If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin
night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on
his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with
the sign of the cross. His condition will soon be better"[[39b]]
As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with
survivals of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of
medical science down to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility
of the Church to the shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen,
from surgical practice the great body of her educated men; hence
surgery remained down to the fifteenth century a despised
profession, its practice continued largely in the hands of
charlatans, and down to a very recent period the name
"barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. In such surgery, the
application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of
the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled
poison; friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.[[40]]
The enormous development of miracle and fetich cures in the
Church continued during century after century, and here probably
lay the main causes of hostility between the Church on the one
hand and the better sort of physicians on the other; namely, in
the fact that the Church supposed herself in possession of something
far better than scientific methods in medicine.
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