NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 151 



medicine ; their share in founding the great Schools of Salerno 

 and Montpellier we have already noted ; and in all parts of 

 Europe we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing art. 

 The Church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were 

 especially severe against theseobenefactors : that men who openly 

 rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeni- 

 ably lost, should heal the elect, seemed an insult to Providence ; 

 preaching friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers 

 in state and Church, while frequently secretly consulting them, 

 openly proscribed them. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and 

 Calixtus III especially forbade Christians to employ them. The 

 Councils of Be'ziers and Alby in the thirteenth century, the 

 Council of Avignon in the fourteenth, the Synod of Bamberg 

 and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, with many others, ex- 

 pressly forbade the faithful to call Jewish physicians or sur- 

 geons, under penalty of excommunication : such great preach- 

 ers as John Geyler and John Herolt thundered from the pulpit 

 against them and all who consulted them. As late as the middle 

 of the seventeenth century, when the city council of Hall, in 

 Wurtemberg, gave some privileges to a Jewish physician "on 

 account of his admirable experience and skill," the clergy of the 

 city joined in a protest, declaring that " it were better to die with 

 Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor aided by the devil.'* 

 Still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals, kings, and even popes, 

 insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.* 



Nor did the Reformation immediately change the sacred the- 

 ory of medicine. Luther, as is well known, again and again 

 ascribed his own disease to " devils' spells," declaring that " Satan 

 produces all the maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the 

 prince of death," and that "he poisons the air"; but that "no 

 malady comes from God." From that day down to the faith 

 cures of Boston, Old Orchard, and among the sect of " Peculiar 

 People " in our own time, we see the results among Protestants 



* For the general subject of the influence of theological ideas upon medicine, see Fort, 

 History of Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, New York, 1883, chapters xiii and 

 xviii ; also Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire des Reliques, passim ; also Rairubaud, Histoire 

 de la Civilisation en France, Paris, 1885, vol. i, chap, xviii; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 345, 

 and elsewhere ; also Baas and others. For the eminence of Jewish physicians, and pro- 

 scription of them, see Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pp. 76-94; also Bedar- 

 ride, Les Juifs en France, en Italie, et en Espagne, chapters v, viii, x, and xiii ; also Re- 

 nouard, Histoire de la Medecine, Paris, 1846, tome i, p. 439; also, especially, Lammert, 

 Volksmedizin, etc., in Bayern, p. 6, note. For denunciations of them by Geyler and others, 

 see Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, pp. 194, 195. For a list of kings and 

 popes who persisted in having Jewish physicians, and for other curious information of 

 the sort, see Prof. Levi de Vercelli, Cristiani ed Ebrei nel Medio Evo, pp. 200-20*7 ; and 

 for a very valuable summary, see Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, pp. 

 265-271. 



