treatment. The Angles and Saxons brought with them to England a
belief in medicinal runes and healing spells, and the cures wrought by
their medical men were attributed to the magic potency of the charms
employed. Some interesting information on contemporary manners is
contained in a "Book of Counsels to Young Practitioners" (A. D. 1300).
The use of polysyllabic and unintelligible words is therein
recommended, probably as a goad to the patient's imagination.

Medical charms, wrote a shrewd philosopher of old, are not to be used
because they can effect any change, _but because they bring the patient
into a better frame of mind_.[215:1]

An interesting account of the manners and methods of itinerant
charlatans of the period is found in "English Wayfaring Life in the
Middle Ages" (fourteenth century), by the noted writer and diplomat, M.
Jean Jules Jusserand. These Bohemian mountebanks went about the world,
selling health. They selected the village green or market-place as
headquarters, and spreading a carpet or piece of cloth on the ground,
proceeded to harangue the populace. Big words, marvellous tales, praise
of their own distinguished ancestry, enumeration of the wonderful cures
wrought by themselves, statements of their purely altruistic motives and
benevolent designs, and of their contempt for filthy lucre, these were
characteristic features of their discourses, which preceded the
exhibition and sale of infallible nostrums.

The law, wrote M. Jusserand, distinguished very clearly between an
educated physician and a cheap-jack of the cross-ways. The court-doctor,
for example, had the support of an established reputation. He had
studied at one of the universities, and he offered the warranty of his
high position. The wandering herbalist was less advantageously known. In
the country, indeed, he was usually able to escape the rigor of the
laws, but in the cities and larger towns he could not ply his trade with
impunity. The joyous festivals of Old England attracted many of these
hawkers of pills and elixirs, for on such occasions they met the rustic
laborers, whose simplicity rendered them an easy prey. These
peasant-folk pressed around, open-mouthed, uncertain whether they ought
to laugh or to be afraid. But they finished usually by buying specimens
of the eloquently vaunted cure-alls.

In medieval times, we are told, it was difficult to distinguish quacks
from skilled practitioners, because the latter were inclined