In some parts of Gaul, in the early Middle Ages, physicians received very little consideration; indeed, to us moderns it seems strange that any one should have possessed sufficient courage to accept the responsibility of prescribing for a member of one of the royal families. It is related by Neuburger, on the authority of Gregory of Tours’ History of the Franks, that when Austrichildis, the wife of King Guntram (sixth century A. D.), was ill with the plague and perceived that her death was near at hand, she sent for her husband and extracted from him a promise that he would behead the two physicians, Nicolaus and Donatus, who had treated her and whose prescriptions had failed to effect a cure. Her wish was carried out, in order--as the statement reads--“that her Majesty might not enter the Realm of the Dead entirely alone.” Many centuries later, however, when civilization had certainly advanced far beyond the stage which it had reached in Gaul in the sixth century of the present era, there were instances in which able and conscientious physicians were subjected to equally cruel treatment for their failure to effect a cure. It was at about this same period, as is amply verified by the statements made by Bishop Gregory of Tours, that faith in the power of saintly relics to heal diseases became almost universal. So great was the effect produced upon the minds of the people by the public display of these objects--bones of saints, portions of their grave-stones, etc.--that a large number of marvelous cures were reported as the result of such displays; and doubtless--so great is the power of suggestion over the human mind--many of these reports were true. A century later (673–735 A. D.), the Venerable Bede, author of the famous work entitled “Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation,” gave, in the course of his narrative, an account of a case of aphasia in which “a remarkable cure was effected”; and, although he mentions a course of “systematic exercises in speaking” as the means used to effect that cure, he attributes it to supernatural causes and not to the practical treatment adopted. He also describes some of the epidemics of his time, and gives most interesting though brief accounts of the methods of treatment employed by the priests and the monks.