The income of the hospital had previously been much augmented by the relics which it was fortunate enough to possess. S. Edmund the Confessor's comb, S. Bartholomew's skin, as well as his much revered image, the bones of S. Stephen and one of the ribs of S. Andrew the apostle, all helped to draw to this shrine without the walls the worship and the offerings of the sick and the devout. It is difficult to realise with what reverential awe men regarded the jaw-bone of an ancient cenobite, the tooth or even the toe-nail of a saint or martyr. Charms, in those days, were considered more efficacious than drugs, and the bones of saints were the favourite remedies prescribed by the monkish physicians. Comb your hair with this comb of Saint Edmund, then, and you would surely be cured of frenzy or headache; apply the bones of S. Stephen to your rheumatic joints, and your pains would disappear. So it was most firmly believed; and faith will remove mountains. There was a saint for every disease. To touch the keys of S. Peter or to handle a relic of S. Hubert was deemed an effectual mode of curing madness. S. Clare, according to monkish leechcraft, cured sore eyes; S. Sebastian the plague, and S. Apollonia the toothache. The teeth of S. Apollonia, by the way, were by a fortunate dispensation almost as numerous as the complaint which she took under her charge was common. It is said that Henry VI., disgusted at the excess of this superstition, ordered all who possessed teeth of that illustrious saint to deliver them to an officer appointed to receive them. Obedient crowds came to display their saintly treasures, and lo! a ton of the veritable teeth of S. Apollonia were thus collected together. Were her stomach, says Fuller, proportionate to her teeth, a country would scarce afford her a meal. The relics at S. Bartholomew's were so highly prized that Oriel College thought it desirable to remove them to their church of S. Mary--where more people might have the benefit of them. S. Bartholomew's hospital was used as a common pest-house for the plague in 1643, and shortly after was completely demolished. The chapel fared no better, for it was put to base uses by the Parliamentarians, and the roof, which was of lead, was melted down to provide bullets for "the true Church Militant." The buildings and chapel were, however, restored by the patrons, Oriel College. If you follow the Cowley Road towards Cowley Marsh, you will find on your left, opposite the College cricket grounds, and just short of the Military College and barracks, a ruined building which is the old chapel of S. Bartholomew, and contains the screen put up in the time of the Commonwealth. The letters O. C., 1651, mark it. They stand for Oriel College, not Oliver Cromwell, we must suppose.