“I know there is an unworthy reproach cast upon this excellent study that it inclines men to atheism. 'Tis true the ignorance and corruption of men that profess any of the three honourable faculties, bring scandal upon the faculty itself. Again, sciolists and half-witted men are those that discredit any science they meddle with. But he that pretends to the noble skill of physic, and dares to deny that which doth continually _incurrere in sensus_, that which in all his researches and experiments he must meet with at every turn, I dare to say he is no Physician; or at least that he doth at once give his profession and his conscience too the lye.” CHAPTER CXX. EFFECT OF MEDICAL STUDIES ON DIFFERENT DISPOSITIONS. JEW PHYSICIANS, ESTIMATION AND ODIUM IN WHICH THEY WERE HELD. _Confiesso la digression; mas es facil al que no quisiere leerla, passar al capitulo siguiente, y esta advertencia sirva de disculpa._ LUIS MUNOZ. If the elder Daniel had thought that the moral feelings and religious principles of his son were likely to be endangered by the study of medicine, he would never have been induced to place him with a medical practitioner. But it seemed to him, good man, that the more we study the works of the Creator, the more we must perceive and feel his wisdom and his power and his goodness. It was so in his own case, and like Adam Littleton and all simple-hearted men, he judged of others by himself. Nevertheless that the practice of Physic, and still more of surgery, should have an effect like that of war upon the persons engaged in it, is what those who are well acquainted with human nature might expect, and would be at no loss to account for. It is apparent that in all these professions coarse minds must be rendered coarser, and hard hearts still farther indurated; and that there is a large majority of such minds and hearts in every profession, trade and calling, few who have had any experience of the ways of the world can doubt. We need not look farther for the immediate cause. Add to a depraved mind and an unfeeling disposition, either a subtle intellect or a daring one, and you have all the preparations for atheism that the Enemy could desire. But other causes may be found in the history of the medical profession which was an art in the worst sense of the word, before it became a science, and long after it pretended to be a science, was little better than a craft. Among savages the sorcerer is always the physician; and to this day superstitious remedies are in common use among the ignorant in all countries. But wherever the practice is connected with superstition as free scope is presented to wickedness as to imagination; and there have been times in which it became obnoxious to much obloquy, which on this score was well deserved.