charms for the clawing of animals, charms to ward off cholera, and even charms to prevent domestic broils. This is surely evidence of high civilisation.

It would be hopeless to endeavour to exhaust this subject. Only a few selected instances can be given to illustrate how large a part magic has played, and still plays, in the healing art. Medicine is by no means freed of its superstitions yet, and the success of quack advertisements of the day abundantly proves that the civilised public is still prone to believe that universal remedies are obtainable, and that miracles can be wrought.

Modern medical science, as one of its great exponents has pointed out, plays a waiting game when miracles are spoken of, and when magic is claimed to supersede specific remedies. "When it is asked to believe in the violent and erratic violation of laws of matter and force, science stands on an impregnable rock, fenced round by bulwarks of logical fact, and flanked by the bastions of knowledge of nature and her constitution." And as exact knowledge spreads, Prospero will have no alternative but to break his staff, and bury it fathoms deep.

IN

Chaucer's Doctor of Physic.

BY W. H. THOMPSON.

N the "Canterbury Tales" we have an inimitable gallery of fourteenth century portraits, drawn from life, with all a great master's delicacy of finish and touch. And in none of these pictures does Chaucer excel himself more than in that of his "Doctor of Physic." We may take it for granted that the portrait is no mere fanciful one, with its pre-Raphaelite minuteness of detail, sketched with the poet's own peculiar skill. With what mischievous and yet altogether playful and good-natured humour is the man of medicine presented to us!

"With us there was a doctour of phisike

In all this world ne was there none like him
To speak of phisike and of surgerie."

What manner of man was this paragon of medical knowledge? In personal appearance he was somewhat of an exquisite. "Clothes are unspeakably significant" saith the immortal Teufelsdrockh, and every practitioner who has his

clientele largely yet to make knows the importance of being well dressed. Chaucer's Chaucer's grave graduate

was apparelled in a purple surcoat, and a blue and white furred hood.

"In sanguine and in perse he clad was all

Lined with taffata and with sendall,"

and yet no luxurious sybarite by any means was

he,

"Of his diet measureable was he,

For it was no superfluity,

But of great nourishing and digestable."

A man of simple habits, even perhaps given to holding his purse strings somewhat tightly.

"He was but easy of expense,

He kept that he won in pestilence."

For, as the poet adds with his characteristic merry sly humour,

"Gold in physic is a cordial,

Therefore he loved gold in special."

The science of medicine since Chaucer's day has made extraordinary advances, and it is only fair to judge his doctor by contemporary standards. To-day, we fear, he would be largely regarded as little better than a charlatan and a quack. It is true, he was acquainted with all the authorities, ancient and modern, from Esculapius and Galen down to Gaddesden, the

anthor of the "Rosa Anglica," the great English book of fourteenth century medicine. But this last named luminary of physic would aid him very little on the road to true knowledge. This medical "Rose," which Leland calls a "large and learned work," only serves to illustrate the

impotence of the professors of the healing arts at

that period. This is the recipe of Gaddesden for the small-pox. "After this (the appearance of the eruption) cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in red scarlet cloth, and

command everything about the bed to be made red. This is an excellent cure. It was in this manner I treated the son of the noble king of England when he had the small-pox, and I cured him without leaving any marks." To cure epilepsy, he orders the patient" and his parents" to fast three days, and then go to church. "The patient must first confess, and he must have mass on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday the priest must read over the patient's head the gospel for September, in the time of vintage after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this the priest shall write out this portion of the gospel reverently, and bind it about the patient's neck, and he shall be cured." If epilepsy was to be exorcised by such a remedy as this, we venture to assert that it must have been largely a case of faith-healing.

Seeing then that such was the condition of the science of medicine in Chaucer's days, we must take with a good deal of reservation his statement that his doctor

"Knew the cause of every malady

Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry,

And where engendered, and of what humour."

Anyhow, some of the remedies prescribed for