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MEDICINE AMONG THE GERMANS.
munication existed between the North Germans and the
more highly developed civilization of other peoples.
SNORRI STURLUSON and HRAFN SWEINBOIRNSSON obtained
great reputation by their successful cures. The
latter is even said to have performed lithotomy with
success* The mystical VlTOLF passed as the patron of
the surgeons of the North.f INGIGERD, daughter of the
Russian King INGVAR, founded a small hospital and consigned
the nursing of the patients to gentle-handed
women.J
In the ioth century there were already in Norway a
number of doctors, who practised their art as a profession.
Even at that early period people had private medical
attendants who were highly paid.§ There existed also
even then a medical tax. The amount of the medical
honorarium depended upon the gravity of the suffering
which was relieved.
In the Sudermanian law-book which, although first published
in 1327, rests upon the authority of ancient enactments
it was ordained that he only should be recognized as
a doctor who had cured an incised wound, a fractured bone,
an internal injury, a mutilation or a deep stab. Midwifery
was naturally delegated to women. Mention is already
made however of Caesarean section. It would not be right
to apply to the Germans of the first centuries, as many
medical historians do, the accounts here given, some of
which clearly bear the stamp of later periods of civilization.
They, at the most, authorize us to make certain
presumptions as to the state of medical science among
them.
The knowledge and customs brought by the Goths,
* Sagenbibliothek des skandinav. Alterthums, herausg. von P. E. MULLER,
iibers. von K. LACHMANN, Berlin 1816, S. 176.—L. FAYE : Rafn Sweinbjornsens
liv og verksomhed, Kristiania 1878.
+ GRIMM: Mytholog. 994, 1101.
+ WEINHOLD op. cit. S. 390.
§ Vapnfirdlinga saga, c. 13, 29.