MEDICINE.—Compared with other countries in the same latitude, Palestine is, and probably was in Bible days, a fairly healthy land. It has few sluggish streams, and most of its valleys are wind- swept; except in some few localities malarious diseases are not very rife, and owing to its want of harbours, and consequently of maritime com- merce, imported epidemics are not as common as they are in Egypt, which in the Old Testament is regarded as very much more unhealthy (cf. Dt 7 28% Am 41), In addition to these natural advantages, if at any time the sanitary legislation of the Priestly Code were strictly observed, this must have been instrumental in preventing and checking the spread of disease. Under the social system set forth in the law, if it could have been carried out, there would not have been any very poor class, subject to the diseases fostered by ἐπε πείση: and it is probable that until a com- paratively late period there was no permanent overcrowding in the larger towns. It is difficult to estimate the density of the population in ancient times, but, considering the frequent checks it received from wars internal and external, it is not probable that even in the most prosperous days it ever exceeded 300 to the square mile. (The numbers in 1 Ch 21° or 2 24° are obviously un- reliable). The conditions of life contemplated in the Perey Code are those of a community of agricultural freeholders ; and the social and moral enactments of the law provide for the maintenance of a healthy discipline, and for the repression of excesses injurious to health.
Health, the state in which the bodily functions are perfectly discharged, is, according to Sirach, the greatest of earthly blessings (30"-"*). The word occurs 15 times in the OT (AV), but in different connotations. It is used twice as the tr. of city shalém, referring to material prosperity (Gn 43%, 2S 20°), but here it is replaced by ‘ well’ in the RV. Thrice in Ps ‘health’ in the old sense of welfare is the rendering of aye: yéshii'ah (42% 435 67°; in the first two places RVm substitutes ‘help’). Four times προς ‘drikah (prop. the new flesh that forms on a wound), is tr. ‘health,’ but ‘healing’ is better (so RV, as in Is 58°, and RVm in Jer 3017 338). In Pr 35 ‘health’ in the ordinary sense of the word is the tr. of πῖνε riph’téth ; but in Pr 4” 1918. 13 1603 and Jer 8", in which ‘health’ is used metaphori- cally, the Heb. is x59> marpé' (in the last ref. RV renders ‘healing’). In the NT ‘health’ occurs VOL. IlI.—2I
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twice: Ac 27%, where it is the tr. of σωτηρία, and is better rendered in RV ‘safety’; and 3 Jn ", in the sense of bodily welfare, to ‘be in health’ being the tr. of ὑγιαίνειν.
The blessing of health was regarded as a reward of service (Is 58%), or withheld on account of sin (Jer 815: =), In both OT and NT the popular belief is referred to, that diseases are penal in their crign, inflicted by God on account of sin either personal or parental (Jn 9*) ; and coming sometimes directly from Him (Ex 4", Dt 32%), or from Satan when permitted (Job 27), or by the agencies of other spirits, as those of dumbness (Mk 917) or foulness (Mk 955. Diseases might also be caused by envy on the part of others (Job 5°), and the power of the evil eye is referred to in 1S 189 as well as in the Talmud (Shabbath 67, Pesachim 112, etc.). They might also come as consequences of gluttony, of drunkenness, of vicious or self-indulgent practices (Sir 3780. 81). but even in these cases they were re- garded as coming by God’s direct interposition. Therefore healing was a divine token of forgive- ness: God was the physician of His people (Ex 1555), and it was their duty to look to Him for relief ; hence Asa’s sin in seeking to the physicians (2 Ch 16°).
Physicians. — The medical knowledge of the biblical peoples was small in amount and crude in character. In Egypt there were schools of medicine in the 15th cent. B.c. (Papyrus Ebers i, ciii); but there are no traces of any system of medical education in Palestine in Bible times, and allusions to physicians are few. Egyptian physi- cians, who are called Joseph’s servants, embalmed Jacob (Gn 50*). These were probably hr-hbu, the class of priests whom the Greeks called paraschistes and taricheute, whose long misunderstood relations have been cleared up by Revillout (42q. Zeitschr. 1879, 1880). The existence of physicians in the days of the compilation of the Book of Judgments (Ex 2119) has been inferred from the order that the assailant of his neighbour is to cause him to be thoroughly healed. The x25 rophé’, of Jer 8, was a healer of wounds, a bandager (cf. Ee 38). While in Asa’s time to seek the physician was to depart from God, Sirach in later days regards him as God’s servant, ‘for from the Most High cometh healing’ (383. At the same time repentance and a memorial offering on the part of the sick man are to precede the visit of the physician, who is to be priest as well as healer (v.). In the newly discovered Heb. the passage in v.”, which, in the Greek, seems to speak slightingly of him, says. ‘He that sinneth against God will behave arro- gantly before his physician’ (x517 %35> 7337).