The Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Boston University, has given a very interesting and intelligent relation of the connections that exist between medicine and the Old Testament, in the light of nineteenth-century science.[50] The article in question is interesting in its logical reasons as to why the Bible was inspired by a superior power, as well as in the comparisons it lays before us of the medicine of the Pagans and that of the Bible, during the early history of the world. After reviewing the false, crude, and senseless vagaries and superstitious notions that passed for medicine from the period of the Trojan war, in 1184 B.C., to the dissolution of the Pythagorean Society, 500 B.C.--periods which existed after the writing of the books of Moses,--and the period between 500 B.C. and 320 B.C., or the philosophic era of medicine, during which flourished the father of our present system of medicine, an era of advancement, but which in our eyes is still full of errors and unscientific conclusions. From these two periods we span over centuries of darkness for science and medicine to the ages of Ambroise Pare and the more modern fathers of our art, who by perseverance finally extricated medicine from the mass of magical and superstitious rubbish which, like barnacles, had clung to it during its passage through the dark and ignorant ages. After this review our author turns to the Bible and discourses in this wise:-- "Turning our attention to the Bible, we take the position that, though it was not designed to teach the science of medicine, still, whenever by hint, explicit statement, or commandment there is found in it anything relating to medicine, disease, or sanitary regulation, there must be no error; that is, provided the Bible, in an exceptional sense, is God's book. Now, what are the facts in this case? They are these: though the Bible often speaks of disease and remedy, yet the illusions, deceptions, and gross errors of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, as formerly taught, nowhere appear upon its pages. This, it must be acknowledged, is at least singular. But more than this: the various hints and directions of the Bible, its sanitary regulations, the isolation of the sick, the washing, the sprinkling, the external applications, and the various moral and religious injunctions in their bearing upon health are confessed to be in harmony with what is most recent and approved. To be sure, the average old-school physician of a century ago would have blandly smiled at our simplicity, had it been suggested to him that his methods would be improved by following Bible hints. 'What did Moses know about medical science?' would have been his reply. But Moses, judged by recent standards, seems to have known much, or, at least, to have written well."