John Jahn says, in his Biblical ArchÆology, Upham’s translation, page 105, that, in Babylon, when first attacked with disease, the patients were placed in the streets, for the purpose of ascertaining, from casual passengers, what practices or medicines they had found useful, in similar cases. Imagine a poor fellow, suddenly attacked with a windy colic, and deposited for this purpose, in State Street, in the very place, formerly occupied, by the razor-strop man, or the magnolia merchant! If it be true—I very much doubt it—that, in a multitude of counsellors, there is safety, this must be an excellent arrangement for the patient.

I have often thought, that benevolence was getting to be an epidemic; particularly when I have noticed the attentions of one or two hundred charitably disposed persons, gathered about a conservative horse, that would not budge an inch. They have not the slightest interest in the horse, nor in the driver—it’s nothing under heaven, but pure brotherly love. The driver is distracted, by the advice of some twenty persons, pointing with sticks and umbrellas, in every direction, and all vociferating together. In the meanwhile, three or four volunteers are belaboring the shins of the refractory beast, while as many are rapping his nose with their sticks. Four stout fellows, at least, are trying to shove the buggy forward, and as many exerting their energies, to shove the horse backward. Half a dozen sailors, attracted by the noise, tumble up to the rescue; three seize the horse’s head, and pull a starboard, and three take him, by the tail, and pull to larboard, and all yell together, to the driver, to put his helm hard down. At last, urged, by rage, terror, and despair, the poor brute shakes off his persecutors, with a rear, and a plunge, and a leap, and dashes through the bow window of a confectioner’s shop, or of some dealer in naked women, done in Parian.

I am very sorry we have been delayed, by this accident. Let us proceed. Never has there been known, among men, a more universal diffusion of such a little modicum of knowledge. The knowledge of the materia medica and of pathology, what there was of it, seems to have been held, by the Babylonians, as tenants in common, and upon the Agrarian principle—every man and woman had an equal share of it. Such, according to John Jahn, Professor of Orientals in Vienna, was the state of therapeutics, in Babylon.

The Egyptians carried their sick into the temples of Serapis—the Greeks to those of Æsculapius. Written receipts were preserved there, for the cure of different diseases. Professor Jahn certainly seems disposed to make the most of the knowledge of physic and surgery, among the Israelites. He says they had “some acquaintance with chirurgical operations.” In support of this opinion, he refers to the rite of circumcision, and to—nothing else. He also says, that it is evident “physicians sometimes undertook to exercise their skill, in removing diseases of an internal nature.”

If the reader is good at conundrums, will he be so obliging as to guess, upon what evidence the worthy professor grounds this assertion? I perceive he gives it up—Well—on Samuel I. xvi. 16. And what sayeth Samuel?—“And Saul’s servants said unto him, behold now an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let our Lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on a harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.” This, reduced into plain language, is simply this—Saul’s servants took the liberty of telling his majesty, that the devil was in him, and he had better have a little music. Accordingly, David was called in—as a physician, according to Jahn—and drove the devil out of Saul, by playing on his Jews’-harp. Jahn also informs us, and the Bible did before, that the art of healing was committed to the priests, who were specially bound, by law, “to take cognizance of leprosies.” There were, as he admits, other physicians, probably of little note. The priests were the regular, legalized faculty. On this ground, we can explain the severe reproach, cast upon Asa, who, when he had the gout, “sought not the Lord but to the physician:” that is, he did not seek the Lord, in prayer, through the intermediation of the regular faculty, the priests.

There are ecclesiastics among us, who consider, that the Levitical law is obligatory upon the priesthood, throughout the United States of America, at the present day; and who believe it to be their bounden duty, to take cognizance of leprosies, and all other disorders; and to physick the bodies, not less than the souls, of their respective parishioners. To this I sturdily object—not at all, from any doubt of their ability, to practise the profession, as skilfully, as did the son of Jesse, and to drive out devils with a Jews’-harp; and to cure all manner of diseases, in the same manner, in which the learned Kircherus avers, according to Sir Thomas Browne, vol. ii. page 536, Lond. 1835, the bite of the tarantula is cured, by songs and tunes; and to soothe boils as big as King Hezekiah’s, with fig poultices, according to Scripture; for I have the greatest reverence for that intuition, whereby such men are spared those studia annorum, so necessary for the acquirement of any tolerable knowledge of the art of medicine, by all, who are not in holy orders. My objection is of quite another kind—I object to the union of the cure of souls and the cure of bodies, in the same person; as I object to the union of Church and State, and to the union of the power of the purse and the power of the sword. It is true, withal, that when a sufferer is killed, by ministerial physic, which never can happen, of course, but for the patient’s want of faith, nobody dreams of such an irreverent proceeding, as pursuing the officious priest, for mala praxis.

Priests and witches, jugglers, and old women have been the earliest practitioners of medicine, in every age, and every nation: and the principal, preventive, and remedial medicines, in all the primitive, unwritten pharmacopÆias, have been consecrated herbs and roots, charms and incantations, amulets and prayers, and the free use of the Jews’-harp. The reader has heard the statement of Professor Jahn. In 1803, Dr. Winterbottom, physician to the colony of Sierra Leone, published, in London, a very interesting account of the state of medicine, in that colony. He says, that the practice of physic, in Africa, is entirely in the hands of old women. These practitioners, like the servants of Saul, believe, that almost all diseases are caused by evil spirits; in other words, that their patients are bedevilled: and they rely, mainly, on charms and incantations. Dr. W. states, that the natives get terribly drunk, at funerals—funerals produce drunkenness—drunkenness produces fevers—fevers produce death—and death produces funerals. All this is imputed to witchcraft, acting in a circle.

In the account of the Voyage of the Ship Duff to Tongataboo, in 1796, the missionaries give a similar statement of the popular notion, as to the origin of diseases—the devil is at the bottom of them all; and exorcism the only remedy.

In Mill’s British India, vol. ii. p. 185, Lond. 1826, the reader may find a statement of the paltry amount of knowledge, on the subject, not only of medicine, but of surgery, among the Hindoos: “Even medicine and surgery, to the cultivation of which so obvious and powerful an interest invites, had scarcely attracted the rude understanding of the Hindus.”

Sir William Jones, in the Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 354, says, “there is no evidence, that, in any language of Asia, there exists one original treatise on medicine, considered as a science.” Crawford, in his Sketches, and he has an exalted opinion of the Hindoos, states, that surgery is unknown among them; and, that, in cases of wounds from the sabre or musket, they do no more than wash the wound; bind it up with fresh leaves, and keep the patient on rice gruel. Buchanan, in his journey, through Mysore, vol. i. p. 336, informs us, that medicine was in the hands of ignorant and impudent charlatans. Origen, who was born, about 185 A. D., states that the Egyptians believed thirty-six devils divided the human body, among them; and that diseases were cured, by supplication and sacrifice, to the particular devil, within whose precinct the malady lay. This is a convenient kind of practice. May it not have some relation to the fact, referred to by Herodotus, in his History, book ii. sec. 84, that the doctors, in Egypt, were not practitioners, in a general sense, but for one part of the body only. Possibly, though I affirm nothing of the sort, Origen may have written devils for doctors, by mistake: for the doctors, in those days, were, manifestly, very little better.

If it be true—et quis negat?—that Hippocrates was the father of physic—the child was neither born nor begotten, before its father, of course, and Hippocrates was born, about 400 B. C., which, according to Calmet, was about 600 years after David practised upon Saul, with his Jews’-harp. His genealogy was quite respectable. He descended from Æsculapius, through a long line of doctors; and, by the mother’s side, he was the eighteenth from Hercules, who was, of course, the great grandfather of physic, at eighteen removes; and who, it will be remembered, was an eminent practitioner, and doctored the Hydra. Divesting the subject of all, that is magical and fantastical, Hippocrates thought and taught such rational things, as no physician had thought and taught before. It appears amazing to us, the uninitiated, that the healing art should have been successfully practised at all, from the beginning of the world, till 1628, in utter ignorance of the circulation of the blood; yet it was in that year the discovery was made, when Dr. William Harvey dedicated to Charles I. and published his Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis.