mon, may have conduced to the establishment of these rites, and drawn away the popular homage, especially in prayers during sickness, or thanksgivings after recovery, from Jehovah. The statement that king Asa (2 Chron. xvi, 12) "sought not to Jehovah hut to the physicians," may seem to countenance the notion that a rivalry of actual worship, based on some medical fancies, had been set up, and would so far support the Talmudical tradi- tion.
The captivity of Babylon brought the Jews into con- tact with a new sphere of thought. Their chief men rose to the highest honors, and an improved mental cult- ure among a large section of the captives was no doubt the result which they imported on their return. Wun- derbar regards the Babylonian captivity as parallel in its effects to the Egyptian bondage, and seems to think that the people would return debased from its intiuence. On the contrary, those whom subjection had made ig- noble and unpatriotic would remain. If any returned, it was a pledge that they were not so impaired; and, if not impaired, they would certainly be improved by the discipline they had undergone. He also thinks tliat sorcery had the largest share in any Babyloniaji or Per- sian system of medicine. This is assuming too much : there were magicians in Egypt, but physicians also (see above) of high cultivation. Human nature has so great an interest in human life that only in the savage, rudi- mentary societies is its economy left thus involved in pliantasms. The earliest steps of civilization include something of medicine. Of course superstitions are found copiously involved in such medical .tenets, but this is not equivalent to abandoning the study to a class of professed magicians. Thus in the Ueherreste der alt- bahylonischen Literatur, p. 123, by D. Chwolson, St. Pe- tersb. 1859 (the value of which is not, however, yet as- certained), a writer on poisons claims to have a magic antidote, but declines stating what it is, as it is not his business to mention such things, and he only does so in cases where the charm is in connection with medical treatment and resembles it; the magicians, adds the same writer on another occasion, use a particular means of cure, but he declines to impart it, having a repugnance to witchcraft. So (p. 125-6) we find traces of charms introduced into Babylonian treatises on medical science, but apologetically, and as if against sounder knowledge. Similarly, the opinion of fatalism is not without its in- fluence on medicine; but it is chiefly resorted to where, as often happens in pestilence, all known aid seems useless. We know, however, too little of the precise state of med- icine in Babylon, Susa, and the " cities of the Medes," to determine the direction in which the impulse so de- rived would have led the exiles ; but the confluence of streams of thought from opposite sources, which im- pregnate each other, would surelj' produce a tendency to sift established practice and accejited axioms, to set up a new standard by which to try the current rules of art, and to determine new lines of inquiry for any eager spirits disposed to search for truth. Thus the visit of Democedes to the court of Darius, though it seems to be an isolated fact, points to a general opening of Orien- tal manners to Greek influence, which was not too late to leave its traces in some perhaps of the contemporaries of Ezra. That great reformer, with the leaders of na- tional thought gathered about him, could not fail to recognise medicine among the salutary measures which distinguished his epoch. Whatever advantages the Le- vites had possessed in earlier days were now speedily lost even as regards the study of the divine law, and much more therefore as regards that of medicine ; into which competitors would crowd in proportion to its broader and more obvious human interest, and effectu- ally demolish any narrowing barriers of established priv- ilege, if such previouslv existed.
2. In the Interval between the Old and the New Testa- ment.—It may be observed that the priests in their min- istrations, who performed at all seasons of the year bare- foot on stone pavement, and without perhaps any vari-
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ation of dress to meet that of temperature, were peculiarly I liable to sickness (KaJl, De Morlns Hacodotum, Hafn. ] 1745). Hence the permanent appointment of a Temple ; physician has been supposed by some, and a certain ' Beii-Ahijah is mentioned by Wunderl)ar as occurring in i the Talmud in that capacity. But it rather appears as ] if such an otlicer's appointment were precarious, and va- ried with the demands of the ministrants.
The book of Ecclesiasticus shows the increased regard given to the distinct study of medicine by the repeated mention of physicians, etc., which it contains, and which, as probably belonging to the period of the Ptolemies, it might be expected to show. The wisdom of prevention is recognised in Ecclus. xviii, 19 ; perhaps also in x, 10. Rank and honor are said to be the portion of the physi- cian, and his office to be from the Lord (xxxviii, 1, 3, 12). The repeated allusions to sickness in vii, 35 ; xxx, 17; xxxi, 22; xxxvii, 30; xxxviii, 9, coupled with the former recognition of merit, have caused some to sup- pose that this author was himself a physician. If he was so, the power of mind and wide range of observa- tion shown in his work would give a favorable impres- sion of the standard of practitioners; if he was not, the great general popularity of the study and practice may be inferred from its thus becoming a common topic of general advice offered by a non-professit)naal writer. In Wisd. xvi, 12, plaistcr is spoken of; anointing, as a means of healing, in Tob. vi, 8.