The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (Text Only)

by Christopher Hibbert

  In 1283 the Statute of Winchester reiterated this mutual responsibility and emphasized the ancient English tradition that every man was a policeman. In order to keep the peace more effectively, and to ‘abate the power of felons’, it specified the type of weapon which every man had for generations been expected to possess both to fight the king’s enemies and to keep the peace. The statute also confirmed the responsibility of all able-bodied men to follow the ‘hue and cry’ which required them to down tools when the call was made and to dash off in pursuit of malefactors caught in the act. Nor did their responsibilities end here, for they were also liable to be called to serve as constables when their turn came, only ‘Religious Persons, Knights, Clerkes and Women’ being excepted.

  In towns able-bodied men were also expected to perform regular duty as watchmen; each of London’s twenty-four wards, for example, was required by an Act of 1283 to provide six men chosen from all the householders, to parade as watchmen under the orders of an alderman. As the years passed, however, busy merchants and artisans found it increasingly irksome to abandon their counting-houses and work-benches when the ‘hue and cry’ was raised or when their turn came to act as constables or watchmen. So, gradually, the ‘hue and cry’ fell into disuse to be replaced by the practice of paying a proxy to perform the duty of constable and to act as assistant to the justice of the peace, an officer whose origins can be traced back to the twelfth century but whose importance did not emerge until a statue of 1360 defined his considerable powers.18

  Yet if improved methods of law enforcement did lead to more arrests, punishment for crime remained so uncertain and arbitrary, and acquittal could so often be bought by bribes or influence that men continued to settle their own grievances by private methods. In the Northumberland Roll of 1279, seventy-two murders are listed and only forty-three accidental deaths. In the murder cases eighty-one culprits are identified. Of these no more than three were hanged. Six escaped to sanctuary, one was imprisoned, one fined, one pleaded benefit of clergy and sixty-nine escaped altogether.19 In 1348 there were eighty-eight known cases of murder in Yorkshire, whose population at that time was probably about the same as that of Sheffield today. If murders were committed on this scale now, there would not be less than 10,000 a year in England and Wales instead of the average of between 500 and 600. Most murderers today commit suicide or, if sentenced, are imprisoned. But nearly all murderers then were allowed to become outlaws, since this was more profitable financially; and many of these outlaws returned to commit depredations in a different part of the country.

  Almost as common a method of private vengeance as murder was mutilation which the law allowed as a punishment, though it was not often inflicted except upon the very poor. Guy Mortimer, rector of Kingston-upon-Hull, attacked one of his parishioners against whom he bore a grudge and, with the help of a fellow clergyman and some other friends, he cut off his upper lip. The court before which Mortimer was brought declared he was guilty of mere trespass and imposed a fine. Not until the fifteenth century was cutting out the tongue of an enemy or putting out his eyes considered a felony.20

  13 Doctors and Patients

  A doctor too emerged as we proceeded;

  No one alive could talk as well as he did …

  The cause of every malady you’d got

  He knew, and whether dry, cold, moist or hot;

  He knew their seat, their humour and condition

  He was a perfect practising physician.

  Like all other conventional practitioners of his craft, the doctor in Chaucer’s portrait knew that the properties of the four elements – earth, air, fire and water – were all present in a person’s body in varying proportions. These proportions were responsible for a person’s character, his or her ‘humour’, the cause of his being either sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic or melancholy. The earth was deemed to be cold and dry, the air to be hot and moist, fire hot and dry, and water cold and moist. The melancholy man was predominantly cold and dry, the choleric hot and dry, the phlegmatic cold and moist, and the sanguine man, like air, was hot and moist, and this gave him his high colour and his cheerful good nature. It was the doctor’s object to recognize the natural temperament of his patient, and to know how to treat him when the elements making up his character became unbalanced and he consequently fell ill.

  To help him in his task the doctor could turn to astrology. This enabled him to fix the best time for medicines to be given, for purges to be administered, for cuppings and bleedings, for the application of leeches, for the use of the pig’s bladder equipped with a tube which served him as an enema. Astrology was also of use in helping the apothecaries – from whom the doctor bought his more complex remedies – to mix them in their proper proportions, for there were some prescriptions such as theriac, an antidote to poison, which contained some fifty ingredients each of which had to be incorporated at the appropriate time.

  Chaucer’s doctor, who makes a great show of his knowledge and talks a good deal of Hippocrates, Galen and Discorides and other ancient masters of his science, seems to have relied heavily upon ‘Natural Magic’ and horoscopes for his treatment, and placed effigies of his patients round their necks so that healing powers could descend into them and thence into the patients when the planets were favourably placed. He also follows the example of most of his fellow-doctors by never setting too light a value upon his skills:

  All his apothecaries in a tribe

  Were ready with the drugs he would prescribe

  And each made money from the other’s guile;

  They had been friendly for a goodish while …

  In blood red garments, slashed with bluish-grey

  And lined with taffeta, he rode his way;

  Yet he was rather close as to expenses

  And kept the gold he won in pestilences.

  Gold stimulates the heart, or so we’re told.

  He therefore had a special love of gold.

  In his demands for high fees for his services, he was obeying the precepts of John of Aderne, the successful fourteenth-century surgeon who had had much practice in his craft during the Hundred Years’ War, and strongly advised doctors, or leeches as he calls them, to beware ‘of scanty askings’, since they ‘set at nought both the market and the thing’.

  Therefore for the cure of fistula [John of Aderne continued] when it is curable, ask competently of a worthy man and a great forty pound, take he not less than an hundred shilling. For never in all my life took I less than an hundred shilling for cure of that sickness … And if the patients or their friends or servants ask how much time he hopeth to heal it, evermore let the leech promise the double that he supposeth to speed by half; that is, if the leech hope to heal the patient in twenty weeks – that is the common course of curing – add he so many over … Have the leech also clean hands and well shapen nails, and cleansed from all blackness and filth. And be he courteous at lords’ tables, and displease he not in words or deeds to the guests sitting by; hear he many things but speak he but few … And when he shall speak, be the words short, and, as much as he may, fair and reasonable and without swearing. Learn also a young leech good proverbs pertaining to his craft in comforting of patients … Also it speedeth that a leech can talk of good tales and of honest that may make the patients to laugh, as well of the Bible as of other tragedies.1

  According to Johannes Mirfield who worked at St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, in the fourteenth century, very few doctors lived up to John of Aderne’s ideals. They were, in fact, mostly ‘ignorant amateurs’ or what Johannes considered ‘worse and more horrible’, ‘worthless and presumptuous women’. In any case, whichever their sex, they made

  the greatest possible mistakes (thanks to their stupidity) and very often kill their patients; for they work without wisdom … in a casual fashion [unacquainted with] the causes or even the names of the maladies which they claim to be able to cure … Modern physicians appear to possess three special qualifications, namely, to be able to lie in a subtle
manner, to show an outward honesty, and to kill with audacity.2

  The cures they advocated were frequently taken from such books of traditional recipes as the fourteenth-century Welsh Meddygon Myddfai (Physician of Myddfai). This, as a cure for toothache for instance, proposes that the patient should ‘take a candle of mutton fat, mingled with seed of sea holly. Burn this candle as close as possible to the tooth, holding a basin of cold water beneath it. The worms [which are gnawing the tooth] will fall into the water to escape the heat of the candle.’ Another book, agreeing that toothache was caused by worms ‘itchynge and tyckelinge and contynuall dyggynge and thrylynge [boring] at the roots’, recommended killing the offending creatures with a mixture of myrrh and opium. Yet another cure was ‘to goe thryse about a church yarde’.3

  For the treatment of stone the remedy discovered by John of Gaddesden, physician at the royal court, was said to have been efficacious. John, having long pondered the problem, ‘at last bethought of collecting a good number of those beetles which in summer were found in the dung of oxen, also of the crickets which sing in the fields’.

  I cut off the heads and wings of the crickets [he wrote], and put them with the beetles and common oil into a pot. I covered it and left it afterwards for a day and night in a bread oven. I drew out the pot and heated it at a moderate fire. I pounded the whole and rubbed the sick parts. In three days the pain had disappeared.4

  For skin diseases the patient was recommended to take gold filings ‘in meate or in drinke or in medicine’; while ‘thyn plates of gold, firy hot, quenced in wine maketh the wine profitable ayenst the evill of the splene, and ayenst many other evills and passions malincolik’.5 Doctors treating jaundice in the fourteenth century were recommended to wash the patient with water in which wormwood had been steeped, and for medicine to give him either ivory shavings in wine, borage root and saffron soaked in ale, or saffron and ivory shavings in holy water. And for those suffering from quinsy this was the cure: ‘Take a fat cat, skin it, draw out the guts and take the grease of a hedgehog and the fat of bear, and fennugreek, and sage, and gum of honeysuckle and virgin wax. All this crumble small and stuff the cat, roast it whole and gather the grease and anoint [the patient] therewith.’6

  Magical potions and charms, such as inscribed parchments hung round the neck, were also widely used; and even John Aderne recommended ‘the following charm against spasm’ as having been found ‘most sovran’:

  A charm written on parchment and placed in a purse and put on the neck of the patient … In nomine patris et filii et Spiritus sancti Amen. Thebal Enthe Enthanay In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus sancti Amen. Ihesu Nazarenus Maria Iohannes Michael Gabriel Raphael Verbum caro factum est .

  Let it be closed afterwards in the manner of a letter so that it cannot be opened easily, and for this reason I used to write it in Greek letters that it might not be understanded of the people. And if one carries that written charm fairly in the name of God Almighty, and believes, without doubt, he will not be troubled with cramp.7

  While, as Keith Thomas has said, it would be ‘a gross travesty to suggest that the medieval Church deliberately held out to the laity an organized system of magic designed to bring supernatural remedies to bear upon earthly problems’, the leaders of the Church did abandon the struggle against superstition whenever it seemed in their interest to do so.8 And it was, indeed, impossible, even had it been desirable, to prevent medieval patients from believing in the magical properties of holy relics and devotional incantations. It was widely held that the wearing of verses from the gospels and of an agnus dei was a protection against calamity, disease and death; that the key of a church door was an efficacious remedy against rabies; that a Bible placed on the forehead was a cure for sleeplessness; that soil from a churchyard could ward off sickness; that the sign of the cross could keep evil spirits at bay; that splinters of martyrs’ bones, chips from the holy cross or drops of Christ’s blood were remedies for all manner of ills.

  More than one authority maintained that it was possible to obtain a prognostication by ‘taking the herb cinquefoil and, while collecting it, saying a Paternoster on behalf of the patient, and boiling it in a new jar with some of the water which the patient is destined to drink, and if the water be red in colour after this boiling, then the patient will die’. His death could also be foretold by counting up all the letters in the patient’s name, the name of the servant sent to summon the doctor and the name of the day upon which the summons first arrived. ‘If an even number result, the patient will not escape. If the number be odd then he will recover.’9

  For the relief of pain during surgery there was little the doctor could do either by magic or by any other means, although it was claimed that by applying to the skin an ointment made from a variety of ingredients including henbane, mandragora, hemlock and black and white poppies ‘he shall mow [be able to] suffre kuttyng in any place of the body without felying or akyng … Also the sede alon [of henbane] giffen in wyne to drynk maketh the drinker alsone for [immediately go] to sleep, that he schal noght fele whatsoever is done to hym.’ Certainly henbane could render a man unconscious, but if carelessly administered it could also kill him.

  Some more enlightened doctors emphasized the importance of diet and exercise. Johannes Mirfield of St Bartholomew’s suggested that invalids should be encouraged to drink wine and barley water and to eat honey, river-crab and dried figs.

  Milk is of the greatest possible value [he also suggested for consumptives] especially if it be that of women; asses milk is next to be preferred, and then that of goats. The milk ought to be imbibed direct from the udder; but should this be impossible, then take a salver, which has been washed in hot water, and allow it to stand over another full of hot water; then let the animal be milked into the salver and the milk immediately proferred …

  Moreover, wine should not be drunk during the whole period in which the milk remains in the stomach, for the wine causes the milk to coagulate, and this changes it into the nature of poison … The patient can also eat the flesh of all the usual kinds of fowl which fly, except of those which live on the water; likewise the flesh of kids, lambs, and unweaned calves, or of the young rabbit; also the extremities of animals (such as the feet and legs of little pigs), hens and their chickens, and the flesh of a year-old lamb: and of all these only a little should be taken, and but rarely, except in the case of flying fowl, and even this should be taken only in such a small quantity as to be digestible.

  As for exercise, Johannes Mirfield considered that:

  The first and most important [kind] of [exercise is] to walk abroad, choosing the uplands where the air is pure; this is the best of all. Riding is another form of exercise but this is only for the wealthy. It behoves prelates, however, to have some other method of taking exercise. Let such a man therefore, have a stout rope, knotted at the end, hanging up in his chamber; and then grasping the rope with both hands, let him raise himself up, and remain in that position for a long time without touching the ground … Another method of taking exercise is to hold the breath and impel it towards the head, or towards the belly, and this is extremely useful … Or if this pastime does not please him, let him hold in his hands a stone, weighing thirty pounds, in which a ring has been fixed, and carry it about frequently from one part of his dwelling to another; or let him hold this same stone up in the air for a long time before setting it down, or lift it to his neck, or between his hands.10

  In the sixteenth century Andrew Boorde, the physician, whose Dyetary of Health and Brevyary of Health were both highly influential, emphasized the importance of a balanced diet and of ensuring that patients were given food suited to their temperaments. The phlegmatic man, for instance, should avoid white meat and fruit, the choleric hot spices; while fried meat was bad for the melancholic man, and garlic for the sanguine.

  A good cook is half physician [Boorde wrote]. For the chief physic (the counsil of a physician excepted) doth come from the kitchen; wherefor the physician and the
cook must consult together for the preparation of meat … For if the physician, without the cook, prepare any meat except he be very expert, he will make a worse dish of meat, that which the sick cannot take.11

  The regulation of sleep was also important. Men and women of the sanguine and choleric temperaments needed only seven hours’ sleep, but the phlegmatic ought to have nine and the melancholic even longer.

  In Boorde’s day new and efficacious drugs were coming into use. Ipecacuana, later to be used in the treatment of dysentery and as a constituent of expectorant mixtures in the treatment of bronchitis, had already been brought over from the New World. So had quinine although the uses of this as an antiseptic and anti-pyretic and in the treatment of malaria were not discovered until later. Tobacco had also been found in America and was used as a fumigant and, less dangerous than mandrake, as a narcotic during operations. Many supposed cures still relied upon magic: a garnet worn around the neck was supposed to alleviate melancholia, while spring water drunk from the skull of a murdered man was believed to cure the falling sickness. But there were far more remedies which were scientifically based, and the indisputably curative properties of various herbs and plants were now more widely known and made use of everywhere. Comfrey, as well as liquorice and calamint, was, for example, used effectively in the treatment of bronchitis. Drinking and bathing in the waters of spas benefited those who could afford to visit them.