28. _Lethargy_ (Gen. ii. 21; 1 Sam. xxvi. 12). 29. _Paralysis_, palsy

(Matt. iv. 24; Acts iii. 2, etc.). 30. _Epilepsy_, the so-called “possession of devils” (Matt. iv. 24, etc.). 31. _Melancholia_, madness (Deut. xxviii. 28, etc.). 32. _Nervous exhaustion_ (1 Tim. v. 23). 33. _Miscarriage_ (Exod. xxi. 22). 34. “_Boils and blains_,” erysipelatous (Exod. ix. 9). 35. _Gangrene and mortification_ (2 Tim. ii. 17). 36. _Poisoning by arrows_ (Job vi. 4). _Poisoning from snake-bite_ (Deut. xxxii. 24). 37. _Scorpions and centipedes_ (Rev. ix. 5, 10). 38. _Old age_, as described in Eccles. xii. I am inclined to add to this list _Syphilis_, which seems to me to be clearly indicated by several verses in Proverbs xii., in the warnings against the strange woman, _e.g._ verses 22, 23, 26, and 27. The law forbade a Levite who was blind to act as a physician. Anatomy and pathology were not understood, as it was considered pollution even to touch the dead. The surgical instruments of the Bible are the sharp stone or flint knives with which circumcision was performed, and the awl with which a servant’s ear was bored by his master (Exod. iv. 25; Josh. v. 2; Exod. xxi. 6). Roller bandages are referred to for fractures (Ezek. xxx. 21). Job used a scraper when he was smitten with boils (Job ii. 8). The materia medica of the Bible is meagre. A poultice of figs—a favourite remedy in ancient times—is ordered in 2 Kings xx. 7. Fish galls (Tobit xi. 4-13) and fasting saliva are used (Mark viii. 23). The only regular prescription mentioned is that in Exodus xxx. 23-25. Midwives were regularly employed to assist Hebrew mothers. The “bearing stool” was employed. There is a very beautiful figurative description of the disease of old age or senile decay given by Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes:— “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, and the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; also _when_ they shall be afraid of _that which is_ high, and fears _shall be_ in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.” Dr. Mead, in his treatise on the diseases of old age,[188] thus explains the curious figurative phrases. By the darkening of the sun, moon, and stars, he says we are to understand the obscuration of the mental faculties, which is so common in advanced life. The clouds returning after rain symbolise the cares and troubles which oppress the aged; especially when the vigour of the mind is lessened, so that they cannot cast them off. From the mind we pass to the body: “the keepers of the house shall tremble,” etc. That is to say, the limbs which support the body grow feeble and relaxed, and are incapable of defending us against injuries. The grinders are the molar teeth. The failing sight is compared to the darkness which meets those who look out of the windows. By diminished appetite the mouth, which is the door of the body, is less frequently opened than in youth. The sound of the grinding of the teeth is low, because old people have, in the absence of them, to eat with their gums. The rising up at the voice of the bird signifies the short and interrupted sleep of the aged. By the daughters of music we are to understand the ears, which no longer administer to our pleasure in conveying harmonious sounds. The sense of feeling is diminished, and the aged are fearful of stumbling in the way. The early flowers of spring shall flourish in vain. The phrase, the grasshopper shall become a burden, according to Dr. Mead, is the modest Hebrew mode of describing the effects of scrotal rupture. He says the grasshopper is made up chiefly of belly, and when full of eggs bears some resemblance to a scrotum smitten by a rupture. “Desire shall be lost” is like Ovid’s _Turpe senilis amor_, and does not refer to appetite for food. The loosened silver cord is the vertebral column; the medulla oblongata is of a silver or whitish colour. The golden bowl expresses the dignity of the head, from which in old age come defluxions to the nose, eyes, and mouth. Incontinence of urine is a common trouble of the aged, well expressed by the figure of the pitcher broken at the fountain; and the wheel at the cistern, to those who knew nothing of the circulation of the blood, fairly describes the failing heart, no longer capable of propelling the stream of life through the vessels. Referring to the words, “The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night” (Psalm cxxi. 6), Captain Burton says[189] that he has seen a hale and hearty Arab, after sitting an hour in the moonlight, look like a man fresh from a sick-bed; and he knew an Englishman in India whose face was temporarily paralysed by sleeping with it exposed to the moon. The captivity at Babylon brought the Jews into contact with a nobler and very high civilization. In many ways there is no doubt that Jewish thought was greatly developed and enlarged by association with the peoples of Babylonia and Assyria. What precise influences the Jews became subject to in this captivity we have not the means to determine; but the fact that the Greek physician Democedes visited the court of Darius, proves that Eastern lands had in some measure fallen under the influence of Greek thought, about the time of Ezra. The Book of Ecclesiasticus is supposed to belong to the period of the Ptolemies, and in that work we find practitioners of medicine held in high esteem. “Honour a physician with the honour due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him; for the Lord hath created him.... The skill of the physician shall lift up his head; and in the sight of great men he shall be in admiration. The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth; and he that is wise will not abhor them.... Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him; let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him.”[190] A very interesting but mysterious sect of the Jews was the ESSENES (B.C. 150). Our knowledge of this ancient community is chiefly derived from Josephus,[191] who says that they studied the ancient writers principally with regard to those things useful to the body and the soul, that they thus acquired knowledge of remedies for diseases, and learned the virtues of plants, stones, and metals. Another name for the Essenes was the Therapeutists, or the Healers.[192] They lived somewhat after the fashion of monks, and had a novitiate of three years. Some of their principles and rules suggest a connection with Pythagorism and Zoroastrianism. De Quincey finds in Essenism a saintly scheme of Ethics, a “Christianity before Christ, and consequently without Christ.”[193] Recent scholarship, says Professor Masson, will not accept his conclusions concerning this remarkable secret society.[194] The surgery of the Talmud includes a knowledge of dislocations of the thigh, contusions of the head, perforation of the lungs and other organs, injuries of the spinal cord and trachea, and fractures of the ribs. Polypus of the nose was considered to be a punishment for past sins. In sciatica the patient is advised to rub the hip sixty times with meat-broth. Bleeding was performed by mechanics or barbers. The pathology of the Talmud ascribes diseases to a constitutional vice, to evil influences acting on the body from without, or to the effect of magic. Jaundice is recognised as arising from retention of the bile, dropsy from suppression of the urine. The Talmudists divided dropsy into anasarca, ascites, and tympanites. Rupture and atrophy of the kidneys were held to be always fatal. Hydatids of the liver were more favourably considered. Suppuration of the spinal cord, induration of the lungs, etc., are incurable. Dr. Baas[195] says that these are “views which may have been based on the dissection of [dead] animals, and may be considered the germs of pathological anatomy.” Some critical symptoms are sweating, sneezing, defecation, and dreams, which promise a favourable termination of the disease. Natural remedies, both external and internal, were employed. Magic was also Talmudic. Dispensations were given by the Rabbis to permit sick persons to eat prohibited food. Onions were prescribed for worms; wine and pepper for stomach disorders; goat’s milk for difficulty of breathing; emetics in nausea; a mixture of gum and alum for menorrhagia (not a bad prescription); a dog’s liver was ordered for the bite of a mad dog. Many drugs, such as assafœtida, are evidently adopted from Greek medicine. The dissection of the bodies of animals provided the Talmudists with their anatomy. It is, however, recorded that Rabbi Ishmael, at the close of the first century, made a skeleton by boiling of the body of a prostitute. We find that dissection in the interests of science was permitted by the Talmud. The Rabbis counted 252 bones in the human skeleton. It was known that the spinal cord emerges from the foramen magnum, and terminates in the cauda equina. The anatomy of the uterus was well understood. A very curious point in their anatomy was the assumption of the existence of a fabulous bone, called “Luz,” which they held to be the nucleus of the resurrection of the body.[196] (The Arabians call this bone “Aldabaran.”) They discovered that the removal of the spleen is not necessarily fatal. According to the Talmudists, the elementary bodies are earth, air, fire, and water. Pregnancy, they held, lasts 270 to 273 days (280 days is the modern calculation), and that it cannot be determined before the fourth month. Alexandrian philosophic thought received a new impulse in consequence of the conciliatory policy which the Ptolemies pursued towards the Jews. Under Soter they were encouraged to settle in Alexandria, and soon their numbers became very great. Egypt at one time contained altogether some 200,000 Jews. Alexandria became for several centuries the centre of Jewish thought and learning. But the learning of the Rabbis became a shallow pedantry in the course of time, and their faith in the inspiration of their scriptures ultimately degenerated into a Cabalism, which in its turn lent itself to jugglery and magic-mongering, and infected the medicine of the Roman world, just as the healing art had emancipated itself from superstition, theurgy, and philosophical sophistries. Kingsley has told us how this Jewish magic arose.[197] “If each word [of the Scriptures] had a mysterious value, why not each letter? And how could they set limits to that mysterious value? Might not these words, even rearrangements of the letters of them, be useful in protecting them against the sorceries of the heathen, in driving away these evil spirits, or evoking those good spirits who, though seldom mentioned in their early records, had, after their return from Babylon, begun to form an important part of their unseen world?” Jewish Cabalism formed itself into a system at Alexandria. It was there, as Kingsley goes on to say, that the Jews learnt to become the magic-mongers which Claudius had to expel from Rome as pests to rational and moral society. According to the Jewish doctors, three angels preside over the art of medicine. Their names, according to Rabbi Elias, are Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sanmangelof.[198] In the Middle Ages the Jews rendered the greatest services to the healing art, and had a large share in the scientific work connected with the Arab domination in Spain. The great names of MOSES MAIMONIDES and IBN EZRA attest the dignity of Jewish intellectual life in the Dark Ages. The Golden Age of the modern Jews, as Milman[199] designates it, begins with the Caliphs and ends with Maimonides. The Hebrew literature was eminently acceptable to the kindred taste of the Saracens, and the sympathy between Arab and Jewish practitioners and students of medicine was fraught with the greatest benefit to the healing art. The Golden Age of the Jews was at its height in the time of Charlemagne, when kings could not write their names. Their intelligence and education fitted them to become the physicians and the ministers of nobles and monarchs. During the reign of Louis the Debonnaire the Jews were all-powerful at his court. His confidential adviser was the Jewish physician Zedekiah, who was a profound adept in magic. In an age when monkish historians could relate “with awe-struck sincerity,” as Milman describes it,[200] the tales of his swallowing a cartload of hay, horses and all, it is not difficult to understand that an acquaintance with the best knowledge of his time would account for the estimation in which a man of science was held. Maimonides lived at the court of the Sultan of Egypt as the royal physician, in the highest estimation. The Phœnicians were devoted to phallic-worship. The instrument of procreative power was the chief symbol of their religion. Astarte was their great goddess. Baal-Zebub, the Beelzebub of the Bible, was their god of medicine, and the arbiter of health and disease. The Cabiri, or Corybantes, considered by some authorities to be identical with the Titans, by others with the sons of Noah, were considered as the discoverers of the properties of the medicinal herbs, and the teachers of the art of healing to mortals.[201]