Crazy Cures: I'm Glad I Didn't Tear My Tendon 600 Years Ago

A Medieval Remedy for Torn Tendons in the 1400s

“For senewes þat beþ nyʒ hewen a two. Tak grete wormes of þe erthe whyles þey engendreþ and lyggeþ yloke to geder and stamp hem and ley hem þer to”

Or, in modern English: “For tendons that are nearly torn in two: take large earthworms whilst they are copulating and lie close together. Crush them and lay them to the tendons”

Shagging Worms: what were they thinking?

This remedy requires the reader to locate a very specific ingredient: he or she must find mating earthworms engaged at that very instant in the act of copulation. Many medieval remedies require hyper-specific ingredients like this and that was probably part of the way that the texts convinced readers and potential patients that specialist expertise lay behind the recommended cure: the lack of explanation for the choice of ingredients may have made readers feel as though the cure had been shaped by expert knowledge that exceeded their own understanding and was, as a result, worth trusting. 

Earthworn Karma Sutra

The lack of explanation for the specific ingredient chosen may also have encouraged medieval readers to consider the cure as a kind of natural magic. Natural magic – which developed as a concept from the thirteenth century onwards –  did not depend upon demons. Instead, some substances were believed to possess natural hidden powers that were not immediately perceptible to the senses or explainable through the physical composition of the substance in question.

Often, the magic was of a ‘sympathetic’ kind, whereby the properties of one substance were transferred to another when ingested or applied to the body. This might explain the logic of the above earthworm cure: worms can regrow lost body parts, making them the ideal remedy for a tendon in need of regrowth and repair.

Yet…

This might all seem very far-fetched and it is unlikely that the above cure – prepared in that particular way – had any direct healing effects on the patient. That said, earthworms have long been used as healing ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine and recent scientific research has achieved new insights into how the biological structures of worms’ bodies enable them to regrow body parts. Some studies have suggested that using earthworms in the right way can help heal wounds in mouse skin and deliver other anti-inflammatory benefits. There is some possibility that further understanding of earthworm biology might help develop more human medical treatments but that is still a long way off... and there is no indication that using mating worms would help!

By Dr Hannah Bower, a leading medieval literature specialist at the University of Cambridge

Man tears tendon just as photographer passes by