Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for ProtestantsSutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Religion
Living Fountains or Broken Cisterns: An Educational Problem for Protestants
Sutherland, E. A. (Edward Alexander)
Church and education; Education -- History; Religious education
It is well to remember that Christ was the Great Physician, healing not
only soul maladies, but physical infirmities as well; and to the apostles
was given the commission to heal the sick and restore sight to the blind.
Gradually, however, as the power of the gospel in its purity was lost by
the substitution of error for truth, the leaders of the church introduced
miracle cures, and preached the efficacy of the bones of saints, etc., in
the cure of disease. This became popular, and increased throughout the
Dark Ages.
[Sidenote: Medical study discouraged]
Draper describes the fanaticism of the monastic schools, and finally
assigns a reason for the exclusion from them of the study of physiology
and anatomy and the science of medicine. “The body,” he says, “was under
some spiritual charge,—the first joint of the right thumb being in the
care of God the Father, the second under that of the blessed Virgin,
and so on of other parts. For each disease there was a saint. A man
with sore eyes must invoke St. Clara, but if it were an inflammation
elsewhere, he must turn to St. Anthony.... For the propitiation of these
celestial beings it was necessary that fees should be paid, and thus the
practice of imposture—medicine became a great source of profit. In all
this there was no other intention than that of extracting money.”[93]
[Sidenote: Doctors in secret]
While such was the teachings of the papacy, the Jews and Mohammedans were
achieving wonderful success, and making discoveries of lasting benefit to
mankind in Spain and Asia Minor. “Bishops, princes, kings, and popes had
each in private his Hebrew doctor; though all understood that he was a
contraband luxury, in many countries pointedly and absolutely prohibited
by the law. In the eleventh century nearly all the physicians in Europe
were Jews.” One reason for this was: “The church would tolerate no
interference with her spiritual methods of treating disease, which formed
one of her most productive sources of gain; and the study of medicine had
been formally introduced into the rabbinical schools.”[94]
[Sidenote: Jewish physicians prohibited]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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