Note 5 — Chapter I · THE ANGLO-SAXON HERBALS

The stories of miraculous cures by famous Anglo-Saxon bishops and abbots are for the most part too well known to be worth quoting, but the unfair treatment of the leech is perhaps nowhere more clearly shown than in Bede’s tale of St. John of Beverley curing a boy with a diseased head. Although the leech effected the cure, the success was attributed to the bishop’s benediction, and the story ends, “the youth became of a clear countenance, ready in speech and with hair beautifully wavy.”