Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/273

 promise that he would behead the two physicians, Nicolaus and Donatus, who had treated her and whose prescriptions had failed to effect a cure. Her wish was carried out, in order—as the statement reads—"that her Majesty might not enter the Realm of the Dead entirely alone." Many centuries later, however, when civilization had certainly advanced far beyond the stage which it had reached in Gaul in the sixth century of the present era, there were instances in which able and conscientious physicians were subjected to equally cruel treatment for their failure to effect a cure.

It was at about this same period, as is amply verified by the statements made by Bishop Gregory of Tours, that faith in the power of saintly relics to heal diseases became almost universal. So great was the effect produced upon the minds of the people by the public display of these objects—bones of saints, portions of their grave-stones, etc.—that a large number of marvelous cures were reported as the result of such displays; and doubtless—so great is the power of suggestion over the human mind—many of these reports were true. A century later (673-735 A. D.), the Venerable Bede, author of the famous work entitled "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation," gave, in the course of his narrative, an account of a case of aphasia in which "a remarkable cure was effected"; and, although he mentions a course of "systematic exercises in speaking" as the means used to effect that cure, he attributes it to supernatural causes and not to the practical treatment adopted. He also describes some of the epidemics of his time, and gives most interesting though brief accounts of the methods of treatment employed by the priests and the monks.

During the ninth and tenth centuries, as we learn from the very full descriptions given by Neuburger in his History of Medicine, much zeal was manifested by the monks at St. Gall in Switzerland, at Reichenau in Saxony, and at Fulda, in Hesse Nassau, in the study of the different branches of knowledge, medicine included. The following are the names of those monks who attained the greatest distinction in this work: Hrabanus Maurus, Abbot of the