Volume 1

The history of St. Thomas's Hospital / by F.G. Parsons.

  • Parsons, Frederick Gymer, 1863-1943.
Date:
1932-1936
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The history of St. Thomas's Hospital / by F.G. Parsons. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    as many as fifteen were found in one prescription. These, no doubt, did good in certain cases but the chief effect of the leechdoms, with their charms and spells, was mental rather than physical and it was for this reason alone that Roger Bacon (1214-1294), whose intellect was one of the finest in Europe during his day, believed in them so thoroughly. It must not be thought that the priestly physician prepared the complicated and often revolting messes which he prescribed. He was far too great a man to do anything with his hands and relied upon inspection of his patient from a safe distance and upon an examina¬ tion of the urine for his diagnosis. Apothecaries began to specialize quite early, and we are told that in 1180 Henry II took one with him to Ireland. Hence we may be sure that one of the lay brothers of the hospital learnt the art of the apothecary and must have had his dispensary, where the various native and foreign drugs were stored. A very favourite prescription was “ Hiera Picra,” or holy bitters, which, in a simple form, contained aloes, mastic, saffron, Indian navel, carpo balsam, and assarum ; though for more important cases fourteen ingredients were used. It is probable, therefore, that the hospital apothecary of the twelfth century was quite a busy man. Black Death or bubonic plague seems to have visited London on several occasions before the great outbreak in 1348, although it was often confused with the famine pestilences in which typhus, dysentery, and enteric carried off a great many victims. During the time we are considering there were severe famines, followed by pestilences, in 1198 and 1258. Sweating sickness too was a rapidly fatal disease though I shall