suit his own purposes, improve on these cases, and could do it with such address, that it required more than ordinary knowledge to detect him, and it must be confessed that this gift has certainly descended to some of his modern successors.
It is interesting to find Chaucer here saying, "Fro the tyme of Kyng Will"; if he spoke as a lawyer, it would seem to suggest that the original time of prescription was the reign of William I, and not Richard I, and the period of the Conquest would be a very natural time from which to date prescription.
We next come to the Doctour of Physik, the type of the medical practitioner of those days. It would seem that in the 14th century the term " doctor," about which title there has been so much discussion in the profession, was becoming recognized by the public as the peculiar appanage of the faculty, for only on that ground would it be intelligible why the poet should have dubbed his representative medical practitioner a "Doctour of Physik." He was evidently, too, a general practitioner, for Chaucer says : — "In all the world ne was ther non him lyk, To speke of physik, and of surgeryr."' This was before there were chartered colleges of physicians or surgeons, when, probably, the distinction between the two branches began to grow up. It is interesting to note, too, that at this period the profes sional following of the healing art was divorced from ecclesiastical leading strings, for Chaucer takes care to say : "Hisstudie was but littel on the Bible," indeed, the tenor of this would seem to have been far more in the other direction, and to have em braced practices over and over again con demned by the church and strictly forbid den : — "He kept his pacient wonclurley wel. In houres by his magik naturel. Again : — "Wel coude he fortune the ascendant Of his ymages for his pacient."
This last line is terribly suggestive of the black art, for which the church in those days was never tired of burning pro salute animce. In passing, I might point out that this doctor did not send out his own medi cines, and that the original apothecary occu pied exactly the position of the modern druggist, for the "Doctour of Physik"
had : — "his apotecaries To send him drugges, and his letuaries. For eche of them made other for to wynne."
The last line suggests there was a very good business understanding between the medical practitioner and the druggist of those days. Then, as now too, the medical practitioner was more ostentatious in his dress than the lawyer: — "In sangwin and in pers he clad was all, Lined with taffata and with sendal." The poet also implies that he looked more keenly after his fees than the latter: — For gold in physik is a cordial : Therefor he lovede gold in special."
As relating to a medieval practitioner the satire in this is very fine. But apart from the general review of Chaucer's dealing with the medical profes sion of his time, when we come to the tale told by the " Doctour of Physik " we find some very interesting references to our early legal institutions, which in my opinion tend to show, that even at this early period the court of chancery, in spite of the outcry against it, was firmly established as one of the recognized tribunals of the day. The story told by the doctor is that of Virginius, so well known to the public through the fine ballad of Macaulay, and the chief point of interest to lawyers is the manner in which Chaucer describes the office of Appius, the chief of the Roman Decemviri. To be un derstood by his readers he obviously re quired to assimilate the function of Appius to an office familiar to the public of his day. A question of some interest then arises : why did the poet cause Claudius, in his endeavor
