While St. Vitus’s Dance stands in this twentieth century as a term perfectly well recognised, a query as to St. Hubert’s Disease would probably puzzle even most doctors in a sort of ‘How much do you know’ medical examination. But time was when it was quite a common synonym for Hydrophobia. The Saint, of course, was converted while in the hunting field, and so became the Patron of Hunters and incidentally of their Hounds. ‘His’ disease, then, was the ailment that occasionally attacks the pack. And this is only one out of plenty of similar instances.

In the Middle Ages ‘radegoundes’ was a recognised and very prevalent disease. It comes over and over again in the literature of the day, a notable instance being a reference in Piers Plowman. A kind of running sore, it owes its popular name to the patron saint of Poitiers, in France, Ste. Radegonde, wife of Clotaire the First. So many cures were effected at her tomb—later sacked by the Huguenots in 1562— that the ailment itself began to be called by the name of the saint. In precisely the same way St. Avertin’s Disease was an ancient name for epilepsy, so many miraculous cures having been wrought at the tomb of this saint, a friend, by the way, of our own St. Thomas of Canterbury, that in old French the word ‘aver-tineux’ figures as meaning epileptics. While on the subject, one might remember that the same malady had two other popular names, ‘St. John’s Evil’ often standing for epilepsy, and ‘St. Mathuron’s Disease’ being one more title sometimes found in the old medical books.