Sketches from the history of medicine, ancient and modern An oration delivered before the Hunterian Society

Footnote 1:

The library destroyed by the Caliph Omar, was situated in the temple of Serapis, and consisted of 300,000 volumes; in addition to which there existed in the Bruchion quarter of the city of Alexandria, a second collection of 400,000 books, which was accidentally lost by fire during the war with Julius Cæsar.

Alexandria (founded 332 B.C.) stood in an intermediate position between the east and west, and united the commerce of Europe, Aralia, and India; here came first into collision the Greek and Oriental mind; here the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament was written; and the collections formed by the ancient kings of Egypt were rapidly enriched and enlarged by the interchange of ideas with the Greek philosophers.

The learned talk about the writings of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians; but they do not produce a single scrap of tangible evidence in support of these pretensions.

It may, however, be contended, that although there are no writings extant, traditional evidence is very strong; and this establishes a high antiquity for Lycurgus, who lived 900 years before the Christian era. The more, therefore, we inquire, the stronger the proof becomes, that Moses as a lawgiver flourished 600 years before the highest claimant to our veneration on the grounds of primitiveness; and thus we are entitled to assume that the Greek legislator took much that is excellent, in the laws ascribed to him, from his Jewish predecessor.

Lycurgus lived about the time that Shishak, king of Egypt, destroyed the temple of Solomon, and carried away many captives: it is therefore no very extravagant supposition, that the Pentateuch of Moses was known to the great lawgiver. During the peaceful reign of king Solomon, the intercourse between the Jews and the Egyptians was frequent and extensive, for the great monarch, needing the assistance of skilful artificers for the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem, broke down that barrier of exclusiveness that had previously isolated his people.

Now the learned of that day were seekers after wisdom wherever it was to be found; and moreover, as the fame of Solomon was co-extensive with the then existing world, so acute an observer as the founder of the Grecian law could not fail to use the materials which the wide spread knowledge of the Jewish kings sayings and doings had placed within his reach.

Every Jew was required to read the law, or hear it read, once a year—each individual therefore became a living depository of its truths, and, consequently, a somewhat competent teacher of those who might desire to be instructed in such matters.

Moses then comes before us as the first writer, and the first lawgiver; and we shall now proceed to show that to these titles he added the still greater distinction of being the first physician, and promulgator of sanitary precautions.

At present, however, I will not further intrude upon your patience, but leaving his claims where I have placed them, pass on to the consideration of the character of the laws themselves;—and here we arrive at a body of enactments so excellent, so well adapted, not only to the requirements of a nomadic people wandering in a wild country, but to that same people when they subsequently became dwellers in cities, and suffered all the encumbrances of a more advanced civilization. Moses made laws for all times and for all communities, general as well as particular, reaching the nation through every individual member thereof; his rules for the preservation of health embraced the consideration of personal cleanliness enforced as a religious obligation in order that he might thereby enlist the unvarying co-operation of the priesthood.

In a climate incentive to animal enjoyments he placed strict barriers for the preservation of chastity, and decreed that matters relating to sexual intercourse should be under the surveillance of the priest; directions were also given to the menstruous woman, and for her conduct during pregnancy and in childbed. The ordinance of circumcision was devised not alone for ablutionary purposes, but for other well understood objects conducive to purity. Further, it was directed how the man should order himself in affections of the virile organs; and more emphatically, what he was bound to observe when the terrible leprosy afflicted him. In such a calamity he was compelled to withdraw from his house, to be separated from society, and present himself to the priest at various periods during the progress of the disease; he was also to remain in a cheerless exclusion, where, if by chance any unwary passenger came in sight, the sufferer was commanded to cry aloud, unclean! unclean! When convalescence and health returned, the priest pronounced him cured of his leprosy, and he was then permitted to return to his home; but if the leprosy was supposed to cling to the habitation, that, too, was subjected to isolation, and in some instances to total destruction.

The same precautions obtain in our own times, although nearly 3400 years have elapsed since they were first insisted upon by Moses.

Thus, we are told by Dr. Thompson, an eminent American writer on the Holy Land (where he resided many years), that lepers are everywhere regarded as unclean, and that at Jerusalem (where there is always a considerable number of them) a separate quarter in the city is assigned to them, to which they are rigidly confined. Dr. Thompson says: “I have seen them cast out of the villages where they resided, and no healthy person would touch them, eat with them, or use any of their clothes or utensils, and even the Arab tent dwellers cast them out of camp. The leper beggars stand apart, and never attempt to touch you, even as it was in the time of the Saviour, when the ten lepers stood afar off and lifted up their voice of entreaty.”

The same writer furnishes us with the following graphic description, which, as coming from an eye witness, we have deemed worthy of notice:—

“Sauntering down the Jaffa road, on my way to the Holy City, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, sans eyes, sans nose, sans hair, sans everything; they held up their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates, and, in a word, I stood horrified, when, for the first time, I found myself face to face with a leper.” He then goes on to say: “For many years I have sought to get at the mystery of its origin, but neither books nor learned physicians have thrown any light upon it. I have suspected that this remorseless enemy originates in some self-propagating animalcules, and thus I can conceive the possibility of the contagion reaching the walls of a dwelling. No one has spoken with authority, as to what it proceeds from or how it is generated.