There are ecclesiastics among us, who consider, that the Levitical law is obligatory upon the priesthood, throughout the United States of America, at the present day; and who believe it to be _their_ bounden duty, to take cognizance of leprosies, and all other disorders; and to physick the bodies, not less than the souls, of their respective parishioners. To this I sturdily object--not at all, from any doubt of their ability, to practise the profession, as skilfully, as did the son of Jesse, and to drive out devils with a Jews'-harp; and to cure all manner of diseases, in the same manner, in which the learned Kircherus avers, according to Sir Thomas Browne, vol. ii. page 536, Lond. 1835, the bite of the tarantula is cured, by songs and tunes; and to soothe boils as big as King Hezekiah's, with fig poultices, according to Scripture; for I have the greatest reverence for that intuition, whereby such men are spared those _studia annorum_, so necessary for the acquirement of any tolerable knowledge of the art of medicine, by all, who are not in holy orders. My objection is of quite another kind--I object to the union of the cure of souls and the cure of bodies, in the same person; as I object to the union of Church and State, and to the union of the power of the purse and the power of the sword. It is true, withal, that when a sufferer is killed, by ministerial physic, which never can happen, of course, but for the patient's want of faith, nobody dreams of such an irreverent proceeding, as pursuing the officious priest, for _mala praxis_. Priests and witches, jugglers, and old women have been the earliest practitioners of medicine, in every age, and every nation: and the principal, preventive, and remedial medicines, in all the primitive, unwritten pharmacopæias, have been consecrated herbs and roots, charms and incantations, amulets and prayers, and the free use of the Jews'-harp. The reader has heard the statement of Professor Jahn. In 1803, Dr. Winterbottom, physician to the colony of Sierra Leone, published, in London, a very interesting account of the state of medicine, in that colony. He says, that the practice of physic, in Africa, is entirely in the hands of old women. These practitioners, like the servants of Saul, believe, that almost all diseases are caused by evil spirits; in other words, that their patients are bedevilled: and they rely, mainly, on charms and incantations. Dr. W. states, that the natives get terribly drunk, at funerals--funerals produce drunkenness--drunkenness produces fevers--fevers produce death--and death produces funerals. All this is imputed to witchcraft, acting in a circle. In the account of the Voyage of the Ship Duff to Tongataboo, in 1796, the missionaries give a similar statement of the popular notion, as to the origin of diseases--the devil is at the bottom of them all; and exorcism the only remedy.