CHAPTER II.

JEWISH MEDICINE. The Jews indebted to Egypt for their Learning.—The only Ancient People who discarded Demonology.—They had no Magic of their own.—Phylacteries.—Circumcision.—Sanitary Laws.—Diseases in the Bible.—The Essenes.—Surgery in the Talmud.—Alexandrian Philosophy.—Jewish Services to Mediæval Medicine.—The Phœnicians. That division of the Hebrew peoples which afterwards developed into Israel, left its home in the extreme south of Palestine some fifteen centuries before the Christian era to occupy the pasture lands of Goshen, in the territory of the Pharaohs, where they continued to retain their nomadic habits, their ancient language and patriarchal institutions. In process of time, however, the Egyptian sovereigns began to deal severely with their self-invited guests; they were forced to labour on the public works of Goshen; and though bitterly resenting this attempt to destroy their identity and reduce them to mere slavery, the proud and noble race was powerless to resist, and continued to labour on in despair until a deliverer arose in Moses, who led them out of Egypt to the land of Palestine which they had originally left. Moses was a pupil of the Egyptian priests, versed in all their wisdom, and imbued with the loftiest sentiments of the religion of Egypt. We shall expect to find in the medicine of the Jews abundant traces of their long residence in the land of the Pharaohs. Our sources for the history of the healing art and the theory of disease which obtained with the people of Israel are two—the Bible and the Talmud. Therein we shall see the influences, both external and internal, which made Jewish medicine what it was; and we shall be astonished, on comparing the theory of disease with that of all the other nations and peoples of the earth, to find that it stands by itself, is absolutely unique in its loftiness of idea, its absolute freedom from the absurd and degrading superstitions of the great and civilized nations amongst which they dwelt or by which they were surrounded. When we reflect on the religions of Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldæa, and compare their many gods with the one God of the Jews, their demonology, sorcery, and witchcraft with the pure and elevated faith of these nomads of the Sinaitic Peninsula, and remember that in all the earth at that time there was no other nation which had formulated such a pure theism, no other people which had broken away from the degrading and corrupting demonology which possessed the whole earth, we are compelled to recognise in God’s ancient people the Jews the evidence of a teaching totally unlike anything which had preceded it. If the Bible, the Talmud, and the Koran are all three merely specimens of ancient literature, how comes it that the Bible is so infinitely superior, not only in its noble monotheism, but in its remarkable freedom from so many of the superstitions which, as we have seen, were everywhere intermixed with the noblest religious systems and the most advanced civilizations? Magic in the Bible is everywhere passed by with contempt. Whatever may be the precise date of the Psalms, they must have been written when all nations were sunk in the grossest superstition, and had resort to magical practices on the slightest pretence; yet there is a total absence of all superstition in the Psalms. Granting that the Book of Ecclesiastes is a mere piece of cynical philosophy, it contains no evidence of superstitious belief. The more ancient is a literature, the greater is the certainty that it will contain some reference to superstitious usages; yet how gloriously the oldest books of the Bible shine in their freedom from contamination with the demon-worship and conjuring arts of the nations surrounding the children of Israel. As the author of the learned article on “Medicine” in Smith’s _Dictionary of the Bible_ says: “But if we admit Egyptian learning as an ingredient, we should also notice how far exalted above it is the standard of the whole Jewish legislative fabric, in its exemption from the blemishes of sorcery and juggling pretences. The priest, who had to pronounce on the cure, used no means to advance it, and the whole regulations prescribed exclude the notion of trafficking in popular superstition. We have no occult practices reserved in the hands of the sacred caste. It is God alone who doeth great things—working by the wand of Moses or the brazen serpent; but the very mention of such instruments is such as to expel all pretence of mysterious virtues in the things themselves.” It is always God alone who is the healer: “I am the Lord that healeth thee” (Exod. xv. 26); “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed” (Jer. xvii. 14); “For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the Lord” (Jer. xxx. 17); “Who healeth all thy diseases” (Ps. ciii. 3); “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” (Ps. cxlvii. 3); “The Lord bindeth up the breach of His people, and healeth the stroke of their wound” (Isa. xxx. 26). The priestly caste had no monopoly of the healing art; it might be practised by any one who was competent to afford medical aid. Physicians are mentioned in several passages. Although the Hebrews had no magic of their own, and notwithstanding the stern severity with which it was prohibited in their law, there would naturally be many who transgressed their law and imported the superstitious practices from the surrounding peoples. The teraphim of Laban which were stolen by Rachel[168] is the earliest example in the Bible of magical instruments. It seems that these objects were a kind of idols in the shape of a human figure; their use was condemned by the prophets, but they were for ages used in popular worship, both domestic and public. Hosea says:[169] “The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and _without_ teraphim.” In this passage the teraphim and ephod are classed with the sacrifice, as though equally essential for worship. Some students think that the teraphim were the Kabeiri gods;[170] whatever they were, they were worshipped or used superstitiously by Micah, by the Danites, and others.[171] They were used magically for the purpose of obtaining oracular answers, and were associated with the practice of divination.[172] The phylacteries of the Jews were charms or amulets in writing. They were believed to avert all evils, but were especially useful in driving away demons. They put faith, also, in precious stones. To this day one may see at the door of every Jewish house the mezûza—a scrap of sacred writing—affixed diagonally on the right doorpost, enclosed in a metal case. The texts contained are inscribed on parchment, and the words are from Deuteronomy vi. 4-9; xi. 13-21. In the Targum on Canticles viii. 3, we learn that the phylactery and mezûza were supposed to keep off hurtful demons. This is merely the corruption of a perfectly innocent idea; it is an example of the way in which harmless things become degraded to superstitious uses. The scapular of little squares of brown cloth worn by Catholics originally meant no more than the investiture, in a secret and unassuming manner, with the habit of the Carmelite order, and allowed pious persons living “in the world” to feel that they were affiliated to a famous and saintly community. When the Catholic wore it, he knew that he assumed the badge of the Blessed Virgin; there was no more in it than that. Amongst the ignorant and superstitious it is now commonly believed that the wearer is protected from death by fire and drowning, and that Our Lady will liberate him from purgatory on the first Saturday after his arrival there. “To the mind of the Israelite,” says Mr. Tylor, “death and pestilence took the personal form of the destroying angel who smote the doomed.”[173] God is plainly declared, in Exodus xv. 26, to send diseases upon men as a punishment for the breach of His commandments, and this has been adduced to show that the Jews traced their maladies to the anger of an offended Deity; and thus it has been argued that their etiology of disease was not higher than that of the other nations. But this argument is unfair. The Mosaic law was to a great extent a sanitary code, and even in the light of modern science we are compelled to admire the wisdom of the laws which have for so many centuries made the Jews the healthiest and most macrobiotic of peoples. The rite of circumcision was not peculiar to the Jews; and just as baptism was an initiatory rite borrowed from another religion, yet made distinctive of Christianity, so circumcision has come to be considered a peculiarly Jewish practice. It may have been with the Israelites a protest against the phallus worship which is of such remote antiquity, and which was the foundation of the myth of Osiris. Wunderbar[174] asserts that it distinctly contributed to increase the fruitfulness of the race and to check inordinate desires in the individual. There are excellent surgical reasons for both these suppositions, in addition to which we may add that it contributed to cleanliness and prevented irritation. Wunderbar, moreover, seems to have established his statement that after circumcision there is less probability of the absorption of syphilitic virus, and he has instanced the fact that such specific disease is less frequent with Jewish than with Christian populations.[175] “Circumcision,” says Pickering, speaking of the Polynesian practice, “was now explained; and various other customs, which had previously appeared unaccountable, were found to rest on physical causes, having been extended abroad by the process of imitation.”[176] The same writer states that the practice is “common to the ancient inhabitants of the Thebaid, and also to the modern Abyssinians and their neighbours in the South.”[177] Ewald[178] says that circumcision was practised by various Arabian tribes, in Africa, amongst Ethiopic Christians and the negroes of the Congo. It was also practised on girls by Lydian, Arabian, and African tribes, as Philo and Strabo inform us. Ewald considers it originated as an offering of one’s own flesh and blood in sacrifice to God, and may have been considered as a substitute for the whole body of a human being. Circumcision is practised amongst Australian savages on the Murray River, as also another incredible ceremonial, as Lubbock terms it.[179] Castration is hinted at in Matthew xix. 12 as an operation well understood. In hot climates extra precautions for cleanliness have to be adopted beyond those which would amply suffice in northern lands. Captain Burton says:[180]— However much the bath may be used, the body-pile and hair of the armpits, etc., if submitted to a microscope, will show more or less sordes adherent. The axilla hair is plucked, because if shaved the growing pile causes itching, and the depilatories are held to be deleterious. Sometimes Syrian incense or fir-gum, imported from Scio, is melted and allowed to cool in the form of a pledget. This is passed over the face, and all the down adhering to it is pulled up by the roots. He adds that many Anglo-Indians adopt the same precautions. Ewald, referring to the laws concerning women, says:[181] “The monthly period of the woman brought with it the second grade of uncleanness, which lasted the space of seven days, but without rendering necessary the use of specially prepared water. Everything on which the woman sat or lay during this time, and every one who touched such things or her, incurred the uncleanness of the first grade.” We find the demon-theory of disease in force in the time of Josephus. He says:[182]— “Now within this place there grew a sort of rue, that deserves our wonder on account of its largeness, for it was no way inferior to any fig-tree whatsoever, either in height or in thickness; and the report is that it had lasted ever since the time of Herod, and would probably have lasted much longer had it not been cut down by those Jews who took possession of the place afterward; but still in that valley which encompasses the city on the north side, there is a certain place called Baaras, which produces a root of the same name with itself; its colour is like to that of flame, and towards evening it sends out a certain ray like lightning; it is not easily taken by such as would do it, but recedes from their hands; nor will yield itself to be taken quietly, until either οὖρον γυναικὸς ἢ τὸ ἔμμηνον αἵμα be poured upon it; nay, even then it is certain death to those that touch it, unless any one take and hang the root itself down from his hand, and so carry it away. It may also be taken another way, without danger, which is this: they dig a trench quite round about it, till the hidden part of the root be very small; they then tie a dog to it, and when the dog tries hard to follow him that tied him, this root is easily plucked up, but the dog dies immediately, as if it were instead of the man that would take the plant away; nor after this need any one be afraid of taking it into their hands. Yet, after all this pains in getting, it is only valuable on account of one virtue it hath—that if it be only brought to sick persons, it quickly drives away those called Demons, which are no other than the spirits of the wicked, that enter into men that are alive and kill them, unless they can obtain some help against them.” If we may consider Josephus as a fair type of the learned and liberally educated men of his time, we are compelled to admit that the theory of disease held by the Hebrews of the period was not much, if at all, in advance of the rest of the world. It was undoubtedly largely the demoniacal theory of sickness. In the _Antiquities of the Jews_[183] Josephus, in his description of the sagacity and wisdom of Solomon, says: “God also enabled him to learn the skill that expels demons, which is a science useful and sanative to men. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated. And he left behind him the manner of using exorcisms, by which they drive away demons so that they never return; and this method of cure is of great force unto this day; for I have seen a certain man of my own country, whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal.” He goes on to describe the process of extracting the demon from the sick man through his nostrils. So again, in telling the story of Saul’s possession by the evil spirit from the Lord, he says:[184] “The physicians could find no other remedy but this—that if any person could charm those passions by singing and playing upon the harp, they advised them to inquire for such a one.” He seems to imply that David cured Saul by an incantation; and Spanheim, commenting upon the story, says that the Greeks had such singers of hymns, and that usually children or youths were picked out for that service, and that they were called singers to the harp.[185] Whether David merely influenced Saul in the natural and touching way so beautifully described by Robert Browning in his poem “Saul,” we must bear in mind that an “incantation” was precisely of the character of the Bible story, and that the demon theory of Saul’s malady is plainly stated.[186] Herzog[187] enumerates the following as the diseases of the Bible:—1. _Fever and ague_ (Lev. xxvi. 16). 2. _Dysentery_ (Acts xxviii. 8), with, probably, _prolapsus ani_, as in Jehoram’s case (2 Chron. xxi. 15, 19). 3. _Inflammation of the eyes_, due to heat, night dews, sea breeze, flying sand, injuries, etc. (Lev. xix. 14; Deut. xxvii. 18; Matt. xii. 22, etc.). 4. _Congenital blindness_ (John ix. 1).