There were in addition scores
of substances, the parts or products of animals, some harmless, others
salutary, others again useless and disgusting. Minor surgery was in the
hands of the barbers, who performed all the minor operations, such as
bleeding; the more important operations, few in number, were performed
by surgeons.
ASTROLOGY AND DIVINATION
AT this period astrology, which included astronomy, was everywhere
taught. In the "Gouernaunce of Prynces, or Pryvete of Pryveties,"
translated by James Yonge, 1422,(26) there occurs the statement:
"As Galian the lull wies leche Saith and Isoder the Gode clerk, hit
witnessith that a man may not perfitely can the sciens and craft of
Medissin but yef he be an astronomoure."
(26) Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No. LXXIV, p. 195,
1898; Secreta Secretorum, Rawl. MS. B., 490.
We have seen how the practice of astrology spread from Babylonia and
Greece throughout the Roman Empire. It was carried on into the Middle
Ages as an active and aggressive cult, looked upon askance at times
by the Church, but countenanced by the courts, encouraged at the
universities, and always by the public. In the curriculum of the
mediaeval university, astronomy made up with music, arithmetic and
geometry the Quadrivium.
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