(1) _Patients of St. Bartholomew’s._—The cripple Wolmer, a well-known beggar who lay daily in St. Paul’s, was a most distressing case. He was so deformed as to be obliged to drag himself along on all fours, supporting his hands on little wooden stools. (Cf. Pl. XX.) His story is extracted from Dr. Norman Moore’s valuable edition of the faithful English version of the _Liber Fundacionis_, dating about the year 1400. “There was an sykeman Wolmer be name with greuous and longe langoure depressid, and wrecchid to almen that hym behylde apperyd, his feit destitute of naturall myght hyng down, hys legges cleuyd to his thyis, part of his fyngerys returnyd to the hande, restynge alwey uppon two lytyll stolys, the quantite of his body, to hym onerous, he drew aftir hym. . . .” For thirty winters Wolmer remained in this sad condition, until at length he was borne by his friends in a basket to the newly-founded hospital of St. Bartholomew, where his cure was wrought by a miracle as he lay extended before the altar in the church:— “. . . and by and by euery crokidness of his body a litill & litill losid, he strecchid un to grownde his membris & so anoon auawntynge hym self up warde, all his membris yn naturale ordir was disposid. . . .” The scene of this incident was, presumably, that noble building which we still see (Fig. 11), and which was then [p095] fresh from the hand of the Norman architect and masons. Aldwyn, a carpenter from Dunwich, once occupied a place in St. Bartholomew’s. His limbs were as twisted and useless as those of Wolmer; his sinews being contracted, he could use neither hand nor foot. Brought by sea to London, the cripple was “put yn the hospitall of pore men,” where awhile he was sustained. Bit by bit he regained power in his hands, and when discharged was able to exercise his craft once more. Again the veil of centuries is lifted and we see the founder himself personally interested in the patients. A woman was brought into the hospital whose tongue was so terribly swollen that she could not close her mouth. Rahere offered to God and to his patron prayer on her behalf and then applied his remedy:— “And he reuolvynge his relikys that he hadde of the Crosse, he depid them yn water & wysshe the tonge of the pacient ther with, & with the tree of lyif, that ys with the same signe of the crosse, paynted the tokyn of the crosse upon the same tonge. And yn the same howre all the swellynge wente his way, & the woman gladde & hole went home to here owne.”