‘A broken heart’ is mentioned 11 times in Scripture, but always in its metaphorical sense of repentance and sorrow for sin. The condition literally expressed by the term has acquired a special interest on account of Dr. Stroud’s hypo- thesis that rupture of the heart was the condition to which our Lord’s death was due (see Stroud, Physical Causes of the Death of Christ, 1847, also Bennett’s Diseases of the Bible, p. 117).
Although it is only in Daniel that the functions of the nervous centres are recognized (see 110 2% 45:1. 10 71-15), vet diseases affecting this system are often mentioned :—
Paralysis or Palsy.— These words are used to express loss of the power of motion, a common symptom in diseases of the central nervous system. This condition is usually serious, often intractable, and is generally fairly rapid in its onset, but slow in disappearing. In the NT there are several accounts of the miraculous cures of paralysis by our Lord, as in Mt 4%; here as in Ac 87 these are recorded in general terms. In the case of the man at Capernaum, borne of four, whose friends let him down through the tiling into the presence of Christ, Matthew (95) uses the word zapadurixés, as also does Mark (2%). Luke (518) uses the term
παραλελυμένος. The man seems to have suffered from paraplegia, i.e. complete loss of power in his lower limbs. The prognosis in this disease, due
as it generally is to an organic change in the spinal cord from myelitis, is generally unfavour- able, and even in the best cases progress is slow.
Our Lord calls this man ‘son,’ which may be in- tended as a mark of age; but both this and the conjecture that the paralysis was a judgnent on him for immorality, on account of our Lord’s having prefaced his cure by declaring the for- riveness of his sins, are deductions not warranted y the very slender data from which they are drawn.
The example of Aineas, healed by St. Peter (Ac 933), that of a man ei ca bee bedridden, was probably one of the same kind.
The centurion’s servant (Mt 8°) was ‘ grievously tormented’ (δεινῶς βασανιζόμενος). This is descrip- tive of the pain which he suffered, as the phrase is used in classical Greek of torture to extort confession (see the case of Gylippus in Thucyd. vii. 86, and the Argive in viii. 29). It was probably an acute case, possibly of spinal meningitis. Bennett conjectures ‘progressive paralysis with muscular spasms involving the respiratory move- ments’ (p. 92), but the former seems to fit the description better, as in it the ‘torment’ is the more grievous.
The man with the withered hand (Mt 12°85, Mk 3!5, Lk 6°) was probably a sufferer in his early years from anterior poliomyelitis, cuusing infantile pacely st In such a case the bones as well as the muscles atrophy, and the limb becomes reduced to a mere stick. To the same category probably be- longed the lame man healed by Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple (Ac 3°), although this may have been congenital want of develop- ment of the lower limbs; but from the narrative it would appear that the limbs were well formed, although for forty years deprived of strength.
Cases like these were probably included in the general term ‘ withered’ (ξηροί), Bpelee to a group of the expectant waiters at the Pool of Bethesda (Jn 5%), he word is used of shrivelled parts (as in Esch. Orestes, 387), or of a generally wasted frame (Blectra, 239). The man who is called ὁ ἀσθενῶν (Jn 5’) was probably thus affected. The thirty- eight years’ duration of the case is against its having been an example of locomotor ataxia. Moreover, the diseased condition to which locomotor ataxia is generally due was probably unknown at that time. He was able to move himself, although slowly, for he says, ‘while I am coming,’ meaning by his unaided exertion (i).). There appears to be an OT reference to this condition under the name héreb, elsewhere translated ‘drought,’ and in this passage (Zec 112") tr. ‘the sword’ (i.e. hereb); but the context shows that it is really the diseased condition of hemiplegic shrivelling in this wasting disease that is referred to—‘ his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.’ See above, p. 324°.
The sudden paralysis of Jeroboam’s hand (1 Καὶ 13+)
was a case of the condition technically known as brachial monoplegia, probably due to a sudden hemorrhage aflecting a certain area of the posterior central convolution of the brain or of the part of the corona radiata or genu of the internal capsule connected with that area. Decaisne has collected and analyzed a large number of cases of this kind. When the sudden supervention of the paralysis depends on a clot plugging the vessels which nourish this area, it may prove only a temporary paralysis, as in the case of Jeroboam (v.°). The word ‘palsy’ is a corruption of the French paralysie, and came into use in English at any rate about the year 1500, for it is used in the English tr. of Mandeville’s Travels.
The case of Nabal (1 S 3533) seems to have been a typical example of an apoplectic seizure, a condition closely allied to paralysis, in that it is usually produced by hemorrhage or effusion of