The science of medicine since Chaucer's day has made extraordinary advances, and it is only fair to judge his doctor by contemporary standards. To-day, we fear, he would be largely regarded as little better than a charlatan and a quack. It is true, he was acquainted with all the authorities, ancient and modern, from AEsculapius and Galen down to Gaddesden, the author of the "Rosa Anglica," the great English book of fourteenth century medicine. But this last named luminary of physic would aid him very little on the road to true knowledge. This medical "Rose," which Leland calls a "large and learned work," only serves to illustrate the impotence of the professors of the healing arts at that period. This is the recipe of Gaddesden for the small-pox. "After this (the appearance of the eruption) cause the whole body of your patient to be wrapped in red scarlet cloth, and command everything about the bed to be made red. This is an excellent cure. It was in this manner I treated the son of the noble king of England when he had the small-pox, and I cured him without leaving any marks." To cure epilepsy, he orders the patient "and his parents" to fast three days, and then go to church. "The patient must first confess, and he must have mass on Friday and Saturday, and then on Sunday the priest must read over the patient's head the gospel for September, in the time of vintage after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this the priest shall write out this portion of the gospel reverently, and bind it about the patient's neck, and he shall be cured." If epilepsy was to be exorcised by such a remedy as this, we venture to assert that it must have been largely a case of faith-healing. [Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER. (_From Harleian M.S.--4866 fol. 91._)] Seeing then that such was the condition of the science of medicine in Chaucer's days, we must take with a good deal of reservation his statement that his doctor "Knew the cause of every malady Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry, And where engendered, and of what humour." Anyhow, some of the remedies prescribed for the "sick man," and the "drugs," which his friends the apothecaries were so ready to supply, would have seemed extraordinary enough to us. The poet tells us the doctor's study was but "little in the Bible," and that though a "perfect practitioner," the ground of his scientific knowledge was astronomy, _i.e._, astrology; the "better part of medicine," as Roger Bacon calls it. In dealing with his patients he was guided by "natural magic." To this practice Chaucer alludes in another of his poems, the "House of Fame." "And clerks eke, which con well, All this magic naturell, That craftily do her intents, To make in certain ascendents, Images--lo through which magic, To make a man be whole or sick."