VI If not in every village, at least in every _châtellerie_, there was a doctor, a surgeon or a barber surgeon;[38] the labourers appear to have used their services freely and to have rewarded them with liberality. One of Bonis’ day-labourers falling ill, sends to Montauban for the physician of the place, and pays him for several visits the sum of 4 sols 2 deniers--which we may compare to nearly £1 15_s._ of our money. Another pays his doctor as much as 18 sols, say £3 12_s._ And in the _Accounts of Bonis_ we find frequent mentions of drugs and medicinal spices of an expensive sort, sold to the agricultural labourers of the district. The doctors of the Middle Ages and later, even so late as the middle of the fifteenth century, were chiefly inspired by the theories of the Arabs. Louis XI., as we know, ordered the Paris University to copy _in extenso_ the great work of Aboo Bekr ibn Zacaria er Razi, the famous physician of the tenth century, whose masterpiece, _El Mansoori_, is a compendium of Arabian therapeutics. This book, commonly known as “Razi,” was very popular throughout the fourteenth century. A copy of it, bought by Bonis for four livres, assisted him in the preparation of his drugs, and of the plasters, unguents, electuaries and tisanes especially in request among a fourteenth-century rural population. It may be interesting to examine a few of the remedies employed. Rheumatism, that special misery of those that work in the wintry fields, was treated externally by the application of a plaster of cordials and aromatic gums spread on a thin piece of silk. The part affected was also rubbed with an ointment (costing seven sols) made of four ounces of turpentine and two ounces of white wax, one ounce of resin, one ounce of myrrh, two ounces of _bol d’Arménie_, and two ounces of oil of roses;[39] it was then covered with a sheet of wadding. Complaints of the skin were treated by an unguent composed of a quarter of a pound of marsh-mallow, a quarter of a pound of white wax, a quarter of a pound of olive oil, an ounce of incense, and an ounce of turpentine; medicated baths were also recommended. Sulphur was freely used. Aniseed was given as a specific against indigestion, with camomile, _Quassia amara_, camphor, and essence of cinnamon. Coughs and colds were cured by a sudorific tea of rose and camomile; by a milk of almonds mixed with starch and sugar, almost exactly resembling the delicious _looch_ of modern France: by an infusion of pectoral flowers (mallow, violet, &c.), as well as by lozenges of gum arabic and barley sugar[40]. In severe cases the physicians of the Middle Ages administered the famous theriac of Nero, the _Theriacus Andromachi_, composed of opium powdered with some tannic bitter substance, together with sulphate of iron, and some two and forty active aromatic essences, such as turpentine, Cingalese cinnamon, valerian, citron, rose, etc.[41] A labourer at Bloxham, in