IT was the year 1643 and a famous friar in France was taken with a most grievous pain in his posterior.

The King's physician was sent for and set about a course of treatment enough to give present day sufferers nightmares for life.

It started with bleeding his left arm and then applying what was called a pain assuaging fomentation, made with crumbs of bread, to the back passage.

Not unreasonably the patient found it hard to endure the pain from such a sensitive part of his abdomen afflicted by swelling of haemorrhoids, most likely a tumour.

But worse was to come. He was bled again, leeches were applied and four ounces of blood taken away. Then he was forced to drink a strange laxative made from a variety of boiled lettuce, mallow, liquorice, borage and syrup of violet.

Sadly the pain and swelling continued and the physician prescribed fumigation. A handful of Great Houseleek was boiled in white wine under a chair which had holes in the seat.

The friar sat in the chair bare-bottomed and the affected part was fumigated by the steam coming through the holes. It did not seem to work too well because he had to suffer more treatment with ointment made from roses and crude mercury, and another session of fumigation using vinegar in which burning flints had been quenched.

The chair was called the 'groaning' chair!.

Whether the friar survived is uncertain, but the story is told in a rare book that has come to light in Herefordshire.

For many years it stood on the shelf in the library of the late Dr Douglas Chandler of Kingstone, who willed it to his son Tim, on his death more than two years ago.

The book is a medical volume called The Practice of Phyfick, written in old English, translated from Latin and printed in London in 1661.

Its authors were Lazarus Riverius, counsellor and physician to King Henry 1V of France, Nicholas Culpeper, physician and astrologer, and Abadiah Cole, a doctor of physic.

The book covers more than 500 pages of famous and rare cures from nearly 400 years ago and shows that earache, toothache, asthma, tumours and almost every ailment we know today were prevalent then.

The difference is how we deal with them. Today we have the NHS, doctors, dentists anaesthetics, antibiotics, pain relief, x-rays, scanners, chemists and dispensaries and natural health shops round almost every corner.

Centuries ago people had none of these, relying on their own diagnosis, old wives' remedies, basic surgery, great pain and suffering and early death.

How Dr Chandler came in possession of The Practice of Phyfick is not known but it is fitting that it should be passed on to his son, Tim, and his wife Sheila.

Both have wide experience of medical problems, Tim has been a local paramedic for 20 years and Sheila a nurse at Hereford hospitals for more than 30 years.

Now both retired, they have found the book fascinating but they are only able to read and absorb in small doses the symptoms of age old illnesses and their hopeful remedies.

For toothache 400 years ago the best pain relief, according to the book, was oil of box wood.

Sometimes more drastic action was needed and a tooth removed. The surgeon does not describe how, but warned that it should not be pulled violently in one go 'left the brain be too fhaken and the jaw bone broken; from whence came a great flux of blood, a fever and fometimes death'.

There is hardly an illness or health problem we know today that is not mentioned in the book. There is a cure, or not, recommended for all of them.

The Practice of Phyfick is an invaluable treasure, a volume of work chronicling the illnesses and cures of people in the late 16th and early 17th century.

It is hardly likely the late Dr Chandler had need to peruse the pages but his family will have years of interest in learning how our forebears dealt with their medical and health problems so long ago.

But the book is not good bedtime reading. It has to be handled carefully, its yellowing pages smell of age and the reader needs to concentrate to understand the message.

For example: "The figns of Worms in the Guts are divers; not al in al people alike. The ufual and moft ordinary figns are, A frinking breath and ftools like Cow dung, or Potters Earth diffolved."

Or: "A Boy three yeares old, had a fit of the falling-ficknefs. From which he was freed with the fmoak of Tobacco; which a fervant drew out of a pipe, and blew into the open mouth of the boy; the boy fel a vomiting, and the fit ceafed."