NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 13 



testimony of the great fathers of the Church to the continuance 

 of miracles is overwhelming ; but everything shows that they so 

 fully expected miracles on the slightest occasion as to require 

 nothing which in these days would be regarded as adequate evi- 

 dence. 



In this atmosphere of theologic thought, medical science was 

 at once checked. The School of Alexandria, under the influence 

 first of Jews and later on of Christians, both permeated with Ori- 

 ental ideas, and taking into their theory of medicine demons and 

 miracles, soon enveloped everything in mysticism. In the Byzan- 

 tine Empire of the East the same cause produced the same effect : 

 the evolution of ascertained truth in medicine begun by Hippoc- 

 rates and continued by Herophilus, seemed lost forever. Medi- 

 cal science, trying to move forward, was like a ship becalmed in 

 the Sargasso Sea : both the atmosphere about it and the medium 

 through which its progress must be made resisted all movement. 

 Instead of reliance upon observation, experience, experiment, and 

 thought, attention was turned toward supernatural agencies.* 



Especially prejudicial to a true development of medical science 

 among the first Christians was their attribution of disease to dia- 

 bolic possession. St. Paul had distinctly declared that the gods 

 of the heathen were devils ; and everywhere the early Christians 

 saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers of 

 evil. The Gnostic and Manichsean struggles had ripened the theo- 

 logic idea that at times diseases are punishments by the Almighty, 

 but that the main agency in them is Satanic. The great fathers 

 and renowned leaders of the early Church accepted and strength- 

 ened this idea. Origen says : " It is demons which produce famine, 

 unf ruitf ulness, corruptions of the air, pestilences ; they hover con- 

 cealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere and are attracted by the 

 blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods." St. 

 Augustine says : " All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to 

 these demons ; chiefly do they torment fresh-baptized Christians, 

 yea, even the guiltless, new-born infants." Tertullian insists 

 that a malevolent angel is in constant attendance upon every per- 

 son. Gregory of Nazianzen declares that bodily pains are pro- 

 voked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they 

 are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Mlus 

 and St. Gregory of Tours, echoing St. Ambrose, give examples to 

 show the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting 

 to the intercession of saints. Leaders of the Church very gener- 



* For the mysticism which gradually enveloped the School of Alexandria, see Barthele- 

 my Saint-Hilaire, De l'^cole d'Alexandrie, Paris, 1845, vol. vi, p. 161. For the effect of 

 the new doctrines on the Empire of the East, see Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 240. As to the 

 more common miracles of healing and the acknowledgment of non-Christian miracles of 

 healing by Christian fathers, see Fort, p. 84. 



