Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle AgesWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
History
Old-Time Makers of Medicine: The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Medicine, Medieval; Physicians
By far the most important contribution to the discussion in recent
years came not long since from the pen of Professor Adolph Harnack, the
professor of church history in the University of Berlin. Professor
Harnack's name is usually cited as that of one of the most destructive
of the higher critics. His recent book, however, "Luke the
Physician,"[33] is an entire submission to the old-fashioned viewpoint
that the writer of the Third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles was
a Greek fellow-worker of St. Paul, who had been in company for years
with Mark and Philip and James, and who had previously been a physician,
and was evidently well versed in all the medical lore of that time.
Harnack does not merely concede the old position. As might be expected,
his rediscussion of the subject clinches the arguments for the
traditional view, and makes it impossible ever to call it in question
again. It is easy to understand how important are such admissions when
we recall how much this traditional view has been assailed, and how
those who have held it have been accused of old-fogyism and lack of
scholarship, and unwarranted clinging to antiquated notions just because
they thought they were of faith, and how, lacking in true scholarship,
seriously hampering genuine investigation, such conservatism has been
declared to be.
The question of Luke's having been a physician is an extremely valuable
one, and no one in our time is better fitted by early training and long
years of study to elucidate it than Professor Harnack. He began his
excursions into historical writing years ago, as I understand, as an
historian of early Christian medicine. Some of his works on medical
conditions just before and after Christ are quoted confidently by the
distinguished German medical historians. From this department he
graduated into the field of the higher criticism. He is eminently in a
position, therefore, to state the case with regard to St. Luke fully,
and to indicate absolutely the conclusions that should be drawn from the
premises of fact, writings, and traditions that we have. He does so in a
very striking way. Perhaps no better example of his thoroughly lucid and
eminently logical mode of argumentation is to be found than the
paragraph in which he states the question. It might well be recommended
as an example of terse forcefulness and logical sequence that deserves
the emulation of all those who want to write on medical subjects. If we
had more of these characteristic qualities of Harnack's style, our
medical literature, so called, would not need to occupy so many pages of
print as it does--yet would say more. Here it is:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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