i 4 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the priests had charge of the health of the people, and in time of plague 

 and pestilence relied wholly on religious methods of cure. According 

 to the accounts that have come down to us, these methods were most 

 successful. In highly civilized Greece, priests, the direct descendants 

 of iEsculapius, cured disease by mysterious ceremonies, music, offer- 

 ings, fastings, and such like. In Rome, when a plague broke out, the 

 priests endeavored to combat it by feasting the gods, or driving nails 

 .into the right wall of the Temple of Jupiter. The early Christian 

 Church was strongly opposed to the progress of medicine. It believed 

 that the power of curing disease had been transmitted from Christ and 

 his apostles to their bishops and elders. They discarded altogether the 

 use of medicinal agents, and healed the sick by prayer, the laying on of 

 hands, and the anointing with oil. This form of treatment, being of 

 "he miraculous order, needed no knowledge of the nature of disease, or 

 of the structure of the human frame. Heathen priests and physicians 

 were regarded as sorcerers and dealers in witchcraft, and so were burned 

 or otherwise put out of the way. For some centuries the monks mo- 

 nopolized all the medical practice and quackery. They made a good 

 living, selling for large sums of money remnants of ancient martyrs, 

 waters of holy wells, portions of the true cross, etc., as a protection 

 against sickness, witchcraft, evil spirits, and other ills that flesh was 

 heir to in those dark ages. They prayed to St. Anthony for inflam- 

 mation, St. Valentine for epilepsy, St. Clara for sore eyes, St. Appo- 

 lonia for toothache, St. Vitus for madness and poison, and so on.* It 

 was not till after the breaking up of the powers of the priesthood by 

 the Reformation, and the introduction of printing, that medicine began 

 to escape from the grasp of quackery and made rapid strides toward 

 the truth, perfecting knowledge of disease by accurate observation 

 and the study of the human frame and its workings in health. That 

 the emancipation of medicine from superstition did not immediately 

 take place is evidenced by the wonderful hold the belief in the cure of 

 scrofula by the royal touch had on the people, both medical and lay, 

 for many years after the Reformation, nay, almost down to our own 

 time. This most remarkable form of quackery, and one, according to 



* The Medical Rose offers a peculiar and very approved remedy for epilepsy. Advis- 

 ing the patient to stand upright, saying the Lord's prayer with the mouth wide open to 

 prevent the first attack, and informing us that a lunatic, an epileptic, and a demoniac 

 were the same, he gives the following sacrophysical directions : " When the patient and 

 his parents have fasted three days, let them conduct him to a church. If he be of a 

 proper age and in his right senses, let him confess. Then let him hear mass on Friday, 

 during the fast of qualuor temporum, and also on Saturday. On Sunday let a good and 

 religious priest read over his head in church the gospel which is read in September in the 

 time of vintage, after the feast of the Holy Cross. After this, let the same priest write 

 the same gospel devoutly, and let the patient wear it about his neck, and he shall be cured. 

 The gospel is, ' This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' " (" Rosa Anglica," 

 p. 78, edition 1491 ; ib., p. 415, edition 1595 quoted in Willcock's "Laws of the Medi- 

 cal Profession," p. 25, edition 1830.) 



