War gear of the First Crusade

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Ruth

When the organized Princes’ Crusade armies set out, they had the best standard weaponry of the time. So what did the average soldier carry?

The most important weapon of the era was the spear, whether it was a throwing lance (or even dart) or a pole-ax that included a spear point with other hooks and barbs. Spears are the primary weapon of the Bayeux Tapestry. Their shafts were eight or nine feet long, probably made of ash wood. Spear heads were made of iron, and the quality of the iron (therefore how sharp its edge stayed) varied with the owner’s wealth.

Imagine being a foot soldier who had to walk across Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and then Anatolia (Turkey). Do you want to carry that spear the whole way? While it might make an okay hiking staff occasionally, you don’t want to wear out the ash pole by constantly slamming it on the ground. You will bring a pack horse (or donkey or mule) along to carry your gear, with the spear tied into the bundle.

The pack horse will also carry your mail shirt, the most expensive gear you own. It’s made of iron wire that was wrapped around a stick while hot, so that it cooled into a non-springy spiral. The wire was cut into rings, and the ends of the rings flattened, with holes bored into each side. When the rings were hooked together like the Olympic symbol, tiny rivets slipped into the holes, securing the rings shut.

Tens of thousands of iron rings are fitted into your shirt. It may only cover your torso, protecting at least your vital organs. If you can afford more rings, your shirt hangs down as a curtain around your upper legs, too. It’s split in front to let you ride a horse or walk easily, but it forms a swinging barrier for any blade aiming to cut your leg off. If you can afford even more rings, it has arm protection too.

The mail shirt is very heavy and uncomfortable, and it must be stored wrapped in oiled cloth to protect it from rusting. When you wear it, you need a quilted tunic against your skin so that the rings won’t pinch and cut you. So that’s another key part of your gear, a linen quilt-shirt that’s stuffed with wool or other padding (when cotton starts being imported, that will be its first use).

The Bayeux Tapestry, which shows the fathers of the current Crusaders, also shows mail shirts being carried with a pole through the arms, between two men. This suggests the weight as well as the need to let gravity keep the rings straight. I don’t think the Crusaders managed them this way, but it does suggest how heavy and inconvenient they were.

You have a linen hood to go under your helm, and probably a padded cap as well. The helm is made of plate iron, probably with some chain mail attached to the bottom edge as neck protection.

You also need a light-color linen tunic to go over the mail, to reflect the sun. First Crusaders may have learned this part the hard way. A mail shirt gets very, very hot in the Middle Eastern sun. This concern was probably also why the Princes’ Crusade set off in August, 1096: so that the hottest months were already past. When fighting pilgrims (they still just called themselves pilgrims at this time) wore a fabric cross as the Pope had suggested, they put it on the outer reflective tunic.

If you’re a knight or in training to be one, you have at least one sword, but if you are a foot soldier from the manors and towns around the province, you don’t. Sword technology going into the First Crusade was similar to what’s found in Viking graves. The blade had been specially treated to increase the carbon content; some of its metal might qualify as steel. The pommel had a guard on each side of the hand, while the iron shaft at the handle’s core was covered by wooden grips carved to fit the hand. Some swords were made so large and heavy that they required two hands, but I think they came later than 1100.

Shields were made of wood: plywood layers with the grains crossed to make it stronger. Shields couldn’t stop a hurtling spear or a direct blow from a sword. They could block arrows or turn less direct blows. It was worth having a shield, more than not, but it wasn’t a big iron plate you could hide behind. That would have been way too expensive and heavy. The shield was covered with linen to stop splintering, and then shellacked with paint. It carried the lord’s insignia.

The rest of your gear, piled on the pack horse, consists of food and water storage containers, small tools, and extra cloth items like a blanket. You always carry a knife at your belt, the way modern people routinely put on wristwatches. Your boots are made of leather, but they have soft soles like moccasins. You probably have some extra soles along, with a needle and awl; you may even have an extra whole pair of boots in the pack, knowing that you’ll be walking. Somewhere in Bulgaria or Anatolia, your pack horse will die, and you’ll have to decide what you can heft on your back.

The Princes, of course, had even more gear: tents, chests of money, more extras of everything, and servants who needed gear just to tend the gear.

 

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1095: Meanwhile in Egypt…

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Ruth

The year before Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade in Clermont, Egypt experienced two important deaths that led to another split in the Shi’ite world.

Caliph al-Mustansir ruled for sixty years in Cairo, starting when he was only an infant. His reign was the longest among Muslim rulers, but he controlled only Egypt, rather than an empire. And during his years, Egypt fell on very hard times. Between 1065 and 1072, the Nile had seven years of low water, creating poverty and famine. Berber nomad raids made things worse. Country towns were abandoned as survivors of famine, plague and raid moved closer to each other.

The Caliph’s treasury was drained to pay Turkish mercenaries, who finally rebelled and looted the palace and libraries in 1069. The Caliph went into hiding and sent a message to the only man he thought could save him: an Armenian general named Badr al-Jamali, who was on the Fatimid front lines in Syria, trying to hold back the Turks. Badr led Armenian troops into Cairo, retaking the city in 1074. He became the Vizier, ruler in all but title. For twenty years, Egypt became stable.

In 1094, both Badr and al-Mustansir died. Badr died first, and provided for his son al-Afdal to succeed him as Vizier. When the Caliph died just months later, al-Afdal seized the moment. The Caliph’s younger son was his brother-in-law, under his personal sway. He placed the young man on the throne, proclaiming him Caliph al-Musta’li. He got all of the nobles to swear allegiance.

Nizar, the older son, had been the designated heir. He fled to Alexandria, where some anti-Badr factions lived. Alexandria proclaimed him Caliph and Imam in 1095. (Archeologists have found a single gold dinar minted for the occasion, with his name on it.) The usual story: a few battles later, Nizar was captured then executed in Cairo.

But this proved to be one of those defining moments in history, when millions of believers throughout Egypt, Syria and Persia refused to countenance what had been done through military strength. Hasan Sabah, chief Ismaili da’i in Persia, immediately announced their support of Nizar’s rights as true Imam. Sabah cut diplomatic ties with Cairo and founded a small Nizari Ismaili state based in mountain strongholds.

All of this was still happening when Pope Urban II was calling for a European invasion of Turkish strongholds in Damascus, Aleppo, Antioch and Jerusalem. It isn’t likely that Europeans were paying any attention to the palace coup in Cairo, if they had a reliable source of news at all.

The Muslim Empire was now divided into at least five distinct sects/kingdoms: the Puritanical al-Moravids of North Africa and Spain; the Vizier-ruled Fatimid rump state in Egypt; the Turkish-Arab Sunni chaos between Jerusalem and Baghdad; the strange mountain Druze sect of Lebanon; and last, the Nizari mountain sect led by Hasan Sabah in Alamut, the Eagle’s Nest, in Persia.

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The Druze

Posted on March 10, 2017 by Ruth

In the later years of Caliph al-Hakim (see original entry here), two separate forces fused to create the Druze, the secretive cult/tribe based in Lebanon. This is another of those stories that’s hard to make out clearly because there are too many disagreements among versions. It goes something like this.

A talented Persian preacher, Hamza, came to Egypt and rose to the top of the Da’wa (missions) department. He was very evangelical about Ismailism and probably influenced Caliph al-Hakim’s increasing suppression of Sunnis. His immediate junior was ad-Darazi, also a Persian. Under Hamza’s influence, ad-Darazi also became very evangelical and ambitious. Since the Caliph was also the Imam, the two motives could not be separated.

Ad-Darazi was asked to lead a military expedition against a rebellious group in Lebanon. (Because, according to Shi’ite doctrine, who better to lead an army than an esoteric preacher?) The rebellion in Lebanon was probably a reaction against the strictness of Ismailism; it was called “Unity” and it stressed uniting the monotheistic religions in one faith. The Unity followers were part of a large extended clan who considered themselves ancient Midianites descended from Moses’s father in law Jethro.

Ad-Darazi lost the battle and was captured. In captivity, he converted to the beliefs of the Unity movement, now also called the Movement that Defeated Ad-Darazi. He brought the same evangelical zeal to the Unity beliefs, then brought its gospel home to Cairo.

Darazi competed with Hamza for leadership of the Dawa. Perhaps in order to gain favor with the mad caliph, he declared that al-Hakim was the new Incarnation of God, a status handed down from Jesus and Ali. For one intense year, the original Unity beliefs and the new fanatical faith in al-Hakim were taken back and forth from Cairo to Lebanon until they began to blend. When ad-Darazi preached his theology in public, there were riots in Cairo. In 1018, he was executed by Caliph al-Hakim.

Darazi left his name to the new theology, Darazites (perhaps short for the Movement that Defeated Darazi), eventually shortened to “Druze,” but he won no friends. The Druze consider Hamza their founder, not Darazi. Reports differ on Caliph Hakim’s view of all this. Some claim firmly that Hakim wanted no part of divine claims, while others believe the claims fit right in with Hakim’s insanity. The Druze believe that in 1017, he had appointed Hamza to be Imam of the Unity movement. In 1021, when the Caliph disappeared, Hamza appointed a new Dawa chief and retreated into Lebanon. He apparently wrote the Druze scriptures.

The Druze call themselves Unitarians, al Muwahhidun; “Druze” is a derogatory nickname, the way “Christian” was at the start too. It’s hard to know just what they believe. They may believe that either or both Hakim and Hamza were “occulted” or “sublimated” instead of dying, and will come again. They did not accept the next Caliphs as Imams. Hamza’s successor at the Dawa stayed in touch and also continued to develop the theology of the “Divine Call.” Eventually he too went into hiding, and in 1043 the theology was declared heretical. The Druze leader (maybe still Hamza’s successor) declared the faith closed.

Just like that, one of the most evangelical movements suddenly became the least evangelical. You cannot convert to the Druze faith; you can only be born into it. The first duty of a Druze is to survive long enough to pass on his faith, so they developed a code of secrecy and lying to outsiders. Pretty much all of the Muslim rulers after this persecuted them if they possibly could. The Druze withdrew to a mountain in Lebanon and created a fortress culture, eventually impressing the Crusaders by their fanatical devotion. (Their ruler, called by Europeans “The Old Man of the Mountain,” could gesture at a guard to jump off the cliff, and with a cry of “Allah hu Akbar!” the guard would jump without delay.)

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The Battle of Karbala, 680

Posted on December 18, 2016 by Ruth
Karbala, an event not often included in European/American histories, is one of the defining moments for Islamic history. 
 
The year was 680. The newly-conquered Muslim lands had gone through four Caliphs in rapid succession, following Mohammed’s death in 632. These Caliphs had all been Mohammed’s close friends or relatives, and the 4th was his cousin, Ali.
 
Ali became Caliph over the objections of Muawiyah, a member of Mohammed’s tribe, the Quraysh. Muawiyah was governor of Syria under Caliph Uthman, who had been assassinated. Muawiyah pushed to have the assassins brought to trial, while Ali wanted to let the matter rest. Ali also moved the governing capital from Damascus to Kufa, in Iraq.
 
Here we see the tribal stress lines: “hereditary royalty” relative, Ali vs. Quraysh tribe; conquered Persians who preferred Kufa vs. original Arabs who had settled into Damascus. The bone of contention was whether or not to hang the assassins, but the real conflict was about tribal and regional power-sharing.
 
Ali and Muawiyah came to open battle along the Euphrates River, but after a week of fighting, they moved to arbitration of the dispute. It’s at this time that the Kharijites walked away. Ali remained Caliph, but Muawiyah was more powerful in Syria, so it was clear that the showdown was not over. A Kharijite assassinated Ali while he was at prayer, in 661.
 
Ali’s son Hassan became Caliph, but he made a treaty with Muawiyah to stop the nascent civil war. He ceded the Caliphate to Muawiyah on condition of a line of succession: Hassan himself, then his brother Hussein. If neither of them was still alive, then the Muslims would have an election. That way, there would be no dynasty unless it was Ali’s.
 
But when Muawiyah died in 680, he appointed his son Yazid as Caliph. Hassan had died in 670, but Hussein was still very much alive. He refused to swear allegiance to Yazid, because of the treaty.
 
Twice, the Muslims had halted civil war for arbitration, but this time, they went to full battle. Hussein left Mecca to seek Persian reinforcement at Kufa. Along the way, Yazid’s army caught his small army at a town called Karbala.
 
The Battle of Karbala was hopeless for Hussein. He is a classic case of the rightful-heir as underdog, swept away by much larger, more pragmatic, force. During the battle, he was not only killed but beheaded. His family members were either killed (including a baby) or captured.
 
One legend about the battle emphasizes Hussein’s status as righteous underdog. In the few days before they opened pitched battle, the army from Damascus prevented Hussein’s men from accessing river water. Suffering from thirst, the men were offered a chance to desert without punishment, but they all stayed to face death with Hussein.
 
By our calendar, the battle took place on about October 10, 680. Within Islam, the date is commemorated as Ashura. Every detail of the battle is remembered and often there is a ritual re-enactment. Here is one re-enactment of the death of Hussein.
 
The Kharijites were more like rebellious dissidents than like a separate sect. The Partisans of Hussein (Shia = partisans) eventually became a sect, but at this time, they too were more a scattered, resentful rebellion. For a few years, there were scattered rebellions in Syria, Arabia and Egypt. The power of the Majority (Sunni = majority) was sufficient to put down these rebellions. Muawiyah’s family became known as the Umayyad dynasty.
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Cosmetic, elective and women’s surgery

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Ruth

Elective surgery was only a concept in the Greek tradition that Northern Europe didn’t learn until the late medieval, when textbook education about surgery spread north from Bologna. I’m still not sure if the Greek world had been using opium as a surgical pain treatment, but the existence of elective surgery at all seems to imply it.

Paul of Aegina described surgery for nose polyps and ankyloglossia, the “tongue-tied” condition restricting the tongue’s motion. Removing tonsils was a bit more involved than those, but still fairly easy since no incision was needed. His method only needed a few special curved knives, and two strong assistants to hold the mouth open and the tongue down. An eyelid that got flipped in the wrong direction could also be corrected; there were several other corrective eye surgeries.

One of the surprising elective surgeries he describes is breast reduction for boys. It’s clearly the same technique that’s still used today, but of course, the young man had to really want the reduction in order to steel himself for such a procedure without real pain control.

There’s no suggestion that anyone did breast reduction for women, although the same book describes enough obstetrical and gynecological procedures that, when it was translated into Arabic, it was taken for the definitive book on gynecology. The author became known in Arabic as “al-Qawabilly” or “The Gynecologist.” If Paul of Aegina didn’t talk about it, it didn’t exist (to the distress of some women in labor who had feet-first babies that Paul just forgot to mention).

I was surprised to find that this older, more sophisticated medical tradition also included two instruments not known to Europe’s Middle Ages: the catheter and the speculum. The catheter was apparently a metal tube, so that the doctor had to work carefully following the curves of inner anatomy. The speculum was essentially no different from the one used today: two bronze leaf-shaped blades with a screw that forced them to move apart once inside. We use flexible plastic and stainless steel as materials now, instead of silver and bronze, but not much else has changed.

The barbarian invasions that began in the 200s and continued, in waves, into the 12th century, seem to explain why this sophisticated knowledge was not available to medieval Europe. It was preserved and improved in Greek-speaking Constantinople, then transferred to the schools and courts of Damascus, Baghdad and Cordoba. We don’t see surgery textbooks showing up in Paris until the late medieval period.

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Paul of Aegina: basic Greek surgery

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Ruth

We think of a surgical patient as passive, lying down, unconscious. In medieval surgery, the patient was a participant in that he was certainly conscious, and therefore he could help out by putting his (or her) body in various useful positions. The surgeon also needed assistants, who helped by holding the patient in that position, probably by holding him down so he couldn’t struggle, and by massaging or moving body parts.

In Paul of Aegina’s 7th century medical book, that’s the picture we get. When Paul treated a man for dangerous varicose veins, it was a cooperative procedure. The doctor tied a string around the leg at one or another places, and the man walked back and forth as directed, while the doctor outlined the problem spot in ink. When he drained excess fluid collecting in the abdomen, he asked the patient to stand while assistants pushed and massaged the fluid as low in the body as possible. When kidney stones needed to move into the bladder or urinary tract, the doctor’s assistants shook the patient until the stones moved.

When Dr. Paul drained fluid from the abdomen, he cut a small hole through the peritoneum, the layer just below the skin, and inserted a little copper tube. (I was wondering what they used for draining a healing wound, and that must be the answer: copper or silver tubes.) Greek medicine was cautious about suddenly draining everything, because a careless doctor might drain away the life force. It was better to ask the standing patient to lie down, and use the inserted drain to improve the situation bit by bit over several days.

Paul’s descriptions don’t take into account the patient’s pain, first because it was obvious; it went with the territory. It seems likely that opium had made its way to the Greek world by the 600s, so they may have been dealing with a groggy patient. However, it doesn’t say.

The most painful procedures seem to go with the greatest immediate danger. For an infected liver, Paul used a small cauterizing tool to actually burn, not cut, through the skin at the lower back, until there was a hole through which to drain it. That must have been unbearable, but it was a deathbed operation already. Similarly, his operation to fix a fistula (an improper hole/passage between the anus and some other place) involved a pretty severe experience for the patient, as the doctor grappled with access to the interior. On the other hand, I think those are typically fatal as well. So….hard choices in ancient times.

We don’t know how much of this was practiced in Northern Europe, but probably not much. Paul of Aegina’s book came to Europe via Arabic, so it probably showed up first in Cordoba’s library circa 850. It may have been translated into Latin in the following centuries, but it didn’t have wide circulation until the 14th century, with the expansion of medical schools.

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Greek medicine’s pathway into Europe

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Ruth

The Big Story of Europe’s medieval period is something like, “How the rude northern tribes took over for Rome and then gradually learned to adapt to and surpass Rome’s standards of civilization.” You see this same shape in every topic: building bridges, writing poems, making laws. Medieval Italy didn’t step as far back in civilization as England and “Frankia” did. And on the other side, the Germanic tribes had some cultural ways that serve the modern world very well; the post-Roman civilization they created has strengths that the Roman world did not.

So when we first look at “medieval” surgery, by common American’s-eye-view convention we mean “the state of surgery in England, France and Germany around 1100.” However, in medicine too, there was cultural lag and catch-up going on.

Alexandria and Constantinople maintained and improved on the knowledge base from Greece and Rome. The most famous medieval surgery book was written in Alexandria by “Paul of Aegina,” about whom little is known. He was born on the island of Aegina, he lived in Alexandria with its great library, and he compiled a complete 7-volume medical encyclopedia. Some portion of what he wrote seems to have been original. More about Paul’s book in the next installment.

Constantinople’s “byzantine” bureaucratic government funded public hospitals in the early medieval period. I’ll write more about Europe’s hospitals later, but for now let’s stipulate that no surgery occurred in them. Italy’s cities began following Constantinople’s model long before the snowier parts of Europe did. Still, only the Greek-writing world kept improving on the ancient traditions of elective and reparative surgery.

So the primary issue in the early Middle Ages was just the language barrier. When a French king married Princess Anne of Kiev, the French court for a little while had Greek speakers. But basically, Greek was not an important language for study in the medieval period. It wasn’t until the late 1400s, after the fall of Constantinople, that Greek study became normal. After that, the sky was the limit, as we know.

One of the translation pathways for Greek books, in the meantime, was to be purchased by the Caliph of Baghdad (in the glory days of Harun al-Rashid, for fellow Arabian Nights fans) and translated into Arabic. Arabic copies then went to Cordoba, where scholars fluent in Latin and Arabic shifted them into Latin. That’s how the medieval world learned of most things, including these surgery books. It wasn’t until after the fall of Constantinople that they got them direct from Greek. Thomas Aquinas, as far as I know, would have gotten his Aristotle this way via Arabic.

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Surgery in early medieval Northern Europe

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Ruth

The medieval candidate for surgery could be described with four Ms: Male, military, moneyed, and mangled.

Most surgery developed around the war games that gradually grew more rule-bound and civilized but never ceased to be nearly as deadly as real war. Tournaments had one great life-saving advantage over war: a refereed time-out. There were lots of reasons why surgery didn’t happen on battlefields, and they’re too depressing to go into. But on a tournament field, conditions were perfect: everyone was rich, fighting was voluntary, and they could plan ahead for casualties.

The medieval surgeon’s bag contained some very sharp knives, a probe for examining wounds, and a cup to drain infections. Additionally, he carried silk thread and a needle, a short silver tube, and an iron instrument for cauterizing a wound (we might also call it a small branding iron).

The silver pipe was for removing barbed arrows, though these were more of a battlefield hazard than a tournament one. Removing a barbed arrow by pressing the pipe into the wound, enclosing the barbs in metal, was perhaps the simplest medieval surgery.

Silk thread was for stitching up ugly gashes, including trying to tuck intestines back into place. Abdominal wounds like that were among the serious wounds that had a *possibility* of successful surgery. Dirt had to be cleaned off the tissues, and after the wound was stitched, they learned that they needed to leave a drain hole for a while. (I’ll be keeping my eyes open for what they used as a drain tube in the days before latex or plastic. Will let you know if I find.)

Infections were a huge problem. One medieval theory held that the infectious wound was self-cleaning, so it should be kept warm and encouraged to swell and ooze. Another common practice was to use wine as a disinfectant.

At tournaments, head wounds were extremely common. Surgeons often tried to save a knight’s life with a trephine hole, bored with the sharp knife or with a small drill. This drain relieved pressure on the brain as the wound healed. While many or most patients died anyway, there’s evidence from buried skulls that some survived long enough for the trephine hole to close up with new bone as the patient went on with life.

There were two known elective surgeries: for cataract and for bladder stones. The cataract surgery was done by traveling amateurs and while it helped immediately, it later led to complete blindness. Stones were most likely treated in a monastery, where medical care was superior. The idea was to position the stone closer to the surface, perhaps trapping it in a fold of skin, and then make a very small cut or scoop to remove it. This sounds pretty reasonable until you imagine positioning a stone in the bladder or urinary tract without an ultrasound.

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Theriac, the uber-medicine

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Ruth

Theriac was more of a concept than a single recipe. It was a cure-what-ails-you brew with multiple ideas of remedies. Its focus was on counteracting poison, but “poison” was as loose an idea as “toxin” is in alternative medicine today. Maybe you actually ingested poison or were bitten by something venomous, or maybe you received an elf-shot or breathed bad air. Poison could be thought of not as a class of harmful chemicals but as an agent of sickness, however it was received.

Theriac began with the flesh of a poisonous serpent, on the grounds that the snake could neutralize its venom. One of the top magic principles was that like cures like, so the creature that delivered poison could also cure it. It might well also include a dried scorpion, another famous poison delivery system.

From there, the list of ingredients varied. In past essays (last August) I talked about various herbs; their herb-lore was extensive, if sketchy. Some herbs absolutely had an therapeutic effect, while others perhaps just resembled a body part or followed some other magical-logical link. Honey, spices, nut oils, and even brewer’s yeast might go into the theriac next. It’s likely that wine was the liquid element. Individual methods would dictate which herbs and liquids were cooked before it was considered properly mixed.

picture of man mixing theriac

The key to theriac was its uniquely long aging process. Theriac sat, probably corked, for at least a year. Judging by other brews that aged for three to nine days, it was probably strained at the end to remove the sludge and pieces, and the resulting liquid was stored in a fresh bottle.

After that, theriac was the ultimate cure-all for anything poison might have caused: actual venomous bites, infection, migraine, or epidemic. It was probably employed for cancer, too. Adults could drink a little bit of it (probably mixed into wine or ale). But theriac was considered too strong for children. A sick child was treated only by rubbing it onto the skin.

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The frenzied and the moon-mad

Posted on August 16, 2016 by Ruth

We can only guess how much early medieval doctors thought of insanity as an illness or as a devil-infliction. In Bald’s Leechbook, some remedies for mental illness sound like they are definitely intended for a physical problem, and it is called madness, insanity, or frenzy. Other remedies are for “night goers” and those who are afflicted by the devil. Was this some type of psychosis? It would make sense that mania would be viewed as a physical ailment of frenzy, while psychosis was seen as caused by a devil. But we don’t know.

In entry 41, Bald begins with a general herbal drink for “all the enemy’s temptations.” (Pollington, Leechcraft) There’s no further elaboration about what these might be, but the preparation of the drink lets us know that it’s looking past heartburn and pocks, to something vaguer and more threatening. Seven herbs are to be placed under the church’s altar; they remain in place until nine masses have been sung. Then they are crushed into holy water, and the patient must drink this on an empty stomach in the morning. Additionally, holy water is to be sprinkled on his food. There’s a salve in 41, too; like the drink, the herbal butter-salve must go under the altar for nine masses. The patient is anointed with this salve in symbolic places: temples, forehead, head, chest, ribs.

If this wasn’t hint enough that some of the targeted ailments are signs of mental illness, the next line in the same entry says it outright: “To cure an insane man.” There are two drink instructions, but neither needs holy water. They are both ale-based, with specific herbal ingredients that are quite different from the first drink. The full cure requires more: drip a few drops of a cold bath into the drink, then put the man into the cold bath three times. Give him a meal of holy bread, cheese, garlic, and cropleek, with the first drink; put the salve all over him, and “when he is better,” make him drink the second one. I think both of these drinks are purges; the second one is called a “strong purgative drink.” One of the ingredients may be from the castor-oil plant.

Entry 61 has a salve for “elvish kin, nightgoers, and with whom the devil has intercourse.” Since the early Germanic idea of disease included attacks of these kinds, Bald could be talking about any disease. However, again the salve instructions show us that it’s for something vaguer and more threatening than usual. Thirteen herbs are to sit in a bowl under the altar until nine masses have gone by; then they are boiled in butter and sheep fat, with holy salt added, and when it’s strained off, the plant matter has to be thrown into running water. The salve goes on the face and eyes, as well as on anything else that stands out as sore. Additionally, the patient is “smoked” and the sign of the cross made over him frequently.

For “frenzy,” perhaps meaning mania, there was just a light drink, but it required very special preparation. It began just before dawn, singing the litany in church, and then proceeding outdoors while singing the Credo and Pater Noster. On arriving at one of the eight named plants (including radish), he must walk around it three times. These plants required twelve masses!

Radishes were a good enough solution by themselves, for a woman’s madness. She was to fast for a day and eat radish roots at night; this remedy protected people from violent attack for at least one day.

For moon-madness, there was one simple treatment. Make a whip out of a dolphin’s hide. Beat the mad person. This was guaranteed to work, and there is a translator’s note: a later hand had added to the manuscript the word AMEN.

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