The Origin and Growth of the Healing Art A Popular History of Medicine in All Ages and Countries — Reading Notes

Druids as Healers and Impostors

Berdoe devotes considerable attention to the Druids, whom he describes as 'simply impostors who pretended to exclusive knowledge of medicine.' He cites Sprengel to characterize their practices as a blend of sorcery, divination, and genuine plant-lore. The mistletoe, called 'All-Heal,' was gathered with elaborate rituals: fasting, using the left hand, and never looking back. Other sacred plants—Selago, Samulus, Vervain—required white garments, bread-and-wine sacrifices, and a metal hook. Berdoe quotes Strutt on the faint light thrown on Druidic methods, noting they extracted juices, made infusions, and prepared salves. Yet the author emphasizes that magical juggles and ceremonies reached their peak in Britain, where human sacrifices supposedly provided anatomical knowledge. The tone is one of measured skepticism: Berdoe acknowledges practical surgery—bone-setting, wound-healing—but subordinates it to ritual.

The Priest-Physician and Divine Wrath

A recurring pattern in Berdoe's account is the conflation of disease with divine punishment. He quotes Strutt: 'the people thought that all internal diseases proceeded from the anger of the gods,' so only priests could intercede. When illness struck, sacrifices were offered; in dire cases, a man was slain on the altar. This logic made the Druid both spiritual mediator and medical authority. Berdoe notes that such beliefs inclined the populace to seek priestly relief rather than empirical treatment. The author’s own stance emerges through his choice of sources: he leans on classical writers like Pliny and Diodorus Siculus, who described British divination by observing a victim’s fall and blood flow. Berdoe does not endorse these methods but presents them as historical evidence of a worldview where healing and religion were inseparable.

Sources and Silences in Berdoe’s Narrative

Berdoe relies heavily on a handful of authorities: Sprengel, Strutt, Pliny, and Diodorus Siculus. He weaves their accounts into a composite picture, but the excerpts reveal gaps. For instance, he mentions that Druidic knowledge was communicated only to initiates and that their alphabet may have come from Greek merchants—yet he offers no direct Druidic texts. The reader is left with secondhand descriptions filtered through Roman and later commentators. Berdoe’s method is synthetic: he assembles fragments from classical and antiquarian sources, acknowledging that 'faint is the light' on actual remedies. This reliance on external accounts shapes the narrative’s perspective, making it more a history of what was said about ancient medicine than a reconstruction of practice. The author’s own voice remains cautious, often qualifying claims with 'probably' or 'it seems.'

Berdoe’s history invites readers to consider how medical knowledge has been entangled with authority, ritual, and belief. The Druid section exemplifies a persistent tension: the author respects the practical skills of ancient healers while condemning their mystifications. As you read, note how Berdoe balances admiration for early surgery with a progressive narrative that positions modern medicine as a triumph over superstition. The work is less a chronicle of discoveries than a study of how cultures have explained and treated illness—a theme that resonates beyond its Victorian context.

That rainy afternoon, Berdoe’s book had me scowling at ancient Druids, their rites so tangled with healing. Yet his reluctant respect for their observed cures lingered. Later, idly, I found myself tracing that same tension back further, to a priest-physician who predated them all. I-em-hotep and Ancient Egyptian medicine: II. Prevention of valvular disease The Harveian Oration delivered before the Royal college of physicians on June 21, 1904 — Themes and Context—and the quiet became even quieter.