Part 16 (1/2)

”_Three special months_, _September_, _Aprill_, _May_, There are in which 'tis good to ope a vein-- In these three months the moon beares greatest sway, Then old or young, that store of blood containe, May bleed now, though some elder wizards say, Some daies are ill in these, I hold it vaine; September, Aprill, May have daies apeece, That bleeding do forbid and eating geese, And those are they, forsooth, of May the first, Of t'other two, the last of each are worst.

”But yet those daies I graunt, and all the rest, Haue in some cases just impediment, As first, if nature be with cold opprest, Or if the Region, Ile, or Continent, Do scorch or freez, if stomach meat detest, If Baths you lately did frequent, Nor old, nor young, nor drinkers great are fit, Nor in long sickness, nor in raging fit, Or in this case, if you will venture bleeding, The quant.i.ty must then be most exceeding.

”When you to bleed intend, you must prepare Some needful things both after and before: Warm water and sweet oyle both needfull are, And wine the fainting spirits to restore; Fine binding cloths of linnen, and beware That all the morning you do sleepe no more; Some gentle motion helpeth after bleeding, And on light meals a spare and temperate feeding To bleed doth cheare the pensive, and remove The raging furies bred by burning love.

”Make your incision large and not too deep, That blood have speedy yssue with the fume; So that from sinnews you all hurt do keep.

Nor may you (as I toucht before) presume In six ensuing houres at all to sleep, Lest some slight bruise in sleepe cause an apostume; Eat not of milke, or aught of milke compounded, Nor let your brain with much drinke be confounded; Eat no cold meats, for such the strength impayre, And shun all misty and unwholesome ayre.

”Besides the former rules for such as pleases Of letting bloud to take more observation; . . . . .

To old, to young, both letting blood displeases.

By yeares and sickness make your computation.

First in the spring for quant.i.ty you shall Of bloud take twice as much as in the fall; In spring and summer let the right arme bloud, The fall and winter for the left are good.”

Wadd mentions an old surgical writer who divides his chapter on bleeding under such heads as the following:--1. What is to limit bleeding? 2. Qualities of an able phlebotomist; 3. Of the choice of instruments; 4. Of the band and bolster; 5. Of porringers; 6.

_Circ.u.mstances to be considered at the bleeding of a Prince._

Simon Harward's ”Phlebotomy, or Treatise of Letting of Bloud; fitly serving, as well for an advertis.e.m.e.nt and remembrance to all well-minded chirurgians, as well also to give a caveat generally to all men to beware of the manifold dangers which may ensue upon rash and unadvised letting of bloud,” published in the year 1601, contains much interesting matter on the subject of which it treats. But a yet more amusing work is one that Nicholas Gyer wrote and published in 1592, under the following t.i.tle:--

”The English Phlebotomy; or, Method and Way of Healing by Letting of Bloud.”

On the t.i.tle-page is a motto taken from the book of Proverbs--”The horse-leach hath two daughters, which crye, 'give, give.'”

[Ill.u.s.tration: _THE FOUNDERS OF THE MEDICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON_]

The work affords some valuable insight into the social status of the profession in the sixteenth century.

In his dedicatory letter to Master Reginald Scot, Esquire, the author says that phlebotomy ”is greatly abused by vagabund horse-leaches and travailing tinkers, who find work almost in every village through whom it comes (having in truth neither knowledge, nor witte, nor honesty), the sober pract.i.tioner and cunning chirurgian liveth basely, is despised, and accounted a very abject amongst the vulgar sort.” Of the medical skill of Sir Thomas Eliot, and Drs. Bulleyn, Turner, Peni?, and Coldwel, the author speaks in terms of warm eulogy; but as for the tinkers aforementioned, he would regard them as murderers, and ”truss them up at Tyborne.”

Gyer, who indulges in continual reference to the ”Schola Salerni,”

makes the following contribution to the printed metrical literature on Venesection:--

”_Certaine very old English verses, concerning the veines and letting of bloud, taken out of a very auncient paper book of Phisicke notes_:--

”Ye maisters that usen bloud-letting, And therewith getten your living; Here may you learn wisdome good, In what place ye shall let bloud.

For man, in woman, or in child, For evils that he wood and wild.

There beene veynes thirty-and-two, For wile is many, that must he undo.

Sixteene in the head full right, And sixteene beneath I you plight.

In what place they shall be found, I shall you tell in what stound.

Beside the eares there beene two, That on a child mote beene undoe; To keep his head from evil turning And from the scale withouten letting.

And two at the temples must bleede, For stopping and aking I reede; And one is in the mid forehead, For Lepry or for sawcefleme that mote bleede.

Above the nose forsooth is one, That for the frensie mote be undone.

Also when the eien been sore, For the red gowt evermore.

And two other be at the eien end.

If thy bleeden them to amend.

And the arch that comes thorow smoking, I you tell withouten leasing.

And at the whole of the throat, there beene two, That Lepry and straight breath will undoo.

In the lips foure there beene, Able to bleede I tell it be deene, Two beneath, and above also I tell thee there beene two.