The Salerne Schoole doth by these lines impart All health to England's King, and doth advise From care his head to keepe, from wrath his harte. Drink not much wine, sup light, and soone arise. When meat is gone long sitting breedeth smart; And after noone still waking keepe your eies, When mou'd you find your selfe to nature's need, Forbeare them not, for that much danger breeds, _Use three physitians still--first Dr. Quiet, Next Dr. Merry-man, and third Dr. Dyet_. [6] Some of these old medical traditions come down to us from many more centuries than we have any idea of until we begin to trace them. Ordinarily it is presumed that the advice with regard to the taking of small amounts of fluid during meals comes to us from the modern physiologists. In "The Babees Book," a volume on etiquette for young folks issued in the thirteenth century, there is among other advices, as, for instance, "not to laugh or speak while the mouth is full of meat or drink," and also "not to pick the teeth with knife or straw or wand or stick at table," this warning: "While thou holdest meat in mouth beware to drink; that is an unhonest chare; and also physick forbids it quite." It was "an unhonest chare" because the drinking-cups were used in common, and drinking with meat in the mouth led to their soiling, to the disgust of succeeding drinkers. All the generations ever since have been in slavery to the expression that "physic forbids it quite," and now we know without good reason. [7] The book called "The Hundred Merry Jests" suggests that the wagtail is light of digestion because it is ever on the wing, and therefore had, as it were, an essential lightness. [8] International Clinics, vol. iii., series 28. [9] "Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery down to the Sixteenth Century." London, 1904. [10] The subsequent disuse of anæthesia seems an almost impossible mystery to many, but the practically total oblivion into which the practice fell is incomprehensible. This is emphasized by the fact that while it dropped out of medical tradition, the memory of it remained among the poets, and especially among the dramatists. Shakespeare used the tradition in "Romeo and Juliet." Tom Middleton, in the tragedy of "Women Beware Women" (Act IV., Scene i., 1605), says: "I'll imitate the pities of old surgeons To this lost limb, who, ere they show their art, Cast one asleep, then cut the diseased part." [11] "Physicke is so studied and practised with the Egyptians that every disease hath his several physicians, who striveth to excell in healing that one disease and not to be expert in curing many. Whereof it cometh that every corner of that country is full of physicians. Some for the eyes, others for the head, many for the teeth, not a few for the stomach and the inwards."