This work on the practice of medicine was completed by John of Gaddesden circa 1317. It became known as ‘Rosa Anglica’ (English Rose) referring with typically medieval love of imagery, to the division of the book into five ‘sepals’ i.e. sections concerning fevers, hygiene, diet, material medica and the use of drugs in the treatment of illness.
Its contents should be understood in the context of 14th
century medicine, which depended large on astrology, that ‘magik naturel’
mentioned by Chaucer and based on ‘the doctrine of humours’.
John’s treatments seem to us to involve a combination of
superstition and religion, accompanied by alarming prescriptions of dubious
efficacy; e.g. patients suffering from the King’s Evil were offered an ointment
of dove’s dung and weasel’s blood.
Pitseus, a contemporary, remarked engagingly that John ‘went abroad in
order that he might not endanger his family and fellow countrymen by his first
practice in medicine’.
One of the chapter headings in John’s book is ‘Of
disagreeable diseases which the doctor can seldom make money by’. Nevertheless he was extremely successful in
his profession, rose to the post of court physician, and held a number of
important ecclesiastical and political appointments during the course of his
lifetime. The ‘Rosa’ was used as a
standard text in various translations throughout Europe for over 300 years.
Incidentally, John of Gaddesden was the first doctor to
catheterize a patient for a urinary disorder, an important development in the
days before penicillin, when syphilis and other venereal diseases were a major
cause of this problem.
Given the state of medical knowledge at the time, an intelligent doctor such as John of Gaddesden must have despaired of being able to do anything useful in the face of an epidemic of the proportions of the Black Death. Gui de Chauliac, physician to Pope Clement VI (the latter took refuge in his castle at Rhone and survived) commented that ‘the plague was shameful for the physicians, who could give no help at all, especially as, out of fear of infection, they hesitated to visit the sick. Even if they did they achieved nothing, and earned no fees, for all those who caught the plague died’.
We would prefer to think that John would have been prepared at least to try to help those struck down, but for the infected it would have made little difference. Tracts written by physicians at the time show that their treatments are unlikely to have effected a single cure. Most attention was given to the need to keep away from the ‘miasma’ or infected mist thought to carry the plague. Because the disease was believed to be air-borne, aromatic substances were considered valuable in its prevention, amber, musk, or scented woods like juniper, ash or rosemary being burnt. It was believed that exercise and hot baths should be avoided. Diet was considered important, but the experts gave conflicting advice on this matter. Soothing poultices were prescribed, some of which may have done more harm than good e.g. 1 ounce of gold added to 11 ounces of quicksilver, dissolved by slow heat, plus 47 ounces of borage water, kept airtight for 3 days over a fire then swallowed until cure or more probably death supervened. At least not many patients could afford to be poisoned by such a cure. Bleeding, in an effort to draw off the ‘evil vapours’ which had entered by the pores of the skin, was popular and many unfortunate invalids were also subjected to the cauterizing of the plague boils or buboes.
The Black Death continued its
rampage, sparing neither king nor commoner: even Edward III’s daughter Princess
Joanna died of it at Bordeaux in August 1338 on her way to marry Prince Pedro
the Cruel of Castile, news of her death reaching England at the same time as the
plague itself.
© Rosemary Dixon-Smith 2005