al, and sometimes a
marvellous anticipation of some of our most modern thoughts. There is
one of these encyclopedias which, because it was written in my favorite
thirteenth century, I have read with some care. It is simply a
development of the work of preceding clerical encyclopedists, and often
refers to them. Because it contains some typical examples of the better
sorts of information in these works, I have thought it worth while to
quote two passages from it. The author is Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and the
quaint English in which it is couched is quoted from "Medical Lore"
(London, 1893). The book is all the more interesting because in a dear
old English version, issued about 1540, the spellings of which are among
the great curiosities of English orthography, it was often read and
consulted by Shakespeare, who evidently quotes from it frequently, for
not a little of the quaint scientific lore that he uses for his figures
can be traced to expressions used in this book.

The first of the paragraphs that deserves to be quoted, discusses
madness, or, as we would call it, lunacy, and sums up the causes, the
symptoms, and the treatment quite as well as that has ever been done in
the same amount of space:

Madness cometh sometime of passions of the soul, as of
business and of great thoughts, of sorrow and of too great
study, and of dread: sometime of the biting of a wood hound,
or some other venomous beast; sometime of melancholy meats,
and sometime of drink of strong wine. And as the causes be
diverse, the tokens and signs be diverse. For some cry and
leap and hurt and wound themselves and other men, and darken
and hide themselves in privy and secret places. The medicine
of them is, that they be bound, that they hurt not themselves
and other men. And namely, such shall be refreshed, and
comforted, and withdrawn from cause and matter of dread and
busy thoughts. And they must be gladded with instruments of
music, and some deal be occupied.'

The second discusses in almost as thorough a way the result of the bite
of a mad dog. The old English word for mad, wood, is constantly used.
The causes, the symptoms, and course of the disease, and its possible
prevention by early treatment, are all discussed. The old tradition was
already in existence that sufferers from rabies or hydrophobia, as it is
called, dreaded water, when it is really only because the spasm
cons