An interesting account of the manners and methods of itinerant charlatans of the period is found in "English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages" (fourteenth century), by the noted writer and diplomat, M. Jean Jules Jusserand. These Bohemian mountebanks went about the world, selling health. They selected the village green or market-place as headquarters, and spreading a carpet or piece of cloth on the ground, proceeded to harangue the populace. Big words, marvellous tales, praise of their own distinguished ancestry, enumeration of the wonderful cures wrought by themselves, statements of their purely altruistic motives and benevolent designs, and of their contempt for filthy lucre, these were characteristic features of their discourses, which preceded the exhibition and sale of infallible nostrums. The law, wrote M. Jusserand, distinguished very clearly between an educated physician and a cheap-jack of the cross-ways. The court-doctor, for example, had the support of an established reputation. He had studied at one of the universities, and he offered the warranty of his high position. The wandering herbalist was less advantageously known. In the country, indeed, he was usually able to escape the rigor of the laws, but in the cities and larger towns he could not ply his trade with impunity. The joyous festivals of Old England attracted many of these hawkers of pills and elixirs, for on such occasions they met the rustic laborers, whose simplicity rendered them an easy prey. These peasant-folk pressed around, open-mouthed, uncertain whether they ought to laugh or to be afraid. But they finished usually by buying specimens of the eloquently vaunted cure-alls. In medieval times, we are told, it was difficult to distinguish quacks from skilled practitioners, because the latter were inclined to be superstitious. In the year 1220 the University of Paris, with the sanction of the Church and municipality, issued a statute against unlicensed practitioners, and in 1271 another, whereby Jews and Jewesses were forbidden "to practice medicine or surgery on any Catholic Christian." All so-called chirurgeons and apothecaries, as well as herbalists, of either sex, were enjoined from visiting patients, performing operations, or prescribing any medicines except certain confections in common use, unless in the presence and under the direction of a physician, the penalties being excommunication, imprisonment, and fine.[216:1]