He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from falling-sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death." Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of the Church, infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches.

Nothing, on the whole, stood more constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy.

It would be expecting too much from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived both wealth and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their care, or lay dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics, should favour the development of any science which undermined their interests.( 301) (301) See Fort's Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, pp.

211-213; also the Handbooks of Murray and Baedeker for North Germany, and various histories of medicine passim; also Collin de Plancy and scores of others.

For the discovery that the relics of St.Rosaria at Palermo are simply the bones of a goat, see Gordon, Life of Buckland, pp.