is,—‘Went to Pisa, to be made an anatomy.’
“4. December 12th, 1552.—A man named Zuccheria, accused of piracy, was reserved from hanging, with his comrade, and sent to Pisa, ‘per la notomia.’
“5. December 22nd, 1552.—A certain Ulivo di Paolo was condemned by the Council of Eight to be hanged for poisoning his wife. Sentence changed—to be sent for anatomy. Was sent to Pisa on January 13th.
“6. November 14th, 1553.—Marguerita, wife of Biajio d’Antinoro, condemned to be beheaded for infanticide.... December 20th, ‘she was released from the fetters and consigned to a familiar, who took her to Pisa to the Commissario, who gave her, as usual, to the anatomist, to make anatomy of her; which was done’ (‘che la consegni, secondo il solito, al notomista, per farne notomia, come fu fatto’).”
“Several other cases, from 1554 to 1570, are recorded, with equally unmistakable exactitude. In one instance the condemned man’s destiny was mitigated, and after having been ordered to be sent to Pisa for the Commissario to consign to the anatomist, ‘when he should ask for him, and at his pleasure,’ he was mercifully sentenced to be hanged at once at Vico, ‘by direction of Sua Excellenza Illustrissima.’ Two unfortunate thieves, Paoli di Giovanni and Vestrino d’Agnolo, were sent together by the Council of Eight to be anatomised; the Duke having written to say ‘that they wanted in Pisa a subject for anatomy.’”
After the date 1570 no more cases occur in the Archives.
Francis I. invited the Italian anatomist Vidus Vidius to his royal college at Paris.
Several new medicines were introduced about this period.
Lemon juice was first spoken of as a remedy for scurvy in 1564. Its use was discovered by some Dutch sailors whose ship was laden with lemons and oranges from Spain.868
The virtues of sassafras as a medicine for scurvy were discovered, according to Cartier, in 1536, on a voyage to explore the coast of Newfoundland and the St. Lawrence. The natives advised the sailors afflicted with the malady to use the wood of the tree ameda, which was thought to have been sassafras.869
Sarsaparilla was first brought to Europe by the Spaniards, in the middle of the sixteenth century, from Peru and Brazil.
Guaiacum was introduced into Europe in 1509, and in 1519 its use became common.
Holinshed complained870 that estimation and credit given to compound medicines made with foreign drugs in his time was one great cause of the prevailing ignorance of the virtues and uses of “our own simples,” which he held to be fully as useful as the “salsa parilla, mochoacan, etc.,” so much in request. “We tread those herbs under our feet, whose forces, if we knew and could apply them to our necessities, we would honour and have in reverence.—Alas! what have we to do with such Arabian and Grecian stuff as is daily brought from those parts which lie in another clime?—The bodies of such as dwell there are of another constitution than ours are here at home. Certes, they grow not for us, but for the Arabians and Grecians.—Among the Indians, who have the most present cures for every disease of their own nation, there is small regard of compound medicines, and less of foreign drugs, because they neither know them nor can use them, but work wonders even with their own simples.”
Carlo Ruini, of Bologna, published in 1598 a work on the anatomy of the horse, in which Ercolani has found evidence that he, to some extent, anticipated Harvey’s discovery.871
Nicholas Houel (1520-1585) was born at Paris, 1520. He was a famous and learned pharmacien, who devoted the fortune which he acquired by his industry and skill to philanthropic and scientific purposes. He founded a great orphanage in Paris, and the School of Pharmacy of that city owes its origin to him. He wrote a Treatise on the Plague, and one on the Theriacum of Mithridates, both published in 1573. It is to his enlightened and charitable suggestion that dispensaries arose in Paris. His “Garden of Simples” inspired the creation of the Jardin des Plantes.872
Even at the close of the sixteenth century careful and sober men, as Mr. Henry Morley says,873 believed in the miraculous properties of plants and animals and parts of animals. When the century commenced, the learned and unlearned alike believed in the influences of the stars and the interferences of demons with diseases, and in the mysteries of magic. The reason why students of such sciences as existed were punished and persecuted was the dread which men had that the knowledge of the occult powers of nature would afford the learner undue and mysterious power over them.
That most important branch of medical science known as Medical Jurisprudence, or Forensic Medicine, first took its rise in Germany, and, later, was recognised as a necessary branch of study in England. Briefly this science may be described as “that branch of State medicine which treats of the application of medical knowledge to the purposes of the law.” It embraces all questions affecting the civil or social rights of individuals, and of injuries to the person. Although we find traces of the first principles of this science in ancient times, especially in connection with legitimacy, feigned diseases, etc., it is by no means certain that even in Rome the law required any medical inspection of dead bodies. The science dates only from the sixteenth century. The Bishop of Bamberg, in 1507, introduced a penal code requiring the production of medical evidence in certain cases. In 1532, Charles V. induced the Diet of Ratison to adopt a code in which magistrates were ordered to call medical evidence in cases of personal injuries, infanticide, pretended pregnancy, simulated diseases, and poisoning. The actual birth of forensic medicine, however, did not take place until the publication, in Germany, in 1553, of the Constitutio Criminalis Carolina.874 The difficulties which the infant science had to contend against may be estimated from the fact that a few years later a physician named Weiker, who declared that witches and demoniacs were simply persons afflicted with hypochondriasis and hysteria, and should not be punished, was with difficulty saved from the stake by his patron, William, Duke of Cleves.
Ambrose Paré wrote on monsters, simulated diseases, and the art of drawing up medico-legal reports.
In 1621-35 Paulo Zacchia, of Rome, published a work entitled Quæstiones Medico-Legales, which inaugurated a new era in the history of Forensic Medicine. He exhibited immense research in this classical work, the materials for which he collected from 460 authors. Considering that chemistry and physiology were then so imperfectly understood, such a work is a proof of the learning and sagacity of the author.
In 1663 the Danish physician Bartholin proposed the hydrostatic test for the determination of live-birth, the method used to-day in examining the lungs of an infant to discover whether the child was born alive or not, by observing whether they float or sink in water.