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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Jul 25, 2022 7:32:24 GMT -5
 This makes for a highly entertaining read, being, from a modern perspective, quite mad in places. The best thing about it it collects many folk cures for various ailments, which are great fun to read and often rather gruesome. If you give any a go let me know in the comments. Hildegard von Bingen was a remarkable woman. According to the blurb: One of two major medical treatises by medieval healer Hildegard von Bingen, presented in its entirety for the first time in English during the 900th anniversary of her birth. • A seminal text in the development of Western herbal medicine • Presents nine categories of healing systems--Plants, Elements, Trees, Stones, Fish, Birds, Animals, Reptiles, and Metals--and elaborates on their medicinal use • Closely related to Eastern medical approaches that are gaining respect today Join me as we journey into the world of medieval medicine. |
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Post by Silent Scream Queen on Jul 25, 2022 7:35:18 GMT -5
XXXIX. MOUSE
A mouse (mus) is hot and has insidious habits and devilish skills. Since it always
flees, its flesh is harmful to humans and not much use as medicine. But, if some-
one having epilepsy falls on the ground, after he gets up, place a mouse in a vessel
(of water). Give that water to the person to drink, and wash his forehead and feet in
that water. This should be done each time he falls and he will be cured. Since a
mouse flees all things, it will chase off the epilepsy. When a mouse has to give
birth, she has difficulty in bringing forth the young. She goes, in pain, to the edge
of some water and seeks very small stones there. She eats as many as she can hold
in her throat, runs to her hole, and spits them out there. She breathes on them and
gets on top of them. She warms them up and immediately gives birth. As soon as
she has given birth she hates the stones and kicks them away. She then lies over
her young, warming them. If it is possible to find those stones within the same
month that she has rejected them, one can tie them over the umbilicus of a preg-
nant woman who is already in labor but not able to give birth. She will then give
birth and, as soon as she does, they should be removed. If one has the ague, take a
mouse and give it a blow so it cannot run away. Before it dies, tie the back of the
mouse between the shoulder blades of the person when the ague is tormenting
him. Let the mouse die between the person’s shoulder blades, and that person will
be cured, and ague will invade him no more.
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