For the story of those unwillingly cured, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof.
T.F.Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp.

52, 182.
Very important also throughout the Middle Ages were the medical virtues attributed to saliva.

The use of this remedy had early Oriental sanction.

It is clearly found in Egypt.

Pliny devotes a considerable part of one of his chapters to it; Galen approved it; Vespasian, when he visited Alexandria, is said to have cured a blind man by applying saliva to his eves; but the great example impressed most forcibly upon the medieval mind was the use of it ascribed in the fourth Gospel to Jesus himself: thence it came not only into Church ceremonial, but largely into medical practice.( 313) (313) As to the use of saliva in medicine, see Story, Castle of St.
Angelo, and Other Essays, London, 1877, pp.