Balm of Gilead, Frankincense, Cassia, Cinnamon, the Pomegranate, Dill, and it is conjectured Colocynth and Castor Oil.

In medicine and natural history the great lawgiver Moses not only surpassed his Egyptian masters, but possessed the secret of reducing gold to powder, as related in the 32nd chapter of Exodus" And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it." He also sweetened the bitter waters of Marah, and has left a most accurate account of the various forms of leprosy. The wisdom of Solomon has since become a proverb.

"And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding exceeding much, and largeness of heart even as the sand that is on the sea shore."

And Solomon's wisdom exceeded the wisdom of all the children of the East country, and all the wisdom of Egypt."

For he was wiser than all men," ****** and his fame was in all nations round about."

"And he spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five."

66

And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes."*

Hartwell Horne,† who appears to have consulted and collated almost every existing authority upon the subject, in his section "On the diseases mentioned in the Scriptures," has the following passage upon the origin of medicine among the Hebrews, and the nature and duties of their physicians.

The Jews ascribed the origin of the healing art to God himself (Ecclus. xxxviii. 1, 2,) and the Egyptians attributed their invention of it to their God Thaut or Hermes, or to Osiris or Isis.

Antiently at Babylon, the sick, when they were first attacked by a disease, were left in the streets, for the purpose of learning from those who might pass them, what practices or what medicines had been of assistance to them, when afflicted with similar diseases. The Egyptians carried their sick into the temple of Serapis; the Greeks carried theirs into those of Esculapius. In the temples of both these deities there were preserved written receipts of the means by which various cures had been effected. With the aid of these

I. Kings, Cap. iv.

A modern writer, however, commenting on this fact, has the following remarks:"Gold is so ductile that it is very difficult to grind it to powder, and it is still more difficult to dissolve it in water. Here is an exploit which the greatest chemists of the present day could not do more than perform-a sufficient proof of the scientific skill of Moses, and consequently of the Egyptians, from whom he drew his knowledge. But there seems no reason for believing that Moses possessed any chemical knowledge whatever. He broke the calf in pieces, and reduced it to as small fragments as he could; these he threw into water, and made the Israelites drink of that liquid. We are sure that the gold was not dissolved in the water, because gold, in a state of solution, is one of the most virulent of poisons, and could not, therefore, have been administered to the Israelites with impunity."-Ed. Review, Vol. L. P. 257.

+ Horne's Introduction to the critical study and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. Vol. iii. chapter ix. § 1. p. 501 to 11.

recorded remedies, the art of healing assumed in the progress of time the aspect of a science. It assumed such a form first in Egypt, and at a much more recent period in Greece; but it was not long before those of the former were surpassed in excellence by the physicians of the latter country. That the Egyptians, however, had no little skill in medicine, may be gathered from what is said in the Pentateuch respecting the marks of leprosy. That some of the medicinal prescriptions should fail of bringing the expected relief is by no means strange, since Pliny himself mentions some which are far from producing the effects he ascribes to them. * Physicians are first mentioned in Gen. 1. 2. Exod. xxi. 19. Job xiii. 4. Some acquaintance with chirurgical operations is implied in the rite of circumcision (Gen. xvii. 11-14.) There is ample evidence that the Israelites had some acquaintance with the internal structure of the human system, although it does not appear that dissections of the human body, for medical purposes, were made till as late as the time of Ptolemy. That physicians sometimes undertook to exercise their skill, in removing diseases of an internal nature is evident from the circumstance of David's playing upon the harp to cure the melancholy of Saul. (1 Sam. xvi. 16.) The art of healing was committed among the Hebrews as well as among the Egyptians, to the priests; who, indeed, were obliged, by a law of the state, to take cognizance of leprosies. (Lev. xiii, 1-14, 57. Deut. xxiv. 8, 9.) Reference is made to physicians who were not priests, and to instances of sickness, disease, healing, &c." in various parts of the scriptures."

The diseases mentioned in the sacred writings § are cancers, consumption, dropsy, fevers, epilepsy, lunacy, leprosy in its

This is by no means confined to Pliny and the ancients-our modern systems of Materia Medica abound and are overloaded with remedies to which supposititious virtues are ascribed, and contain many which are inert and useless, or on the other hand positively mischievous. Few circumstances have operated so prejudicially upon the advance of the therapeutical department of medicine, as the ignorance, carelessness, and we fear, occasionally the culpable and wilful mis-representations which characterize a large proportion of the observatious published on the actions and uses of medicinal agents.

+This, however, can only be admitted as evidence of the lowest possible degree of surgical skill. Circumcision and Nymphotomy, an analogous operation, still continues to be practised among the Copts, Egyptians, Arabs, Ethiopians and other eastern nations. They are performed by the most ignorant and lowest order of practitioners, demanding a very moderate amount of knowledge and skill. Buffon, in alluding to the latter operation says-" d'apres Niebuhr, cette operation se fait vers l'age de dix ans, sans ceremonie religieuse, et en y attachant si peu d'importance qu'on ne la fait pratiquer que lorsque les femmes qui font ce metier passent accidentellement dans la rue." (Hist. Nat. Tom. iv.) They are on a level in fact with the corn cutters and bone setters of modern Europe.

ANATOMY does not appear to have been cultivated by the Hebrews, among whom the contact with a dead body rendered an individual unclean, even with purification for seven days, as related in the 19th chapter of Numbers from the 11th verse, and also alluded to in the book of Leviticus.

Their knowledge of PHYSIOLOGY was exceedingly restricted. They regarded the bones as important organs, and as the seat of severe diseases, and considered the umbilical region and epigastrium as exercising a great degree of influence over the health of the individual. But on these and other ordinary matters connected with the natural sciences and arts, the Jews were left very much to their own resources. It never was the design of true Revelation to supersede the exercise of the human faculties in any department of knowledge to the cultivation of which these may be fully competent. On the contrary, its general intent has been to brace, invigorate and expand all the powers and susceptibilities of the soul, and to encourage, under due regulation, the application of these to every pursuit calculated to enlarge the boundaries of useful knowledge or confer fresh benefits on the family of man.

§ Horne. loc. cit.

various forms, as contagious or non-contagious-described with a degree of minuteness and accuracy to which it is scarcely possible for a modern observer to make a single addition from external examination alone, as may daily be seen in the streets of this city-elephantiasis with a species of which the patriarch Job is conjectured to have been afflicted; the disease of the Philistines, variously supposed to have been either dysentery, or hæmorrhoids; the disease of Saul, melancholia; the disease of Jehoram, King of Israel, dysentery, with ulceration and discharge of portions of intestine; the disease with which Hezekiah was afflicted, said to have been either a pleurisy, or the plague, elephantiasis, or a quinsey, but conjectured by most to have been fever terminating in abscess; and the hypochondriasis of Nebuchadnezzar.

We do not refer to the diseases, remedies, and other medical matters mentioned in the New Testament, as they are of much more recent date, and can scarcely be taken to have any· connection with the antiquity of Hebrew Medicine.

Much of the learning of the ancient Israelites was probably derived from the Egyptians, in the frequent intercourse that took place in the time of Abraham and his descendants, as well as during the four centuries of bondage of the successors of Jacob. There is no doubt, however, that much more was peculiar to themselves, and like their faith and customs, handed down from the remotest periods.

The claims of the Chinese will not bear investigation, either as to the extent or antiquity of their knowledge of medicine, when compared with the Hebrews, the Egyptians, or the Hindus.

There can be equally little, or possibly even less, doubt concerning the more modern claims of the Arabs, who have not only been proved to have had access to and quoted from the Charaka and Susruta,-but to have been well acquainted with the writings of the Greek Fathers of Medicine. In fact the doctrines of Hippocrates and Galen were early taught in their schools, and no credit can be assigned to them of having been among the earliest cultivators of any of the arts and sciences. They belong altogether to a much more recent era, and were in the first instance chiefly indebted for their knowledge to the Hindus and Greeks.

Although the Greeks cannot pretend to the antiquity in knowledge of the Hindus, the Egyptians, or the Hebrews"it is neither in Egypt, nor in India, nor in Palestine, nor in Rome, that the first germs of the systematic study of science are to be found, but in Greece alone."

To the Hindus and to the Egyptians the modern world

owes nothing of its advance in science and civilization, but to Greece, the cradle of learning and liberty, the debt of gratitude in every department of literature and art is immense and universally acknowledged. Among them none have derived more positive benefit, or been more firmly impressed with the sterling stamp of wisdom than Medicine and the branches of human knowledge collaterally or immediately connected with it. With the single exception of Chemistry, in which the credit of a high degree of cultivation and success, subsequently reflected in the brilliant researches and discoveries of our own time, belongs undoubtedly to the Arabs, every other branch of European Medicine may be traced to a Grecian origin; and in many of them, the doctrines and practices of the old fathers of physic are still quoted with deference, and acknowledged with respect. The dogmatism of Hippocrates and his successors; the professed empiricism which reigned in the schools from the time of Serapion to the commencement of the Christian Æra; the methodism which partially commenced with Themison and continued until the reign of Marcus Aurelius, when it was firmly established by Galen, the physician and peripatetic; and the peripatetic dogmatism that prevailed from his time to the period when that strange compound of mountebank, quack, and philosopher Paracelsus, the cotemporary of Charles the V., appeared upon the stage, all had their influence upon the succeeding revolutions of medicine,embracing the chemical dogmatism that ceased with the discovery of the circulation, by the immortal Harvey, in the reign. of Charles I; the mechanical dogmatism that obtained possession of the schools to the period of Boerhave in the commencement of the 18th century, and then merged into the general dogmatism with its infinite varieties and off-shoots, including the learned empiricisms of Homeopathy, Hydropathy, and others of still more doubtful character, that still continue to occupy the learned, attract the vulgar, delude the ignorant, and mystify the multitude. All this, however, is foreign to our present purpose, and we must retrace our steps from the light of Greece to the obscurity of Hindustan.

To enable our readers to estimate correctly the value and extent of the addition contributed to the history of medicine by Wise's Commentary, a brief and rapid review of our previous knowledge of the subject, may not be deemed altogether uninteresting or out of place.

To the full and candid work of the learned LeClerc, we have not access at present, but if our memory be not faulty, it contains little, if any, positive information upon the medicine of

the Hindus, except possibly a few incidental allusions borrowed from the writings of the Arabian physicians, who were not very profoundly acquainted with the matter themselves.

The history of medicine from the time of Galen to the commencement of the 16th century, by Friend, is equally silent.

Of Black's history of medicine and surgery published in 1782, it is sufficient to repeat the opinion entertained by a cotemporaneous writer, that it was-"prolix in ancient history, meagre in the middle ages, superficial in later times, and in the most modern completely uninformed.”

The first of the works with which we have any acquaintance, that alludes directly to the Hindus as among the earliest of the successful cultivators of the healing art, is the infinitely important and valuable' Essai d'une histoire pragmatique de la Medecine, by Kurt Sprengel-a work to which we have been much indebted in the passing remarks upon Egyptian and Hebrew medicine.

His chapter upon Indian Medicine is chiefly compiled from the Greek writers and the statements of modern travellers and authorities, but from having had no access to the original Sanskrit historians, of the existence even of most of which he appears to have been unacquainted, his information is necessarily meagre, and in some respects not very correct.

Bostock, although a diligent reader and evidently acquainted with the writings of nearly every author of repute and trust connected with the origin and progress of physic, has not even mentioned the Hindus in his History of Medicine, evidently regarding the little information then extant as too scanty and fabulous to deserve notice.

Dr. Wm. Hamilton is somewhat more explicit on the subject, and sums up his opinions in the following paragraph, which contains, indeed, the whole of the space devoted to the Hindus in his "History of Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy, from the creation of the world to the commencement of the nineteenth Century."

Notwithstanding the progress which recent researches, no less than ancient traditions inform us, was made by the inhabitants of Hindustan, at the most remote periods, in other branches of knowledge, and in the abstruse science of Astronomy more especially; their proficiency in the art of healing does not appear, from any evidence which either ancient history or modern discovery affords, to have equalled that of nations, in other respects far less enlightened. Their chief dependence, in the cure of disease, consisted, as Strabo informs us, in a rigid attention to diet, and the external application of cataplasms, and other topical remedies. Medicine appears to have been practised chiefly, if not wholly, by persons who were termed Lauavalos or Samaneans, who exercised their calling by the special permission, and under the immediate superintendence, of the magistrates.