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they were the followers of prophets, apostles, and of the "Great Physician" himself, that they were endowed with like miraculous powers, and went forth in obedience to His command to "heal the sick."* How far they followed such examples, or obeyed such precepts, a short inquiry will render evident.

Throughout the Old Testament we do not find that prophets refused their succour to such as suffered from external diseases. The prophet Isaiah gave his counsel to the good King Hezekiah: "Take a lump of figs, and they took and laid it on the boil, and he recovered."+ Naaman, also, captain of the host of the King of Syria, repaired not to Elisha in vain to recover him of his leprosy; he responded, "Go and wash in Jordan seven times. Then went he down and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, and his flesh came again like to the flesh of a little child, and he was clean." The patriarch Job, King Asa, the Philistines as recorded in the first book of Samuel, and many others, were alike the victims of external disease or injury; but they failed not to obtain the sought-for aid, whether in the exercise of natural or supernatural powers. Still less is the New Testament a warrant for the course pursued by these "apostolic successors.' We find it not in the

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* The arguments drawn from Scripture are in answer to those who, being the authors of this compulsory division in medicine, had rejected all human authority, and claimed to be the agents of a Divine commission.

2 Kings, xx, 7.

2 Kings, v, 14.

whose existence or removal was less easily detected, remained during this period the exclusive province of the priest-physician.*

I would fain hope to have faithfully portrayed, not only the history, but, in some measure at least, the true cause of the first great schism in medicine. It remains to consider the more immediate subject of this paper; namely, THE PHYSICIAN'S OFFICE-thus divided-THROUGHOUT GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN MODERN TIMES; for which purpose it will be necessary to regard severally, that portion of it which attached to the priest and monk, even up to the time of its transfer to the Royal College of Physicians; and the other division which was consigned by the same authority to Barbers, Smiths, and others.

Whilst such evil powers and principles had combined to complete this division, better and more worthy means were at work to establish the revival of literature generally, and with it that of medicine.

The escape of the Greek savans with their longhidden copies of the ancient authors from Constantinople, and elsewhere in the Eastern empire, prior to, and at the time of its capture by the Turks, A.D.

* In the fourteenth century miraculous cures continued to be as frequent as in the times preceding. Whilst men of science and learning (followers of Roger Bacon and Petrus d'Apono) were consigned to death as magicians and sorcerers, sainted physicians became so numerous, that some absurd laws were enacted whereby alone cures could be pronounced miraculous, and the physician canonised. See Sprengel, tom. ii, p. 428.

him."*

So also of" the woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself," Jesus "laid his hands on her; and immediately she was made straight."

Such cases may be abundantly multiplied; but the above are sufficient evidence that the division and degradation of medicine effected by the Church at this time, were no more sanctioned by Divine than human authority. We might naturally suppose that cases such as these would especially have claimed the care of the boasted followers of Christ and his Apostles, as being the only sure and ready proof of MIRACULOUS POWER. But not so; with the dawn of intellectual light, these were the diseases that, by an appeal to the senses, would have proved too plainly the truth or falsehood of their assumed power; and therefore it was that this portion of medicine was renounced, which-together with all other branches -had yielded so plentiful a harvest in those more prosperous times of ignorance and credulity, when, not only the reason, but the senses were in servile submission to authority.

In this manner, all operative medicine first, and in the interval between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, all external wounds, injuries and diseases, were separated from the "pure" physician's office; whilst that portion of medicine-internal diseases

*Luke xxii, 50.

whose existence or removal was less easily detected, remained during this period the exclusive province of the priest-physician.*

I would fain hope to have faithfully portrayed, not only the history, but, in some measure at least, the true cause of the first great schism in medicine. It remains to consider the more immediate subject of this paper; namely, THE PHYSICIAN'S OFFICE-thus divided-THROUGHOUT GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND IN MODERN TIMES; for which purpose it will be necessary to regard severally, that portion of it which attached to the priest and monk, even up to the time of its transfer to the Royal College of Physicians; and the other division which was consigned by the same authority to Barbers, Smiths, and others.

Whilst such evil powers and principles had combined to complete this division, better and more worthy means were at work to establish the revival of literature generally, and with it that of medicine.

The escape of the Greek savans with their longhidden copies of the ancient authors from Constantinople, and elsewhere in the Eastern empire, prior to, and at the time of its capture by the Turks, A.D.

* In the fourteenth century miraculous cures continued to be as frequent as in the times preceding. Whilst men of science and learning (followers of Roger Bacon and Petrus d'Apono) were consigned to death as magicians and sorcerers, sainted physicians became so numerous, that some absurd laws were enacted whereby alone cures could be pronounced miraculous, and the physician canonised. See Sprengel, tom. ii, p. 428.

1453, contributed with other causes to effect this end. The ready shelter and encouragement given to these fugitives, especially by the great Florentine patrons of learning, the De Medicis, occurring simultaneously with the invention of printing, served to confirm and perpetuate the success of these Revival schools, commencing with Salernum. Florence may, indeed, be called the birthplace of that restoration which had hitherto existed but in embryo.

From hence emanated those great floods of intellectual light and learning that were destined more or less to illumine the whole world with increasing splendour, to the present day; and here it was that Dr. Linacre, the founder of the College of Physicians, repaired to satiate his thirst for knowledge, and draw from the originals themselves those truths which had hitherto chiefly descended through Syriac and Arabic translations.

Dr. Friend says, the "Statutes of the College of Salernum are very old, and very proper; they are, perhaps, the first example of this kind, and may, probably, have set the pattern to all others of the same nature."* True it is, that one or both of the two great evilst first set forth and legislated against in these statutes, found an echo more or less distinct, in all subsequent legislation, up to and

*History of Medicine,' vol. ii, p. 229.

The Separation of Surgery from, and the Union of Pharmacy with, the Physician's Office.' See Antè, p. 28.

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