Leechdoms, wortcunning, and starcraft of early England. Being a ...

PREFACE.
xxiii
could such a book as this have had, at that time, much
interest. We see then a Saxon leech here at his studies;
the book, in a literary sense, is learned ; in a professional
view not so, for it does not really advance mans knowledge
of disease or of cures. It may have seemed by
the solemn elaboration of its diagnoses to do so, but I
dare not assert there is real substance in it. Bald,
however, may have got some good out of it, he may
have learned to think, have begun to discriminate, to
take less for granted. Thus we see him in his study,
among his books becoming, for his day, a more accomplished
physician ; and he speaks with a genuine
philosophs zeal about those his books. " nulla mihi tam
" cara est optima gaza Quam cari libri :" fees and stored
wealth he loved not so well as his precious volumes.
If Bald was at once a physician and a reader of learned
books on therapeutics, his example implies a school of
medicine among the Saxons. And the volume itself
bears out the presumption. We read in two cases ^ that
" Oxa taught this leechdom ;" in another ^ that " Dun
" taught it ;" in another " some teach us ;" ^ in another
an impossible prescription being quoted ;^ the author, or
possibly Cild, the reedsman, indulges in a little facetious
comment, that compliance was not easy. I assume that
Oxa and Dun were natives, either of this country or
of some land inhabited by a kindred people. Any way,
we make out, undoubtedly, a bookish study of medicine;
the Saxon writers, who directly from the Greek, or
through the medium of a Latin translation studied
Trallianus, Paulus of ^gina, and Philagrios, were men
of learning not contemptible, in letters, that is, not to
say in pathology. Some of the simpler treatment is
reasonable enough ;
the cure of hair lip^ contains a true
> Lb. p. 120.
2 Lb. p. 292.
^Lb. p. 114.
* Ibid.
* Lb. L xiii.