Though their work was entirely unscientific, experience and common sense, or perhaps mere luck, often gave to their treatment an appearance of success which was denied to their more learned rivals. Thus Adam Martindale describing his illness says that it was “a vehement fermentation in my body ... ugly dry scurfe, eating deep and spreading broad. Some skilfull men, or so esteemed, being consulted and differing much in their opinions, we were left to these three bad choices ... in this greate straite God sent us in much mercie a poore woman, who by a salve made of nothing but Celandine and a little of the Mosse of an ashe root, shred and boyled in May-butter, tooke it cleare away in a short time, and though after a space there was some new breakings out, yet these being annointed with the same salve ... were absolutely cleared away.”[595] Footnote 595: _Martindale (Adam), Life of_, p. 21. 1632. The general standard of efficiency among the men who professed medicine and surgery was very low, the chief work of the ordinary country practitioner being the letting of blood, and the wise woman of the village may easily have been his superior in other forms of treatment. Sir Ralph Verney, writing to his wife advises her to “give the child no phisick but such as midwives and old women, with the doctors approbation, doe prescribe; for assure yourselfe they by experience know better than any phisition how to treate such infants.”[596] Of Hobbes it was said that he took little physick and preferred “an experienced old woman” to the “most learned and inexperienced physician.”[597] Footnote 596: _Verney Family_, Vol. 2, p. 270. 1647. Footnote 597: _Dictionary of National Biography._ Dr. Turbeville, a noted oculist in the West Country, was sent for to cure the Princess of Denmark, who had a dangerous inflammation of the eyes. On his return he is reported to have said that “he expected to learn something of these Court doctors, but, to his amazement he found them only spies upon his practice, and wholly ignorant as to the lady’s case; nay, farther, he knew several midwives and old women, whose advice he would rather follow than theirs.”[598] He died at Sarum in 1696, and his sister, Mrs. Mary Turbeville, practised afterwards in London “with good reputation and success. She has all her brother’s receipts, and having seen his practice, during many years, knows how to use them. For my part, I have so good an opinion of her skill that should I again be afflicted with sore eyes, which God forbid! I would rely upon her advice rather than upon any pretenders or professors in London or elsewhere.”[599] Footnote 598: Hoare, Sir R. C., _History of Modern Wilts_, Vol. VI., p. 465. Footnote 599: Hoare, Sir R. C., _History of Modern Wilts_, Vol. VI., p. 467.