nd
those of the United States, this at least may be said, that on both
sides of the Atlantic the great majority of the leading institutions
of learning are under the sway of enlightened public opinion as voiced
mainly by laymen, and that, this being the case, the physical and
natural sciences are henceforth likely to be developed normally,
and without fear of being sterilized by theology or oppressed by
ecclesiasticism.

CHAPTER XIII. FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.

I. THE EARLY AND SACRED THEORIES OF DISEASE.

Nothing in the evolution of human thought appears more inevitable than
the idea of supernatural intervention in producing and curing disease.
The causes of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after
ages of scientific labour. In those periods when man sees everywhere
miracle and nowhere law,--when he attributes all things which he can not
understand to a will like his own,--he naturally ascribes his diseases
either to the wrath of a good being or to the malice of an evil being.

This idea underlies the connection of the priestly class with the
healing art: a connection of which we have survivals among rude tribes
in all parts of the world, and which is seen in nearly every ancient
civilization--especially in the powers over disease claimed in Egypt by
the priests of Osiris and Isis, in Assyria by the priests of Gibil, in
Greece by the priests of Aesculapius, and in Judea by the priests and
prophets of Jahveh.

In Egypt there is evidence, reaching back to a very early period, that
the sick were often regarded as afflicted or possessed by demons; the
same belief comes constantly before us in the great religions of India
and China; and, as regards Chaldea, the Assyrian tablets recovered in
recent years, while revealing the source of so many myths and legends
transmitted to the modern world through the book of Genesis, show
especially this idea of the healing of diseases by the casting out of
devils. A similar theory was elaborated in Persia. Naturally, then, the
Old Testament, so precious in showing the evolution of religious and
moral truth among men, attributes such diseases as the leprosy of Miriam
and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the dysentery of Jehoram, the withered
hand of Jeroboam, the fatal illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the
wrath of God or the malice of Satan; while, in the New Testament, such
examples as the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the
casting