that this belief has been general for a time leaves behind a certain psychological residuum in favour of supernaturalism in general.
The connection between the priest and the physician is naturally a very ancient one. The priest, indeed, is the primitive physician, the belief that diseases are supernaturally caused indicating him as the agent of their cure. And it is only to be expected that when the attempt is made to divert the treatment of disease from priestly hands the effort should be met with determined opposition. Quite naturally, too, the first gropings after a scientific theory of disease show a curious mixture of rationalism and superstition. Thus, in Greece, the temple hospitals devoted to the mythical Æsculapius, which were situated at Epidaurus, Pergamus, Cyrene, Corinth, and many other places, served as colleges, hospitals, and places of worship. Sufferers slept in the temples in the hopes of receiving messages from the gods, and the priests themselves professed to have ecstatic visions which enabled them to prescribe for those afflicted.[35] Great emphasis was placed on bathing, light, air, and food, and it is pretty clear that the priests had begun to mix both faith and physic in a most perplexing manner.
The definite separation of medicine from magic and religion begins with Hippocrates. His theory of disease was simple. He did not deny that there might be a supernatural side to disease; he insisted that there was always a natural one, and that this was the side with which we should be concerned. Each disorder,
he said, had its own physical conditions, and he laid down the rule that we "ought to study the nature of man, what he is with reference to that which he eats and drinks, and to all his other occupations and habits, and to the consequences resulting from each."[36] In Egypt, also, very considerable advance was made in the same direction. Probably a good deal of their knowledge resulted from the practice of embalming, in spite of the priestly interdict on dissection. At all events, there is no doubt that considerable advance had been made. Herophilus and Erasistratus wrote of the structure of the heart, and described its connection with the veins and arteries. The two kinds of nerves, motor and sensory, were described, and the influence of foods, etc., as influencing health, dwelt on. Insanity was also dealt with as due to natural and controllable causes, and the effects of colour and music in dealing with mania noted.[37] Had this advance been followed, the history of European civilisation might have been different from what it was. Plagues, epidemics, and diseases, with their far-reaching social and political consequences,—consequences that are too little noted, or even understood, by historians,—might have met with adequate resistance, and some would never have occurred.
The Pagan schools of medicine came to an untimely, although in some cases a lingering, end. "The introduction of Christianity," says a medical writer, "had an undoubted influence on the course of medical science; for the Christian was taught to recognise, in every bodily infirmity, the dispensation of the Almighty, and in the calm, abstracted pursuits of those holy men who passed their time in prayer and meditation, a propitiation: hence medicine fell into the hands of monks and anchorites, who assumed to themselves, exclusively, the power of interpreting all natural phenomena as indications of the Divine Will, and pretended to possess some occult and supernatural means of curing disease."[38] Reversing the natural order of things, the physician was replaced by the priest. The supernaturalistic theory was revived, and held its own for well on a thousand years. For every complaint the Church provided a specific in the shape of a charm, an incantation, or a saint. St. Apollonia for toothache, St. Avertin for lunacy, St. Benedict for stone, St. Clara for sore eyes, St. Herbert for hydrophobia, St. John for epilepsy, St. Maur for gout, St. Pernel for agues, St. Genevieve for fevers, St. Sebastian for plague, etc.[39] The height of absurdity was reached when, in spite of the monopoly of the treatment of disease by the priesthood, the Council of Rheims (1119) actually forbade monks to study medicine. This was followed by the Council of Beziers (1246) prohibiting Christians applying for relief to Jewish physicians, at a time when practically the only doctors of ability in Christendom were Jews. In 1243
the Dominicans banished all books on medicine from their monasteries. Innocent III. forbade physicians practising except under the supervision of an ecclesiastic. Honorius (1222) forbade priests the study of medicine; and at the end of the thirteenth Century Boniface VIII. interdicted surgery as atheistical. The ill-treatment and opposition experienced by the great Vesalius at the hands of the Church, on account of his anatomical researches, is one of the saddest chapters in the history of science.[40]
When the sight of bodily disease strengthened and confirmed belief in the supernatural, mental disease must have offered still more convincing evidence. Among uncivilised people we know that this is so. To quote again from the indispensable Tylor:—
"The possessed man ... rationally finds a spiritual cause for his sufferings.... Especially when the mysterious unseen power throws him helpless on the ground, jerks and writhes him in convulsions, makes him leap upon the bystanders with a giant's strength and a wild beast's ferocity, impels him with distorted face and frantic gesture, and voice not his own nor seemingly even human, to pour forth wild incoherent raving, or with thought and eloquence beyond his sober faculties to command, to counsel, to foretell—such a one seems to those who watch him, and even to himself, to have become the mere instrument of a spirit which has seized him or entered into him, a possessing demon in whose personality the patient believes so implicitly that he often imagines a personal name for it, which it can declare when it speaks in
its own voice and character through his organs of speech."[41]
It was this conception of insanity, universally current in the uncivilised world, that was revived with fearful intensity in the early Christian Church, and which certainly served its purpose in intensifying the genuine belief in supernaturalism. Jesus had given His followers power to expel demons "In My name," and this power of exorcism was one upon which the early Christians specially prided themselves. It is with unconscious sarcasm that Dean Trench puts the question, If one of the disciples "were to enter a madhouse now, how many of the sufferers there he might recognise as 'possessed'?"[42] One may safely say that he would regard all as under the dominion of evil spirits. No other cause of insanity appears to have been recognised, and the Church devised the most elaborate formulæ for casting out demons. The assumed demoniac was prayed over, incensed, and evil-smelling drugs burned under his nose. A set form of objurgation then followed:—