In early Egypt also the physicians were priests, and Papyrus Ebers gives several formule to be used as prayers while compounding medicaments (for later Egyptian physicians see Herod. ii. 84). The Hebrew priests had charge of certain branches of public health, e.g. leprosy, but it was to the pro- phets that those requiring medical aid chiefl euplicd : Nathan (28 12), Ahijah (1 K 143), Elijah (1 K 1738), Elisha (2 K 43), and Isaiah (2 Καὶ 207) are examples. In post-biblical times Jewish physicians were famous throughout the East, and the sayings of many of these are preserved in the Talmud and other rabbinical writings. According to Sanhedrin 176 there was a physician in every town, and there was also in the temple a physician for the priests (Shekalim 5. 1, 2). At the same time it was not unlawful to employ a Gentile, even to perform circumcision, if no qualified Jew was available (Menahoth 42a); but Gentile medi- cine was to be taken with caution, as it might contain blood. At first these physicians and surgeons were mostly priests possessed of a certain amount of traditional and empirical knowledge,
322 MEDICINE
MEDICINE
as, for example, in connexion with the diaynosis of leprosy. oubtless many of them were, like Job’s friends, 5>x "κε Job 134, that is, having the same relation to real physicians as that which an insignificant idol bears to the true God. Men of this kind probably gave rise to the proverb in Kiddushin 4. 14, that the best of physicians was deserving of hell. In the NT we have Luke, ‘the beloved ar pane (Col 4.2), in whose writings the influence of a medical training has been recognized by Lagarde (Psalterium juxta Ileb. Hieron. 165),
obart (Medical Language of St. Luke, 1882); see also Blass, Philol. of the Gospels, 1898. The refer- ence to physicians in Mk 5* is not very apprecia-
ve (cf, with Lk 8*),
Until a comparatively late period, the objections to touching the dead, and the ceremonial unclean- ness associated with such contact, prevented the Jewish physicians from obtaining any practical acquaintance with the interior of the human body, as dissection was regarded as dishonouring the dead (Chullin 116). The famous Rabbi Ishmael (A.D. 100), of whose anatomical knowledge many stories are told, broke down this prejudice to some degree, and obtained the body of a condemned criminal for anatomical purposes (Bechoroth 45a) ; see also Nazir 326, for stories of Theudas recog- nizing bones. Something of the structure of animals must have been known from the priestly experiences in sacrifices, in which the operator had the opportunity of inspecting the viscera of the slain bene The method employed in the slaughter of the animals whose carcases were used as food, in order to drain the body of its blood, must also have given to the shehet (butcher) and to the shémér (inspector), whose duty is to certify the meat as kdéshér or clean, a certain amount of empirical knowledge of the anatomy and pathology of animals (Chullin 9a). In the Seper Zabahi of Rabbi Meir Cohen (Leghorn, 1832) the ritual for this examination is given at length, and from it the stringency of the rules for the recognition of clean flesh can be estimated. This code is of con- siderable anuquity, and must have been of great benefit to the public health (Buxtorf, Syn. Jud. Xxvii.).
There are very few biblical references to the facts of anatomy or physiology. ‘The blood is the life,’ and therefore tabooed as food (Gn 94, Lv 17"). This in itself was an important sanitary precaution, considering the highly metabolic nature of blood, which is of all the materials in the body the most likely to carry the microbes of disease, as well as parasites of larger size. In Job 10” and Ps 1395. 16 the current notion of embryology, which was one of epigenesis, is set forth ; but the details were considered as beyond human knowledge (Ec 11°); see also Nidda 25. In Aruch the embryo is said to appear at first like a grasshopper. 7%’, tr. ‘navel,’ appears in Pr 3° as the seat af health, perhaps as being the mid-point of the body, but the word is perhaps a slip for 7y3 ‘ flesh,’ in contra- distinction to bones, as LXX reads it (τῷ σώματί gov). The heart (wh. see) was, to the Jews, as to all the peoples of antiquity, the seat of emotion, thought, and wisdom: the reins or kidneys (wh. see) were the seats of feeling, passion, and deter- mination: the bowels (wh. see) were supposed to be the organs of affection and sympathy (see Job 8057). In Zohar (Bemidbar 128) there is a remark- able account of the anatomy of the brain.
There were many proverbial sayings current among the Jews referring to physicians. Our Lord nutes one of these: ‘Physician, heal thy- self’ (Lk 4%). A similar saying, ΤῊ Π ‘oN ΚΝ, occurs in Jalkut on Bereshith 38, and in Midrash Rabbah (Beresh. 23). The same idea is expressed in a saying ascribed to R. Levi (Midrash on Ly δ):
‘It is a shame on the ΣΝ whose surgeon is routy and whose oculist is blind.’ See Burck- rardt’s Arab. Prov. No. 404. A proverb, the yarallel of our Lord’s parable of the Mote and the aaa, occurs in Baba Bathra 15), Bay not, Take the straw out of thine eye, when thou hast a stick in thine own.’ Another of His sayings, ‘They that are whole have no need of a physician; but they that are sick,’ is nearly alike in sense to a sentence in Baba Kamma 46), ‘They who suffer pain should seek the physician.’ Other medical proverbs are, ‘God determines the healing before the disease’ (Megillah 13); ‘A wise man will not live in a town where there is no physician’ (San- hedrin 176); and, on the other hand, ‘Do not live in a town of which the chief officer is a physician’ (Pesachim 113. 1); ‘ Honour the physician before thou hast need of him’ (Yanhuma, see also Sir 38! Hebrew version).