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Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture pp 12–33Cite as

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The Anglo-Saxon View of the Causes of Illness

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Abstract

This essay began as an attempt to gather information about belief in witchcraft and magic as sources of illness in Anglo-Saxon England, partly as a response to Grattan and Singer’s characterization of its medicine as a “mass of folly and credulity”, without any theory of disease.1 However, I found very little evidence in the medical texts that the Anglo-Saxons ascribed illness to human malevolence, and was therefore forced into a much more general consideration of where the Anglo-Saxons believed disease came from, and how it arose.

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Notes

  1. J.H.G. Grattan and Charles Singer, eds, Anglo-Saxon Magic and Medicine (London 1952), p. 92. Section numbers of the Lacnunga cited in this paper are taken from this edition.

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  2. Ed. as a whole by T. Oswald Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, Rolls Series 35, 3 vols (London 1864–66). This contains, in vol. I: the Herbarium of Apuleius Platonicus (pp. 1–325), Medicina de quadrupedibus (pp. 326–73), and marginal remedies (pp. 374–405); in vol. II: Bald’s Leechbook (pp. 1–298) and Leechbook III (pp. 300–60); in vol. III: Lacnunga (pp. 2–80), Peri didaxeon (pp. 82–145), and various marginal remedies and prognostics, etc. (pp. 144–295).

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  3. Herbarium 2.9, 117.5, 135.4, 137.1, 148.3, 173.4; Medicina de quadrupedibus 5.15. For these texts the best edition is H.J. de Vriend, The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, EETS o.s. 286 (London 1984), and the numbering used here follows this edition.

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  4. Ed. B. Schauman and A. Cameron, “A Newly-Found Leaf of Old English from Louvain”, Anglia 95 (1977) 289–312. The Omont leaf is now in the Université catholique at Louvain-la-Neuve (Centre général de documentation, Fragmenta H. Omont 3).

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  5. Nigel Barley, “Anglo-Saxon Magico-Medicine”, Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 3 no. 2 (1972) 67–76 at 68.

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  6. Another view is put forward by W.H.R. Rivers, Medicine, Magic, and Religion (London 1924), esp. pp. 1–80.

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  7. C.H. Talbot, “Some Notes on Anglo-Saxon Medicine”, Medical History 9 (1965) 156–69; Medicine in Medieval England (London 1967), esp. pp. 11–23.

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  8. M.L. Cameron, “The Sources of Medical Knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England”, ASE 11 (1983) 135–55; “Bald’s Leechbook: Its Sources and their Use in its Compilation”, ASE 12 (1983) 153–82.

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  9. The head humours are said to rule from mid-December to mid-March, blood from March to June, rough bile from June to September, and black bile from September to December. The Peri didaxeon is (according to Cameron, personal communication February 1989) “a translation and adaptation, with additions, of the Petrocellus; see Max Löweneck, ed., Peri didaxeon, eine Sammlung von Rezepten in englischer Sprache aus dem 11./12. Jahrhundert, Erlanger Beiträge zur englischen Philologie und vergleichenden Litteraturgeschichte 12 (1896), pp. vi–vii, 2–3”. Byrhtferth (early in the 11th century) expresses the concept of the humours clearly in a non-medical context (Byrhtferth’s Manual, ed. S.J. Crawford, EETS o.s. 177 [London 1929], pp. 10–12), agreeing with classical ideas

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  10. see Rudolph E. Siegel, Galen’s System of Physiology and Medicine (Basel and New York 1968), pp. 216–24.

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  11. See John M. Riddle, “Theory and Practice in Medieval Medicine”, Viator 5 (1974) 157–84, esp. pp. 172–74.

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  12. M.L. Cameron, personal communication February 1989. Professor Cameron has kindly supplied the following sources for the passages in Bald’s Leech-book concerning the humours. For reasons of space, citations of editions and quotations from texts will usually not be given here. I.1.13: Oribasius, Euporistes 4.5; Cameron, ASE 11, pp. 138–39. I.1.16: Physica Plinii Bambergensis (ed. A. Önnerfors [Hildesheim 1975]) 1.1. ‘This is one of the clearest examples showing that wœte meant ‘wet things’ as well as humor“, since wœtan in Bald’s Leechbook refers to materia in Physica Plinii Bambergensis, not to physiological humours. I.2.1: (Last line on p. 26 to end of section): “This expands a simple statement in Physica Plinii Bambergensis 17.1”. I.15.1: Practica Alexandri 2.1; Cameron, ASE 11, pp. 141–2. I.18.1: “This chapter comes ultimately, through some intermediate form, from Galen, and follows his opinions quite closely; see G.C. Kühn, Claudii Galeni opera omnia (Leipzig 1827), vol. 14, pp. 363, 371–2, 374, 451”; Cameron, ASE 11, p. 137. I.31.5: No sources discovered. I.35: Bald’s Leechbook follows its Latin sources closely: Passionarius Galeni (Lyon 1526), 5.34–35 and 44 (Cameron, ASE 11, p. 143; ASE 12, pp. 162–63, 171). I.42: No clear source. I.72: No direct source. “Everything in it was common knowledge of the day. The humours are the physiological humours”. II.1.1–2: Direct translation of Practica Alexandri 1.14 and 36–37 (Cameron, ASE 11, pp. 141–42). II.15–17, 25–30.1, 38–39, 42: “Most of this is from Practica Alexandri also”. II.56.4: “Closely related to Passionarius Galeni III.15, 16, 17; the words wiþ blod 7 wip oman being related to Passionarius Galeni sanguinem cum phlegmate mistum. There is no mention in either text of humours per se: oman means ‘inflammatory materials’ (a translation of phlegma, through a confusion with flegmon meaning ‘inflammation’ or ‘swelling’)”, II.59.1–2: ‘Taken mostly from the Petrocellus-Liber Tertius complex, with some connections with Alexander of Tralles”; Cameron, ASE 12, pp. 162–66. III.12: Self-explanatory.

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  13. Felix Grendon, ed., “Anglo-Saxon Charms”, Journal of American Folklore 22 (1909) 105–237, no. A3, p. 167, nn. p. 216; Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (henceforth ASPR) 6 (New York and London 1942), no. 12, p. 128

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  14. G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague 1948), no. 4, pp. 154–59.

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  15. J.F. Payne, English Medicine in the Anglo-Saxon Times (Oxford 1904), pp. 44–45, conjectures that hand-worm and “dewworm” (infecting the feet) are terms for the itch-mite (Acarus scabei).

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  16. R. Campbell Thompson, The Devils and Evil Spirits of Babylonia, 2 vols (London 1903–04), II, 160–63.

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  17. E.g. Varro writes (1.12): “Advertendum etiam, si qua erunt loca palustria… quod crescunt animalia quaedam minuta, quae non possunt oculi consequi, et per aera intus in corpus per os ac nares perveniunt atque efficiunt difficilis morbos” (Precautions must also be taken in the neighbourhood of swamps… because there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which float through the air and enter the body through the mouth and the nose and there cause serious diseases). Marcus Porcius Cato, On Agriculture; Marcus Terentius Varro, On Agriculture, ed. and trans. William D. Hooper, rev. H.B. Ash (London and Cambridge, Mass. 1934), pp. 208–09.

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  18. Also in Grendon, “Charms”, B4, pp. 190–95, 226–29; Dobbie, Minor Poems, no. 2, pp. 119–21; Storms, Magic, no. 9, pp. 186–97; and in Gert Sandmann, Studien zu altenglischen Zaubersprüchen (Münster, Ph.D. diss. 1975), pp. 192–235.

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  19. Bede, De natura rerum 37, “De pestilentia”, ed. J.-P. Migne, Venerabilis Bedae opera omnia, Patrologia Latina (henceforth PL) 90 (Turnholt 1844), cols 187–279 at 256–57, takes from Isidore and Galen the idea that pestilence is produced from the air corrupted from excess of dryness or heat or from rain; see Wilfrid Bonser, The Medical Background of Anglo-Saxon England (London 1963), p. 56.

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  20. E.g. see Guido Majno, The Healing Hand (Cambridge, Mass. 1975), pp. 1–6.

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  21. M.L. Cameron, “Anglo-Saxon Medicine and Magic”, ASE 17 (1988) 191–215 at 205–06.

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  22. For the meaning of fede see J. Bosworth and T.N. Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1st edn 1898, suppl. 1921); The Blickling Homilies, ed. R. Morris, EETS o.s. 58, 63, 73 (Oxford 1874–80), no. IV, p. 41, 1. 28 has “Seo cyrice sceal fedan þa bþe æt hire eardiab” (The church shall nourish/protect those who dwell in her).

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  23. Historia ecelesiastica 3.11, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford 1969), p. 248.

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  24. Bertram Colgrave, ed. and trans., Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge 1956), ch. 41, pp. 126–31, nn. p. 188. See also Bonser, Medical Background, ch. 16, pp. 257–63

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  25. Stanley Rubin, Medieval English Medicine (Newton Abbot 1974), pp. 77–79.

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  26. The Romans also considered epilepsy to be caused by evil spirits; see W.H.S. Jones, “Ancient Roman Folk Medicine”, Journal of the History of Medicine 12 (1957) 459–72 at 465.

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  27. The meaning “to try (someone) with afflictions” is established for the verbs (ge)costian, (ge)costnian (sense 1.a.ii), and “tried with afflictions” for (ge)-costnod (1.a.i). (Ge)costung, costnung translates tribulatio in biblical texts, and appears to bear the meaning “affliction” in some citations under sense 2.a, “temptation as storm, weapon, heat etc.” as well as in the medical texts (Dictionary of Old English, ed. Ashley Crandell Amos and Antonette diPaolo Healey, Fascicle C [Toronto 1988]). The idea that God permits the devil to test humans with afflictions also underlies Ælfric’s De auguriis homily; see ll. 166–73 in Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, ed. W.W. Skeat, 2 vols, EETS o.s. 76, 82 (London 1881–85), I, 364–83 at 376–77. See my discussion in “Ælfric’s Use of his Sources in his Homily on Auguries”, English Studies 66 (1985) 477–95 at 489–90 and 494.

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  28. See A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, comp. Richard L. Venezky and Antonette diPaolo Healey (Toronto 1980).

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  29. Also in Grendon, “Charms”, A2, pp. 166–67, 215–16; Dobbie, Minor Poems, no. 3, pp. 121–22; Storms, Magic, no. 7, pp. 166–73; Sandmann, Zaubersprächen, pp. 52–61. A somewhat similar remedy is found in MS. Bodley Auct. F-3-6 (2666), ed. Storms, Magic, no. 78, pp. 305–06 (N.R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon [Oxford 1957], no. 296, pp. 354–55).

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  30. Sandmann, Zaubersprüchen, pp. 52–61. See the description s.v. typhus in the Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health, ed. Benjamin F. Miller and Claire B. Keane, 4th edn (Philadelphia 1987), pp. 1276–78.

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  31. Leechbook III.62 is also edited as a charm by Grendon, “Charms”, B5, pp. 194–95, 229; Dobbie, Minor Poems, no. 7, pp. 124–25; Storms, Magic, no. 5, pp. 158–63; and has been discussed in detail by Karl Schneider, “Zu den ae. Zaubersprüchen Wiþ Wennum und Wiþ Wœterœlfadle”, Anglia 87 (1969) 282–302 at 294–302, and by Sandmann, Zaubersprüchen, pp. 42–50. It is not clear from the OE description that the mind of the victim of wœterœlfadl was disturbed. Dr Jim Walker suggests that the darkness of the fingernails was caused by lack of oxygen (hypoxaemia) due to chronic chest disease (e.g. tuberculosis; see description in Miller and Keane, Encyclopedia, pp. 1270–72). Tuberculosis can affect the skin and the lymph glands in the neck, which may account for the sores and earache mentioned in the incantation. Storms, however, suggests that the disease is chicken pox, “called ‘waterpokken’ in Dutch and ‘Wasserpocken’ in German.… The way in which chicken-pox appear and disappear may well have given rise to the belief that a mischievous elf was playing his tricks. Its symptoms are a burning feeling on the affected spots, and when the sores burst a liquid runs out and infects other parts of the body. Pox or pocks is related to words denoting goblins, imps, demons: OE pucel, Icel. puki, Shakespearean Puck, and the liquid suggests a ‘water’ elf”. Cameron (personal communication) agrees with Storms, on the grounds that œlfadl was at first believed to be caused by arrows shot by elves, and the word was then extended in use for any rash or pustular outbreak on the skin. Wœterœlfadl would therefore be characterized by watery pustules. Sandmann compares a Swedish folkname Aliblast = aelvblast = ‘illness blown by the elves’ for a disease that appears and disappears suddenly, whose symptoms are a fever, a rash, swelling, and little itching red spots on the body. Wœterœlfadl can therefore not be equated with a specific disease, but was evidently used for a spontaneously occurring illness that could be described as “watery”. Shingles (Herpes zoster), which usually affects adults and is caused by the chicken pox virus, in which very painful vesicles spread along the path of a nerve and can seriously affect eyes and ears, may also be included (Miller and Keane, Encyclopedia s.v. Herpes zoster, pp. 574–75). Since there are no overtly Christian elements in the cure (apart from the holy water added to the herbal concoction), it is somewhat atypical as an “elf remedy”.

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  32. Maxims I, 1. 66; ed. George P. Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie in The Exeter Book, ASPR 3 (New York and London 1936), p. 159. Some East Africans have a belief in the “nightwitch”, always male, who alone moves about at night and who is contrasted with the possessor of an evil eye, who goes by day; see Jean Buxton, “Mandari Witchcraft” and John Middleton, “Witchcraft and Sorcery in Lugbara”, in Witchcraft and Sorcery in East Africa, ed. J. Middleton and E.H. Winter (London 1963), pp. 99–121 (at 99–101) and 257–75 (at 262–63) respectively.

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  33. See Peter Bierbaumer, Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen, 1. Teil: Das Lœceboc, Grazer Beiträge zur englischen Philologie 1 (Frankfurt 1975), p. 129. For atorlape (unidentifiable), see Bierbaumer, ibid., pp. 7–8 and also his 2. Teil: Lacnunga, Herbarium Apuleii, Peri didaxeon (1976), pp. 3–4, and 3. Teil: Der botanische Wortschatz in altenglischen Glossen (1979), p. 6. M. L. Cameron suggests (personal communication) that atorlape is fumitory (Fumaria or Corydalis sp.), equated (through a misunderstanding) by the Anglo-Saxon translator of the Herbarium with gallicrus, i.e. Panicum crus galli L., cockspur grass.

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  34. Theodore’s, I.iv.7; Egbert’s VII.7. Probably the most accessible edition is by A.W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents, 3 vols (Oxford 1871), III 173–213 (at 180) and 413–31 (at 424) respectively. These provisions are discussed in my paper “Anglo-Saxon Idolaters and Ecclesiasts from Theodore to Alcuin”, forthcoming in Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 5 (1990).

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  35. Josef Raith, ed., Die altenglische Version des Halitgar’sehen Bussbuches (sog. Poenitentiale pseudo-Ecgberti), Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 13 (Hamburg 1933), IV.12–14, pp. 53–54

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  36. Roger Fowler, “A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor”, Anglia 83 (1965) 1–34 at 25.

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  37. See Frederick T. Elworthy, The Evil Eye (London 1895)

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  38. D. McKenzie, The Infancy of Medicine (London 1927), pp. 255–62.

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  39. For the Middle East see E. A. Wallis Budge, Amulets and Superstitions, 1st edn (London 1930, repr. New York 1978), ch. 20, pp. 354–65

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  40. Brian Spooner, “The Evil Eye in the Middle East”, in Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ed. Mary Douglas (London 1970), pp. 311–19.

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  41. W.H. Stevenson, ed., Asser’s Life of King Alfred (Oxford 1904; new impression with article by Dorothy Whitelock, 1959), p. 55. Translation from Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, Alfred the Great (Harmondsworth 1983), p. 89.

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  42. See C.T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford 1879), s.v. effascinatio, effascino, fascinatio, fascino, fascinum. These passages from Pliny’s Natural History (ed. Rackham et al.) clarify the usage: 7.2.16–18, 13.9.40, 19.19.50, 26.62.96, 28.7.35, 28.7.39, 28.27.101, 37.54.145.

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  43. There is a very similar example from Heliodorus; see Elworthy, Evil Eye, p. 33. See also Arnica Lykiardopoulos, “The Evil Eye: Towards an Exhaustive Study”, Folklore 92 (1981) 221–30, esp. p. 226. Lykiardopoulos’s article contains references to earlier works on the evil eye.

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  44. Richard Jente, Die mythologischen Ausdrücke im altenglischen Wortschatz, Anglistische Forschungen 56 (Heidelberg 1921), para. 176, pp. 310–11.

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  45. T.C. Lethbridge, A Cemetery at Shudy Camps, Cambridgeshire, Cambridge Antiquarian Society Quarto Publications, n.s. 5 (Cambridge 1936), p. 31.

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  46. E.g. G. Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England, vols III–IV: Saxon Art and Industry in the Pagan Period (London 1915), III pls xli, xliii

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  47. Nils Åberg, The Anglo-Saxons in England (Uppsala 1926), pp. 28–39.

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  48. James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small (London 1976), p. 193.

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  49. Michele Stephen, “Master of Souls: The Mekeo Sorcerer”, in Sorcerer and Witch in Melanesia (Melbourne 1987), pp. 41–80 (though admittedly here the most exacting technique was employed to make money by making someone sick “and then demand[ing] hefty fees to cure them”, p. 46).

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  50. For a paper dealing with the theories underlying treatment, see Jerry Stannard, “The Theoretical Bases of Medieval Herbalism”, Medical Heritage 1 (1985) 186–98.

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  1. Audrey L. Meaney
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  1. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Canada

    Sheila Campbell , Bert Hall  & David Klausner ,  & 

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© 1992 Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

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Meaney, A.L. (1992). The Anglo-Saxon View of the Causes of Illness. In: Campbell, S., Hall, B., Klausner, D. (eds) Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21882-0_2

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