258 THOMAS CHAPLINj ESQ.^ M.D.^ ON 



membrane of the boAvels mortifies and is cast off. Dysenteiy 

 is a very common disease in Palestine and other countries 

 bordering on the Mediterranean, and is frequently accom- 

 panied by copious discharges of blood. The bloody flux 

 of which St. Paul healed the father of Publius at Malta 

 (Acts xxviii., 8) is called by this name and may have been of 

 this character. But the use by St. Luke of the plural 

 {TTvperoi^) for the fever which attended it has been thought 

 to indicate some form of remittent or intermittent fever. 

 Possibly it was a case of typhoid {enteric) fever, in which 

 haemorrhage from the bowels is of frequent occurrence. 



Herod Agrippa is said by Josephus (Antiquities of the 

 Jews, xix., 8, 2) to have died of an acute and violent disease of 

 the belly, which carried him off in five days. Whether this 

 was dysentery or not it is diflScult to decide, and as the 

 disease was attended by another very remarkable symptom 

 — "he was eaten of worms" (Acts xii., 23) — the subject will 

 be discussed below. Among the symptoms of the com- 

 plicated disorder of which Herod the Great died, ulceration 

 of the bowels is mentioned, and the chief violence of the 

 pain lay in the colon (Joseph, ib. xvii., G, 5j. Antiochus 

 Epiphanes also is reported (2 Mace, ix., 5 et seq.) to have died 

 of " a pain of the boAvels that was remediless.'" 



4. Consumption. — It may be doubted whether the word thus 

 translated in Lev. xxvi., 1(5, refers to a disease or to a condition 

 of social want and suffering. The LXX. has anropia, the 

 Vulgate egestas, both of which terms might be rendered 

 " poverty." Consumption (phthisis), however, is not un- 

 common in Egypt and the coast towns of Palestine, and 

 other forms of wasting diseases are frequently met with 

 there. 



5. Demoniacal Possession. — Much difference of opinion has 

 existed with reference to this subject. On the one hand, the 

 symptoms manifested by some persons said to have been 

 possessed with a devil being not unlike the symptoms of 

 insanity or epilepsy, or some allied disorder, the expression 

 " possessed with a devil " has been thought to be merely the 

 popular way of speaking made use of by the inspired writer,, 

 without indicating the actual existence of such possession. 

 On the other hand, those instances in which the devils spoke, 

 and especially that in which they besought the Lord to send 

 them into the herd of swine, can be explained on no other 

 supposition than that of actual demoniacal possession. Our 

 Lord certainly recognized the fact of "possession" (Mark v.,. 



