CHAPTER CXX.

EFFECT OF MEDICAL STUDIES ON DIFFERENT DISPOSITIONS. JEW PHYSICIANS, ESTIMATION AND ODIUM IN WHICH THEY WERE HELD.

Confiesso la digression; mas es facil al que no quisiere leerla, passar al capitulo siguiente, y esta advertencia sirva de disculpa.

LUIS MUNOZ.             

If the elder Daniel had thought that the moral feelings and religious principles of his son were likely to be endangered by the study of medicine, he would never have been induced to place him with a medical practitioner. But it seemed to him, good man, that the more we study the works of the Creator, the more we must perceive and feel his wisdom and his power and his goodness. It was so in his own case, and like Adam Littleton and all simple-hearted men, he judged of others by himself.

Nevertheless that the practice of Physic, and still more of surgery, should have an effect like that of war upon the persons engaged in it, is what those who are well acquainted with human nature might expect, and would be at no loss to account for. It is apparent that in all these professions coarse minds must be rendered coarser, and hard hearts still farther indurated; and that there is a large majority of such minds and hearts in every profession, trade and calling, few who have had any experience of the ways of the world can doubt. We need not look farther for the immediate cause. Add to a depraved mind and an unfeeling disposition, either a subtle intellect or a daring one, and you have all the preparations for atheism that the Enemy could desire.

But other causes may be found in the history of the medical profession which was an art in the worst sense of the word, before it became a science, and long after it pretended to be a science, was little better than a craft. Among savages the sorcerer is always the physician; and to this day superstitious remedies are in common use among the ignorant in all countries. But wherever the practice is connected with superstition as free scope is presented to wickedness as to imagination; and there have been times in which it became obnoxious to much obloquy, which on this score was well deserved.

Nothing exposed the Jews to more odium in ages when they were held most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as physicians. There is a remarkable instance of the esteem in which they were held for their supposed superiority in this art as late as the middle of the sixteenth century. Francis I. after a long illness in which he found no benefit from his own physicians, dispatched a courier into Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most skilful Jewish practitioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for merriment to the Spaniards; the Emperor however gave orders to make enquiry for one, and when he could hear of none who would trust himself in that character, he sent a New-Christian physician, with whom he supposed Francis would be equally satisfied. But when this person arrived in France, the King by way of familiar discourse sportively asked him if he were not yet tired of expecting the Messiah? Such a question produced from the new Convert a declaration that he was a Christian, upon which the King dismissed him immediately without consulting him, and sent forthwith to Constantinople for a Jew. The one who came found it necessary to prescribe nothing more for his royal patient than Asses milk.

This reputation in which their physicians were held was owing in great measure to the same cause which gave them their superiority in trade. The general celebrity which they had obtained in the dark ages, and which is attested by Eastern tales as well as by European history, implies that they had stores of knowledge which were not accessible to other people. And indeed as they communicated with all parts of the known world, and with parts of it which were unknown to the Christian nations, they had means of obtaining the drugs of the East, and the knowledge of what remedies were in use there, which was not of less importance in an art, founded, as far as it was of any avail, wholly upon experience. That knowledge they reserved to themselves, perhaps as much with a view to national as to professional interests.

Nicolas Antonio sent to Bertolacci a manuscript entitled Otzar Haanijm, that is, “the Treasure of the Poor,” written by a certain Master Julian in the Portuguese language, but in rabbinical characters. It was a collection of simple receipts for all diseases, and appears to have been written thus that it might be serviceable to those only who were acquainted with Hebrew. There was good policy in this. A king's physician in those days was hardly a less important person than a king's confessor; with many princes indeed he would be the more influential of the two, as being the most useful, and frequently the best informed; and in those times of fearful insecurity, it might fall within his power, like Mordecai, to avert some great calamity from his nation.

Among the articles which fantastic superstition, or theories not less fantastic had introduced into the materia medica, there were some which seemed more appropriate to the purposes of magic than of medicine, and some of an atrocious kind. Human fat was used as an unguent,—that of infants as a cosmetic. Romances mention baths of children's blood; and there were times and countries in which such a remedy was as likely to be prescribed, as imagined in fiction. It was believed that deadly poisons might be extracted from the human body;—and they who were wicked enough to administer the product, would not be scrupulous concerning the means whereby it was procured. One means indeed was by tormenting the living subject. To such practices no doubt Harrison alludes when, speaking, in Elizabeth's reign, of those who graduated in the professions of law or physic, he says, “one thing only I mislike in them, and that is their usual going into Italy, from whence very few without special grace do return good men, whatever they pretend of conference or practice; chiefly the physicians, who under pretence of seeking of foreign simples, do oftentimes learn the framing of such compositions as were better unknown than practised, as I have often heard alleged.” The suspicion of such practices attached more to the Jewish than to any other physicians, because of the hatred with which they were supposed to regard all Christians, a feeling which the populace in every country, and very frequently the Rulers also did every thing to deserve. The general scandal of atheism lay against the profession; but to be a Jew was in common opinion to be worse than an atheist, and calumnies were raised against the Jew Physicians on the specific ground of their religion, which, absurd and monstrous as they were, popular credulity was ready to receive. One imputation was that they made it a point of conscience to kill one patient in five, as a sacrifice of atonement for the good which they had done to the other four. Another was that the blood of a Christian infant was always administered to a Jewess in child-bed, and was esteemed so necessary an ingredient in their superstitious ceremonies or their medical practice at such times, that they exported it in a dried and pulverized form to Mahommedan countries, where it could not be obtained fresh.

There are some pages in Jackson's Treatise upon the Eternal Truth of Scripture and Christian Belief, which occurring in a work of such excellent worth, and coming from so profound and admirable a writer, must be perused by every considerate reader with as much sorrow as surprize. They show to what a degree the most judicious and charitable mind may be deluded when seeking eagerly for proofs of a favorite position or important doctrine, even though the position and the doctrine should be certainly just. Forgetful of the excuse which he has himself suggested for the unbelief of the Jews since the destruction of Jerusalem, saying, with equal truth and felicity of expression, that “their stubborness is but a strong hope malignified, or, as we say, grown wild and out of kind,” he gives credit to the old atrocious tales of their crucifying Christian children, and finds in them an argument for confirming our faith at which the most iron-hearted supralapsarian might shudder. For one who passes much of his time with books, and with whom the dead are as it were living and conversing, it is almost as painful to meet in an author whom he reveres and loves, with anything which shocks his understanding and disturbs his moral sense, as it is to perceive the faults of a dear friend. When we discover aberrations of this kind in such men, it should teach us caution for ourselves as well as tolerance for others; and thus we may derive some benefit even from the errors of the wise and good.

That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews with hostile feelings as their first persecutors, was but natural, and that that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious horror for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation it's abiding punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many centuries this enmity should have continued to exist, and that no sense of compassion should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have inherited the curse of their fathers was in the apprehension of ordinary minds to inherit their guilt; and the cruelties which man inflicted upon them were interpreted as proofs of the continued wrath of Heaven, so that the very injuries and sufferings which in any other case would have excited commiseration, served in this to close the heart against it. Being looked upon as God's outlaws, they were everywhere placed as it were under the ban of humanity. And while these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered them more especial objects of envy, suspicion and popular hatred. In times when literature had gone to decay throughout all Christendom, the Jews had not partaken of the general degradation. They had Moses and the Prophets whose everlasting lamps were kept trimmed amongst them, and burning clearly through the dark when the light of the Gospel had grown dim in the socket, and Monkery and Popery had well nigh extinguished it. They possessed a knowledge of distant countries which was confined to themselves; for being dispersed every where, they travelled every where with the advantage of a language which was spoken by the Children of Israel wherever they were found, and nowhere by any other people. As merchants therefore and as statesmen they had opportunities peculiar to themselves. In both capacities those Princes who had any sense of policy found them eminently useful. But wealth made them envied, and the way in which they increased it by lending money made them odious in ages when to take any interest was accounted usury. That odium was aggravated whenever they were employed in raising taxes; and as they could not escape odium, they seem sometimes to have braved it in despite or in despair, and to have practised extortion if not in defiance of public opinion, at least as a species of retaliation for the exactions which they themselves endured, and the frauds which unprincipled debtors were always endeavouring to practise upon them.

But as has already been observed, nothing exposed them to greater obloquy than the general opinion which was entertained of their skill in medicine, and of the flagitious practices with which it was accompanied. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to strengthen that obloquy, even when it did not directly accredit the calumnies which exasperated it. Several Councils denounced excommunication against any persons who should place themselves under the care of a Jewish Physician, for it was pernicious and scandalous they said, that Christians who ought to despise and hold in horror the enemies of their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies in sickness. They affirmed that medicines administered by such impious hands became hurtful instead of helpful; and moreover that the familiarity thus produced between a Jewish practitioner and a Christian family, gave occasion to great evil and to many crimes. The decree of the Lateran Council by which physicians were enjoined under heavy penalties to require that their patients should confess and communicate before they administered any medicines to them, seems to have been designed as much against Jewish practitioners as heretical patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable when they could express their feelings with safety. It appears in their own books that a physician was forbidden by the Rabbis to attend upon either a Christian or Gentile, unless he dared not refuse; under compulsion it was lawful, but he was required to demand payment for his services, and never to attend any such patients gratuitously.