1380 (Early English Text Society, No. 102, 1894, p. 8): "Needful it is that a surgeon be of a complexion well proportioned. . . He must have hands well shaped, long small fingers, and his body not quaking. Also he must be of subtle wit, for all things that (be)longeth to surgery may not with letters be written. . . Be he no glutton, nor not envious nor a niggard; be he true; humble and pleasingly bear himself to his patients; speak he no ribaldry in the sick man's house; give he no counsel but if he be asked; nor speak he with no woman in folly in the man's house; nor chide he not with the sick man nor none of his household, but courteously speak to the sick man, and in all manner of sickness promise him health although you despair of him, but nevertheless tell his friends the truth. Love no hard cures and undertake no desperate cases. Help poor men as far as possible and ask good reward of the rich. Praise he not himself with his own mouth, nor blame he over sharply other leeches. Love he all leeches and clerics, and, as far as possible, make he no leech his enemy. So clothe he himself with virtue that he may obtain a good name and a fair reputation. This is the ethical teaching."

It is clear from these extracts that Arderne had read Lanfrank's rules for a surgeon, and that he amplified them from his own experience, which corresponded very much with that of the French surgeons who were his contemporaries. But Arderne's teaching of the duties of a surgeon compares very favourably with that of William Salicet or Henri de Mondeville. He had a higher moral tone, or, at any rate, he based his warnings on morality rather than upon selfinterest, and there is nowhere any reference to a surgeon as a common thief. His fees are high, but, as a contemporary writer explains, this is to make up for the long periods when he had nothing to do, and it is clear that it was extremely difficult to obtain money from patients.

Every surgeon was taught never to treat cases which appeared incurable or were unlikely to run a straightforward course. This was due to ignorance, to the weakness of the law, and to the arbitrary treatment to which individuals might be exposed. Throughout the Middle Ages, and long afterwards, there was no science of toxicology and very little knowledge of morbid anatomy. Persons who died suddenly, therefore, were usually thought to have been killed by poison, and the histories of the present day are full of accounts of the deaths of great men who are said to have been poisoned, when it is clear to every medical reader that they died a natural death from some acute disease. A perforated gastric ulcer, a perforated duodenal ulcer, an acute gan

grenous inflammation of the vermiform appendix would present all the characters of poisoning to the lay mind. Failure after an operation was liable to be followed by the most undesirable consequences to the leech. King John of Bohemia, from whose body Edward the Black Prince took an ostrich feather for his crest, sewed up his French leech in a sack and threw him into the Oder because he had not cured his cataract as he had promised.

Arderne must have led an interesting and adventurous life, and his treatises contain many sidelights on contemporary events. He appears to be the only contemporary authority for the story of the means by which Edward the Black Prince obtained the ostrich feather which has since become the cognisance of the heir apparent to the English throne. The passage runs as follows, "We are not able to cure rhagades unless the remedy can be put through the anus either as a clyster or by means of a suppository, since remedies applied outside are either useless or do very little good. We ought, therefore, to work with stimulating applications until the wound is clean, and afterwards with applications which both heal and dry, as has been said already in the chapter on internal piles, to wit, where Nastar is painted and Nastar is a kind of clyster or enema known as a glisterpipe. The feather of the Prince of Wales is also shown there, viz. on the preceding page. And note that Edward the eldest son of Edward King of England bore a similar feather above his crest, and he obtained the feather from the King of Bohemia, whom he killed at Cressy in France. And so he took the feather which is called an 'ostrich feather,' which that most noble Lord King had used hitherto to bear above his crest. And in that year when our Lord the strenuous and warlike Prince departed to God, I wrote this little book of mine with my own hand, viz. in the year one thousand three hundred and seventy-six. And our Lord Edward the Prince died on the sixth June on Trinity Sunday at Westminster during the great Parliament, and may God assoil him, for he was the very flower of chivalry, without peer in the world.”1

1 66

Rhagades curare non possumus nisi medicinis infra anum inferamus aut in clystere aut modo suppositorii quia medicinæ exterius appositæ parum vel nihil prosunt, unde primo oportet cùm corrosivis operare ad mundificationem et postea cum consolidantibus et desiccantibus ut prædictum est capitulo de hæmorrhoid. infra anum latentibus ubi nastare depingitur et penna Principis Walliæ, viz. folio præcedente. Et nota quod talem pennam albam portabat Edwardus primogenitus filius Edwardi Regis Angliæ, super crestam suam. Et illam pennam conquisivit de rege Boëmo, quem interfecit apud Cresse in Francia. Et sic assumpsit sibi illam pennam quæ dicitur Ostrich fether,' quam prius Dominus Rex nobillissimus portebat super crestam suam et eodem anno quo

This passage is omitted from the English translation which is here printed (Sloane 6), as well as from the later and different English translation (Sloane 76), which are often merely abstracts of what Arderne wrote. But it is present in the Latin texts (Sloane MSS. 56, leaf 74; 335, leaf 68; 2002, leaf 333; 176, back; 29301, leaf 42, col. 157; in MS. 1153, leaf 41, in Trin. Coll. Camb.; and in the MS. No. 339 in the Hunterian Library at Glasgow, leaf 77).

It was from the last MS., which was then called Sloane 2, that Thomas Hearn copied it in the "Chronici Walteri Hemingford.' In each case it is a part of the text, and is written by the same hand as the rest of the manuscript. The scribes have not copied from each other, and there is very little doubt in my own mind that Arderne wrote it originally, and that it contains the story current in his day about the source of the feather, and Arderne was in a position to obtain the story at first hand. Incidentally it bears out an interesting point, for it says that both the King of Bohemia and the Prince of Wales bore the feather above his crest, not as his crest, so that it was used in exactly the same manner as was the Garter at first, viz. as an ornament to be worn at jousts or tournaments.2 It only became a crest in later years, and so long as it was a mere ornament or distinguishing badge there was no need for it to be associated with a motto; indeed, in each of Arderne's figures the scroll placed upon the quill of the feather, which is single, is left blank instead of being charged. This use of the ostrich feather as an ornament at jousts further explains the passage in the Black Prince's will, in which he desired that his corpse should be taken through the City of Canterbury as far as the Priory, and that "two war horses, covered with our Arms and two men armed in our Arms and in our crests," should precede his corpse; that is to say, "the one for War, with our entire Arms quarterly, and the other for Peace, with our Badge of Ostrich Feathers," with four banners of the same suite.3

Dominus strenuus et bellicosus Princeps migravit at Dominum, scripsi libellum istum manu propriâ, viz. anno Millesimo ccclxxvi. Et Dominus Edwardus princeps obiit vi Idus Junii, viz. die Sanctæ Trinitatis, apud Westmonasterium in magno parliamento, quem Deus absolvat, quia fuit flos Milicia Mundi sine pare. Nastare species est clysteris sive enematis a glister pipe.'

1 Vol. 2, pp. 444, 446, in note.

2 "Observations on the Institution of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, by Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas." 66 'Archæologia," vol. 31, p. 130. 3 "On the Badge and Mottoes of the Prince of Wales," vol. 3. "Archæologia," vol. 31, p. 356.

"Et volons qe a quele heure qe notre corps soit amenez parmy la ville de Cantirbirie tantq'a la priorie, q'deux destrez covert3 de nos arme3, et deu3 home3

66

The directions for making Nerbone plaister (p. 91) show the difficulties in reckoning small subdivisions of time. Arderne directs that the melted diachylon should be allowed to stand without moving by the space of a pater noster" and an "ave maria." I asked a patient recently, the Mother Superior of a Convent, how long it would take to repeat these prayers, and she replied about three quarters of a minute. When I next saw her, after she had spent a sleepless night with a clock in front of her, she said that the question had interested her, and she found that a pater and an ave took exactly half a minute. Dr. Norman Moore draws attention ("The Progress of Medicine at St. Bartholomew's Hospital," 1888, p. 13) to a similar method employed by John Mirfeld, a Canon of the priory of St. Bartholomew, who wrote a general treatise on medicine-Breviarium Bartholomei-about the year 1380. He says, "Mirfeld treated chronic rheumatism by rubbing the part with olive oil. This was to be prepared with ceremony. It was to be put into a clean vessel while the preparer made the sign of the cross and said the Lord's Prayer and an Ave Maria, and when the vessel was put to the fire the Psalm, Why do the heathen rage,' was to be said as far as the verse 'Desire of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance.' The Gloria, Pater Noster, and Ave Maria are to be said, and the whole gone through seven times. 'Which done let that oil be kept.' "The time occupied I have tried," says Dr.

Norman Moore, "and found to be a quarter of an hour."

The charm against Cramp (p. 102) was obtained from one who was at Milan when Lionel, Duke of Clarence, married Violante, the daughter of Galeazzo Visconti, at the door of the Cathedral, on June 5th, 1368. Five months of continuous jousts, feasts and revels were followed by the inevitable consequences of delirium tremens and epileptiform convulsions.

The sober testimony to the profligacy of the times given in the receipt for making confection of Sanguis Veneris (p. 89) is the natural outcome of the conditions described in Dr. Furnivall's "Early English Meals and Manners" (Early English Text Society, Original Series, No. 32). The boys and girls of the upper classes were transferred arme3 en nos arme3 et en nos heaumes voisent devant dit n're corps, c'est assavoir l'un pur la guerre de no3 armez entiers quartellez, at l'autre pur la paix de noz bages des plumes d'ostrace, ove quarter baneres de mesme la sute, et qe chacun de ceaux q'porteront les ditez baneres ait sur sa teste un chapeau de no3 armes. "Nichols's Royal Wills," p. 68. See also "Notes and Queries," Series ii, 1861, vol. xi, pp. 224 and 294.

from their own homes to be educated in the houses of the nobility as pages and maids of honour. They were well fed, spent their lives in a round of pleasure, and were often badly looked after.

The account of juniper shows that Arderne knew London and its neighbourhood and talked with the countryfolk as he went amongst them. He says, "Juniper grows in Kent upon Shooter's Hill on the road to Canterbury, at Dorking also in Surrey as well as in many other places in that County, at Bedington too near Croydon, and the inhabitants of that country call it gorst because they do not know its proper name. The Black Death does not seem to have left much impression upon Arderne's mind, because, like most contemporary medical writers, he only mentions it incidentally, and what we look upon as an appalling visitation had already faded from his mind, and its impression had been replaced by more recent epidemics.

"1

Arderne lived through the most chivalrous period of English history, and in all probability he knew personally many of the peerless knights and splendid champions who survive for ever in the pages of Froissart. To have known such men was in itself an education, and to have lived in the household of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, and of John of Gaunt was sufficient to make Arderne the best type of an English surgeon a scholar and a gentleman. The chivalry of the age is well brought out in the extant manuscripts of Arderne's treatises. In some cases he mentions the names of the patients, but in many instances he tricks their coat-armour instead of giving names, and thus some early shields are preserved, amongst others that of the great Douglas.

Arderne left a few traces on the sands of time, but very few. Johannis Argentin, a physician at Cambridge, wrote a treatise, which still remains in the Bodleian Library as Ashmol. MS. No. 1437. Tanner 2 thinks that it was written about 1476. He mentions Arderne no less than eleven times, and copies his style, especially his manner of quoting cases in illustration of his various subjects.

Arderne's fame as a pharmacist long outlasted his reputation as a surgeon. Tapsimel (p. 31), Pulvis sine pari (pp. 26 and 86), Tapsivalencia (p. 69), and the valences of Scabious and Wormwood (p. 97),

1 "Et crescat in cancia super Scheteres hylde in viâ versus cantuariam, apud Dorkyng, eciam in Soperay et eciam in aliis pluribus illius provincie, crescit eciam apud Bedyngton iuxta Croyden quam incole patrie illius vocant gorst, quia. proprium nomen illius ignorant." (MS. Digby 161, leaf 23, in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.)

2 44

Bibliotheca," p. 48.