Note 71 — Chapter XXIV · DURING THE LATTER HALF OF THE MIDDLE AGES SURGERY ASSUMES THE MOST PROMINENT PLACE IN THE ADVANCE OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

“Gaddesden had for a long time been troubled how to cure stone: ‘At last,’ says he, in his Rosa Anglica, ‘I thought of collecting a good quantity of those beetles which in summer are found in the dung of oxen, also of the crickets which sing in the fields. I cut off the heads and the wings of the crickets and put them with the beetles and common oil into a pot; I covered it and left it afterwards for a day and night in a bread oven. I drew out the pot and heated it at a moderate fire, I pounded the whole and rubbed the sick parts; in three days the pain had disappeared;’ under the influence of the beetles and the crickets the stone was broken into bits. It was almost always thus, by a sudden illumination, that this doctor discovered his most efficacious remedies: Madame Trote [Trotula] of Salerno never confided to her agents in various parts of the world the secret of more marvelous and unexpected recipes.” (From Jusserand’s “English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages.”)