at
least, in her book. She discusses the redness of the blood as a sign of
health, the characteristics of various excrementitious material as signs
of disease, the degrees of fever, and the changes in the pulse. Of
course, it was changes in the humors of the body that constituted the
main causes for disease in her opinion, but it is well to remind
ourselves that our frequent discussion of auto-intoxication in recent
years is a distinct return to this.

Some of Hildegarde's anticipations of modern ideas are, indeed,
surprising enough. For instance, in talking about the stars and
describing their course through the firmament, she makes use of a
comparison that is rather startling. She says: "Just as the blood moves
in the veins which causes them to vibrate and pulsate, so the stars
move in the firmament and send out sparks as it were of light like the
vibrations of the veins." This is, of course, not an anticipation of the
discovery of the circulation of the blood, but it shows how close were
men's ideas to some such thought five centuries before Harvey's
discovery. For Hildegarde the brain was the regulator of all the vital
qualities, the centre of life. She connects the nerves in their passage
from the brain and the spinal cord through the body with manifestations
of life. She has a series of chapters with regard to psychology normal
and morbid. She talks about frenzy, insanity, despair, dread, obsession,
anger, idiocy, and innocency. She says very strongly in one place that
"when headache and migraine and vertigo attack a patient simultaneously
they render a man foolish and upset his reason. This makes many people
think that he is possessed of a demon, but that is not true." These are
the exact words of the saint as quoted in Mlle. Lipinska's thesis.

It is no wonder that Mlle. Lipinska thinks St. Hildegarde the most
important medical writer of her time. Reuss, the editor of the edition
of Hildegarde published in Migne's "Patrology," says: "Among all the
saintly religious who have practised medicine or written about it in the
Middle Ages, the most important is without any doubt St. Hildegarde...."
With regard to her book he says: "All those who wish to write the
history of the medical and natural sciences must read this work in which
this religious woman, evidently well grounded in all that was known at
that time in the secrets of nature, discusses and examines carefully
all the knowledge of the time." He adds, "It i