arrow, but failed to extract it. "Cut open the wound," said Thormod, "till you can get a good hold, and then let me pull." So he got out the iron, with bits of flesh-red and white-sticking to the barbs. "The king has fed us well, I am fat to the heart roots," observed the hero, and with that he died. Thirteen years later, King Magnus the Good, of Norway and Denmark, defeated a great army of Wends near Sleswig, in one of the bloodiest battles ever fought in the North. He was concerned to find that there were not enough surgeons to look after the wounded, so he appointed those of his soldiers who had the softest hands to this office, and though they knew nothing of the healing art, they all became perfect leeches, doubtless by the aid of the king's father and patron, St. Olaf, who had wrought many healing miracles, both before and after his death. Their skill was inherited by their descendants, one of whom, Rafn Sveinbjornson, successfully performed the operation of lithotomy in the Island of Iceland about 1180 A.D., in the presence of a large company, each of whom had previously repeated five Paternosters. But he had travelled far in his youth, even to Italy, and probably owed his skill less to St. Olaf than to Salerno. His grandson, Rafn Oddson, again appears as an army surgeon, for he went with King Erik, the priest-hater, of Norway, on his expedition to Denmark (1289), and while tending the wounded was struck by three arrows, in the back, the arm, and the finger, the last of which caused his death. Thus, in the earliest middle ages, we find the wounded soldier looked after first by women, or by those of his comrades who possessed some surgical skill, and afterwards by professed surgeons, present either as forming part of the general levy, or attached to the king's person, or who had joined the army for the sake of the practice and presents they could pick up.

Saracen armies, as we have seen, were even accompanied by apothecaries, and Saladin had a medical staff of fifteen physicians, whose services can hardly have been confined to his own household. In the sixth book of the Liber Almansoris Rhazes gives a short chapter on the hygiene of camps,

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advising, among other things, that when many soldiers are taken ill at once, they should immediately be separated from the rest on that side of the camp towards which the wind blows. It was probably on this that Arnald of Villanova based his treatise De Regimine Castra Sequentium, from which the following is an extract: "To test the purity of water take a thin, very white piece of linen, dip it in the water and hang it in the sun to dry. If spots of any colour appear, the water is pestiferous and should be avoided."

It is satisfactory to find that the English were not only the first of Western nations to use cannon in war, but also the first to originate something like an army medical service. When Prince Edward was stabbed in Palestine, it is very doubtful whether the wound was sucked by his wife; but there is good evidence that it was excised by an English surgeon, and the success of the treatment perhaps inspired him with respect for the healing art, for we find him accompanied in the invasion of Scotland (1299-1301) by no less than seven medical men. They included a king's physician and two juniors (valetti), a king's surgeon and two assistants (socii), and a simple surgeon. The king's physician and surgeon each received a knight's pay-two shillings daily; and the others, who ranked as esquires, half that sum. That they found plenty to do is indicated by the fact that the chief surgeon got compensation for three horses killed in Scotland "on the king's service". But this germ of a medical staff seems to have undergone no further development, for we hear nothing of military surgeons during the wars of Edward III., except that the Welshmen who fought at Crecy were accompanied by one of their own race. In the following century appear the often-quoted names of Nicholas Colnet, physician, and Thomas Morstede, surgeon, who went with Henry V. to Agincourt. Both were attended by three mounted archers, and Morstede had, in addition, twelve members of his own craft as his assistants. Colnet and Morstede were to receive one shilling, and their attendants sixpence per diem, together with a share of the

plunder, and their part of "the usual bounty," viz., 100 marks (£66 13s. 4d.) per quarter for every thirty men during the actual campaign. If they got all this they were well paid indeed, but only one receipt has come down to us, in which Colnet acknowledges the payment of £8 6s. 8d. as half-quarter's salary for himself and his archers. Another surgeon, William Bredewardyn, seems to have been afterwards associated with Morstede, and they were allowed two waggons and a chariot for their baggage.

Field hospitals and ambulances on a large scale appear only at the very close of the mediæval epoch, and the credit of introducing them seems to belong to that noblest of queens, Isabella the Catholic. Speaking of the siege of Alora (1484), the Spanish historian, Hernando del Pulgar, writes: "For the care of the sick and wounded the queen sent always to the camp six large tents and their furniture, together with physicians, surgeons, medicines and attendants, and commanded that they should charge nothing, for she would pay for all. These tents were called the Queen's Hospital." On the surrender of Malaga, 1487, the Spanish army, on its entry, was followed by the Queen's Hospital in 400 waggons, "ambulancias". At the siege of Granada, two years later, an eye-witness, Peter Martyr, wrote to the Archbishop of Milan as follows: "Four huge hospital tents, the careful provision of queenly piety, are a sight worth seeing. They are intended not only for the wounded, but for those labouring under any disease. The physicians, apothecaries, surgeons, and other attendants are as numerous, the order, diligence and supply of all things needful as complete as in your suburban Infirmary of the Holy Spirit, or the great Milan Hospital itself. Every sickness and casualty is met and provided for by the royal bounty, except where Nature's appointed day is at hand." (Regia impensa quidquid languoris, quidquid accidentis emergit, ni status cuique a natura dies adsit abscinditur.) The queen herself frequently visited the wounded, and when her courtiers hinted that this was contrary to Castilian etiquette, she is

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said to have replied: "Let me go to them, for they have no mothers here, and it will soothe them in their pain and weakness to find that they are not uncared for". Well may the admiring chronicler add: "Surely this queen deserved as much as those ancient Greek and Roman princesses that famous title, Mater castrorum '"

NOTE.

Germania, 8; Nibelungenlied, iv. 255; Gudrun, viii. 536 ff. The stories of Thormod and Magnus are from the Heimskringla (Laing's translation). For Rafn see Faye, Rafn Sveinbjornsen's liv og Virksomed, Christiania, 1878, and Husemann's review of this work in Rohlfs' Archiv, 1880. A very full account of early English military medicine is given by Smart, B. M. J., 1873, vol. i. The agreements with Colnet and Morstede may be found in Rymer's Fœdera, 29th April, 1415, etc.

The relative rank of military surgeons as estimated by their salaries may be made clearer by the following account of the pay received by the English army in France in 1347: "Prince of Wales, one pound a day; Bishop of Durham and 13 earls, six shillings and eightpence each; 1046 knights, two shillings; 4132 esquires, one shilling; 5104 mounted archers, sixpence; 4374 Welshmen, fourpence; 15,480 archers on foot, threepence (Meynert, Geschichte des Kriegswesens).

Pedro Bosca, in his "Oration held at Rome, 1st November, 1487, before the sacred senate of cardinals, in celebration of the glorious victory gained at Malaga by the most serene and Catholic princes of Spain, Ferdinand and Helisabet " (sic), says the Queen's Hospital comprised nearly 400 waggons with awnings (operti umbraculis), and the wounded were nursed not by the highly improper persons who usually follow armies, but by "honestissimis et probatissimis matronis huic muneri servientibus et ministrantibus (Oratio Romæ habita, etc., Rome, 1487).

On the general subject see Fröhlich, Ueber die Anfänge der Militärmedicin im Mittelalter and Geschichtliches über die Militärmedicin der Deutschen in Rohlfs' Archiv, 1880, 1882 respectively.

XL. THE MEDIEVAL PHYSICIAN.

WHEN King Gram went in disguise to a wedding for the purpose of carrying off the bride, he dressed in the dirtiest

rags he could find, sat among the lowest menials in the hall, and called himself a physician.1 This is a sad contrast to the curled and scented dandies of the days of Aristophanes, but it is only one of many signs of the low social state of the profession during the early middle ages. Nor are the causes for this decline hard to discover. When the Christian Emperors, Valens and Valentinian, handed over the pagan Oribasius to "the most savage of the barbarians," in the pious hope that he would become a target for their arrows, they were disappointed to hear that his medical skill had raised him to the rank of a chief. But the physicians of the West could compare neither socially nor professionally with Oribasius; they still belonged largely to the servile class, and their skill, whether in medicine or surgery, was not sufficient to impress the rude conquerors, who looked upon the free-born Romans themselves as little better than slaves. Medicine was, indeed, saved from entire degradation by its connection with the Church, which did so much to soften the horrors of the barbarian conquest; but the suspicion with which its practitioners were regarded is very clearly shown by the laws passed concerning them, as in the following examples from the Visigothic code.

"No 'medicus' shall bleed a free woman except in the presence of a relative, or, in case of necessity, of a respectable neighbour or servant, on pain of a fine of ten solidi." "No medicus' shall visit a prisoner unless accompanied by an official, for he may bring him a poison, and so defeat the ends of justice." "Before undertaking a case he shall enter into a contract and give pledges." "If a physician injures a freeman by bleeding, let him pay a hundred solidi; but if the patient dies, let him be handed over to his relatives to treat as they please. If a slave is injured or killed, the physician shall replace him by one of equal value." This last law is especially important; it reappears in yet stronger terms in later codes, and was doubtless frequently put in force, and sometimes even exceeded. The plague which ravaged France in the sixth century attacked, among others,