healing assumed in the progress of time the aspect of a science. It assumed such a form, first in Egypt, and at a much more recent period in Greece; but it was not long before those of the former were surpassed in excellence by the physicians of the latter country. That the Egyptians, however, had no little skill in medicine, may be gathered from what is said in the Pentateuch respecting the marks of leprosy. That some of the medical prescriptions should fail of bringing the expected relief is by no means strange, since Pliny himself mentions some which are far from producing the effects he ascribes to them. Physicians are mentioned first in Gen. 1. 2.; Exod. xxi. 19.; Job xiii. 4. Some acquaintance with chirurgical operations is implied in the rite of circumcision. (Gen. xvii. 11-14.) There is ample evidence that the Israelites had some acquaintance with the internal structure of the human system, although it does not appear that dissections of the human body, for medical purposes, were made till as late as the time of Ptolemy. That physicians sometimes undertook to exercise their skill, in removing diseases of an internal nature, is evident from the circumstance of David's playing upon the harp to cure the malady of Saul. (1 Sam. xvi. 16.) The art of healing was committed among the Hebrews, as well as among the Egyptians, to the priests; who, indeed, were obliged, by a law of the state, to take cognisance of leprosies. (Lev. xiii. 1-14. 57.; Deut. xxiv. 8, 9.) Reference is made to physicians who were not priests, and to instances of sickness, disease, healing, &c. in the following passages; viz. 1 Sam. xvi. 16.; 1 Kings i. 2—4.; 2 Kings viii. 29., ix. 15.; Isa. i. 6.; Jer. viii. 22.; Ezek. xxx. 21. The probable reason of king Asa's not seeking help from God, but from the physicians, as mentioned in 2 Chron. xvi. 12., was, that they had not at that period recourse to the simple medicines which nature offered, but to certain superstitious rites and incantations; and this, no doubt, was the ground of the reflection which was cast upon him. About the time of Christ, the Hebrew physicians both made advancements in science, and increased in numbers. It appears from the Talmud 2, that the Hebrew physicians were accustomed to salute the sick by saying, "Arise from your disease." This salutation had a miraculous effect in the mouth of Jesus. (Mark v. 41.) According to the Jerusalem Talmud, a sick man was judged to be in a way of recovery, who began to take his usual food. (Compare Mark v. 43.) The ancients were accustomed to attribute the origin of diseases, particularly of those whose natural causes they did not understand, to the immediate interference of the Deity. Hence they were denominated, by the ancient Greeks, Maoríyes, or the scourges of God, a word which is employed in the New Testament by the physician Luke himself (vii. 21.), and also in Mark v. 29. 34.3

II. Concerning the remedies actually employed by the Jews few particulars are certainly known. Wounds were bound up, after applying oil to them (Ezek. xxx. 21.; Isa. i. 6.), or pouring in a lini

1 Mark v. 26.; Luke iv. 23., v. 31., viii. 43. Josephus, Antiq. Jud. lib. xvii. c. 6. § 5. Schabbath, p. 110. See also Lightfoot's Hora Hebraicæ on Mark v. 41.

Jahn, Archæol. Biblica, by Upham, §§ 105. 184. Pareau, Antiq. Hebr. pp. 164. 166

ment composed of oil and wine (Luke x. 34.), oil being mollifying and healing, while wine would be cleansing and somewhat astringent. Herod was let down into a bath of oil.1 Great use was made of the celebrated balm of Gilead. (Jer. viii. 22., xlvi. 11., li. 8.) The comparison in Prov. iii. 8. is taken from the plasters, oils, and frictions, which, in the East, are still employed on the abdomen and stomach in most maladies: the people in the villages being ignorant of the art of making decoctions and potions, and of the doses proper to be administered, generally make use of external medicines, to which in India they give a decided preference. When Jesus Christ authorised his apostles to heal the sick (Matt. x. 8.), the evangelist Mark relates that they anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them. (vi. 13.) From the expressions in Prov. iii. 18., xi. 30., xiii. 12. and xv. 4., Calmet thinks it probable that the Jews had salutary herbs and plants which they called the tree of life, and which we should now call medicinal herbs and plants, in opposition to such as are poisonous and dangerous, which they call the tree of death.

III. Various diseases are mentioned in the Sacred Writings, as cancers, consumption, dropsy, fevers, lunacy, &c. Concerning a few disorders, the nature of which has exercised the critical acumen of physicians as well as divines, the following observations may be satisfactory to the reader:

1. Of all the maladies mentioned in the Scriptures, the most formidable is the disorder of the skin, termed LEPROSY3, the characteristic symptom of which is patches of smooth laminated scales, of different sizes and of a circular form. This disease was not peculiar to the Israelites, but anciently was endemic in Palestine, as it still is in Egypt and other countries. In the admirable description of the cutaneous affections to which the Israelites were subject after their departure from Egypt, given by Moses in the thirteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, there are three which distinctly belong to the leprosy. All of them are distinguished by the name of nņa (BeHRAT), or "bright spot;" viz.

4

i. The P (BоHaK), which imports brightness but in a subordinate degree, being a dull white spot: it is not contagious, and does not render a person unclean, or make it necessary that he should be confined. Michaelis describes a case of bohak from the traveller Niebuhr, in which the spots were not perceptibly elevated above the skin, and did not change the colour of the hair. The spots in this species of leprosy do not appear on the hands or abdomen, but on the neck and face they gradually spread, and continue sometimes only

Josephus, Bell. Jud. lib. i. c. 33. § 5.

2 Bp. Lowth's Isaiah, vol. ii. p. 10. Roberts's Oriental Illustrations, p. 556.

• This dreadful disorder has its name from the Greek Aerpa, from Aeris a scale; because in this disease the body was often covered with thin white scales, so as to give it the appearance of snow. Hence the hand of Moses is said to have been leprous as snow (Exod. iv. 6.); and Miriam is said to have become leprous, white as snow (Numb. xii. 10.); and Gehazi, when struck judicially with the disease of Naaman, is recorded to have gone out from the presence of Elisha, a leper, as white as snow. (2 Kings v. 27.) Dr. A. Clarke on Lev. xiii. 1.

For this account of the leprosy the author is almost wholly indebted to Dr. Good's Study of Medicine, vol. v. pp. 587-597. 2nd edition.

about two months, though in some cases as long as two years, when they gradually disappear of themselves. This disorder is neither infectious nor hereditary, nor does it occasion any inconvenience.'

ii. Two species called nyy (TSORAT,) that is, venom or malignity, viz. the bright white behrat (Lev. xiii. 38, 39.), and the dark or dusky behrat, spreading in the skin. (Lev. xiii. 3.) Both these are contagious; in other words, render the person affected with it unclean, and exclude him from society.

(1.) In the behrat cecha (the Leprosis Lepriasis nigricans of Dr. Good's nosological system) the natural colour of the hair, which in Egypt and Palestine is black, is not changed, as Moses repeatedly states, nor is there any depression of the dusky spot, while the patches, instead of keeping stationary to their first size, are perpetually enlarging their boundary. The patient labouring under this form of the disease was pronounced unclean by the Hebrew priest, and, consequently, was sentenced to a separation from his family and friends whence there is no doubt of its having proved contagious. Though a much severer malady than the common leprosy, it is far less so than the species described in the ensuing paragraph; and on this account it is dismissed by Moses with a comparatively brief notice.

(2.) The behrat lebena, (Leprosis Lepriasis candida, or leuce of Dr. Good's Nosology,) or bright white leprosy, is by far the most serious and obstinate of all the forms which the disease assumes. The pathognomonic characters, dwelt upon by Moses in deciding it, are "a glossy white and spreading scale upon an elevated base, the elevation depressed in the middle, but without a change of colour, the black hair on the patches, which is the natural colour of the hair in Palestine, participating in the whiteness, and the patches themselves perpetually widening their outline." Several of these characters taken separately belong to other lesions or blemishes of the skin, and, therefore, none of them were to be taken alone; and it was only when the whole of them concurred, that the Jewish priest, in his capacity of physician, was to pronounce the disease a tsorat, or malignant leprosy.

Common as this form of leprosy was among the Hebrews, during and subsequent to their residence in Egypt, we have no reason to believe that it was a family complaint, or even known amongst them antecedently: whence there is little doubt, notwithstanding the confident assertions of Manetho to the contrary, that they received the infection from the Egyptians, instead of communicating it to them. Their subjugated and distressed state, however, and the peculiar nature of their employment, must have rendered them very liable to this as well as to various other blemishes and misaffections of the skin in the productions of which there are no causes more active or powerful than a depressed state of body or mind, hard labour under

Michaelis's Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, vol. iii. pp. 233, 234. "That all this," he adds, "with equal force and truth, should still be found exactly to hold, at the distance of 3500 years from the time of Moses, ought certainly to gain some credit to his laws, even with those who will not allow them to be of divine authority." (p. 234.)

a burning sun, the body constantly covered with the excoriating dust of brick-fields and an impoverished diet; to all of which the Israelites were exposed, whilst under the Egyptian bondage.

It appears, also, from the Mosaic account, that in consequence of these hardships there was, even after the Israelites had quitted Egypt, a general predisposition to the contagious form of leprosy, so that it often occurred as a consequence of various other cutaneous affections. Eight different blemishes in the skin, which had a tendency to terminate in this terrible disease, are enumerated by Moses, and described by Dr. Good, to whose elaborate treatise the reader is referred. The effects of leprosy, as described by travellers who have witnessed the disorder in its most virulent forms, are truly deplorable.' The Mosaic statutes respecting leprosy are recorded in Lev. xiii. and xiv. ; Numb. v. 1—4.; and Deut. xxiv. 8, 9. They are in substance as follows:

(1.) On the appearance of any one of the cutaneous affections above noticed on any person, the party was to be inspected by a priest, both as acting in a judicial capacity, and also as being skilled in medicine. The signs of the disease, which are circumstantially pointed out in the statute itself, accord with those which have been noticed by modern physicians. "If, on the first inspection, there remained any doubt as to the spot being really a symptom of leprosy, the suspected person was shut up for seven days, in order that it might be ascertained, whether it spread, disappeared, or remained as it was; and this confinement might be repeated. During this time, it is probable that means were used to remove the spot. If in the mean time it spread, or continued as it was, without becoming paler, it excited a strong suspicion of real leprosy, and the person inspected was declared unclean. If it disappeared, and after his liberation became again manifest, a fresh inspection took place.

(2.) The unclean were separated from the rest of the people. So early as the second year of the Exodus, lepers were obliged to reside without the camp (Numb. v. 1-4.); and so strictly was this law enforced, that the sister of Moses herself, becoming leprous, was expelled from it. (Numb. xii. 14-16.) When the Israelites came into their own land, and lived in cities, the spirit of the law thus far operated, that lepers were obliged to reside in a separate place; and from this seclusion not even kings, when they became leprous, were exempted. (2 Kings xv. 5.) As, however, a leper cannot always

Mr. Barker, the agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, when at Damascus in the year 1825, describing the hospital of Christian lepers, says, "How afflicting was their situation and appearance! Some were without noses and fingers, being eaten up by the disease, and others were differently disfigured." (Twenty-sixth Report of the Bible Society, app. p. 111.) The Rev. J. D. Paxton saw at the gate of Nabloos or Napolose (the ancient Shechem), eight or ten lepers, who were not permitted to enter the walls of the city, with spots that looked like raw flesh, and had a most disgusting appearance. They seemed to be shut out from the city, and were most importunate beggars. (Letters from Palestine, p. 173.) A similar account is given in the Narrative of the Scottish Mission to the Jews, p. 214.; and by Mr. Stephens. Incidents of Travel, p. 569.

2 In the vicinity of Jerusalem Mr. Wilbraham met with a group of ten lepers, who did not dare to approach for fear of infecting the traveller and his party, but cried for alms with a loud voice, and held up their hands, which exhibited the ravages of the disease in

be within doors, and may, consequently, sometimes neet clean persons, he was obliged, in the first place, to make himself known by his dress, and to go about with torn clothes, a bare head, and his chin covered; and in the next place, when any one came too near him, to cry out that he was Unclean. (Numb. xiii. 45, 46.)"

(3.) Although a leper, merely meeting and touching a person, could not have immediately infected him, yet, as such a rencontre and touch would have rendered him Levitically unclean, in order to prevent leprosy from spreading, in consequence of close communication, "it was an established rule to consider a leprous person as likewise unclean in a Levitical or civil sense; and, consequently, whoever touched him, became also unclean; not indeed medically or physically so, that is, infected by one single touch, but still unclean in a civil sense.

(4.) "On the other hand, however, for the benefit of those found clean, the law itself specified those who were to be pronounced free from the disorder; and such persons were then clear of all reproach, until they again fell under accusation from manifest symptoms of infection. The man who, on the first inspection, was found clean, or in whom the supposed symptoms of leprosy disappeared during confinement, was declared clean: only, in the latter case, he was obliged to have his clothes washed. If, again, he had actually had the disorder and got rid of it, the law required him to make certain offerings, in the course of which he was pronounced clean." 1

(5.) The leprous person was to use every effort in his power to be healed; and, therefore, was strictly to follow the directions of the priests. This, Michaelis is of opinion, may fairly be inferred from Deut. xxiv. 8.

(6.) When healed of his leprosy, the person was to go and show himself to the priests that he might be declared clean, and offer the sacrifice enjoined in tnat case; and, when purified, that he might be again admitted into civil society. (Matt. viii. 4.; Lev. xiv. 11-32.)

(7.) Lastly, As this disease was so offensive to the Israelites, God commanded them to use frequent ablutions, and prohibited them from eating swine's flesh and other articles of animal food that had a tendency to produce this disease.

The peculiar lustrations, which a person who had been healed of a leprosy was to undergo, are detailed in Lev. xiv. - See an abstract of them in p. 362. of this volume.

2. The DISEASE with which the patriarch JOB was afflicted (ii. 7.) has greatly exercised the ingenuity of commentators, who have supposed it to be the contagious leprosy, the small pox, and the ELEPHANTIASIS, or Leprosy of the Arabians. The last opinion is adopted by Drs. Mead and Good, and by Michaelis, and appears to be best

the loss of most of their fingers. (Wilbraham's Palestine, p 45.) At Damascus now, as anciently among the Jews, lepers are not suffered to enter into the gate of the city, except under certain restrictions; but they are confined to a village outside the walls, inhabited solely by sufferers like themselves. (Elliott's Travels in Austria, Russia, and Turkey, vol. ii. p. 295.)

Michaelis's Commentaries, vol. iii. pp. 278-287.