192 PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 



roots of human sentiments and beliefs lie deeper than the 

 roots of particular creeds, and are certain to survive and 

 bud out afresh when an old creed has been superficially re 

 placed by a new one. Everywhere pagan usages and ideas 

 are found to modify Christian forms and doctrines, and it is 

 so here. The primitive theory that diseases are of super 

 natural origin still held its ground, and the agency of the 

 priest consequently remained needful. Of various hospitals 

 built by the early Christians we read: 



&quot;It was commonly a Priest who had charge of them, as, at Alex 

 andria, S. Isidore, under the Patriarch Theophilus ; at Constantinople, 

 St. Zoticus, and after him St. Samson.&quot; 



Concerning the substitution of Christian medical institu 

 tions for pagan ones, it is remarked : 



The destruction of the Asclepions was not attended by any suit 

 ably extensive measures for insuring professional education . . . The 

 consequences are seen in the gradually increasing credulity and im 

 posture of succeeding ages, until, at length, there was an almost 

 universal reliance on miraculous interventions. &quot; 

 But a more correct statement would be that the pagan con 

 ceptions of disease and its treatment re-asserted themselves. 

 Thus, according to Sprengel, after the 6th century the 

 monks practised medicine almost exclusively. Their cures 

 were performed by prayers, relics of martyrs, holy water, 

 &c., often at the tombs of martyrs. The state of things dur 

 ing early mediaeval times, of which we know so little, may 

 be inferred from the fact that in the 12th and 13th centuries 

 the practice of medicine by priests was found to interfere so 

 much with their religious functions that orders were issued 

 to prevent it; as by the Lateran Council in 1139, the Coun 

 cil of Reims in 1131, and again by the Lateran Council in 

 1215. But the usage survived for centuries later in France 

 and probably elsewhere; and it seems that only when a 

 papal bull permitted physicians to marry, did the clerical 

 practice of medicine begin to decline. &quot; The physicians of 

 the University of Paris were not allowed to marry till the 

 year 1452.&quot; 



