The story of Naaman (2 Kings v.) deserves to be mentioned briefly here. He was captain of the host of the King of Syria (about 894 B. C.) and a man of valor, highly esteemed by his master, but he was--according to the Bible statement--a leper. Learning casually that there was in Samaria a prophet who might be able to cure his disease, he put a large sum of money into his sack and departed for that country. “So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.” Naaman, at first much displeased with the advice given to him by Elisha, and especially by the very informal manner in which it had been communicated to him, finally decided to follow the prophet’s instructions. “Then went he down, and dipped himself seven times in Jordan, ... and his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean. And he returned to the man of God, ... and came, and stood before him; and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.” Elisha, however, refused persistently to accept any reward for the advice which he had given. He simply said to Naaman: “Go in peace.” Before he departed, however, Naaman expressed to Elisha the hope that he would be pardoned if he yielded to the necessity of bowing down to the god Rimmon on certain occasions--as, for example, when he accompanied his master, the king, on his visits to the temple of that god for the purposes of worship. From the evidence furnished by this account, as given in the Old Testament, it is fair to assume that both Naaman and the writer of the book of Kings believed that the cure had been effected by supernatural means. The modern physician, however, is not ready to accept such an interpretation of the manner in which Naaman’s cure was effected, but prefers to believe that the supposed leprosy was in reality some curable form of skin disease which to the unprofessional eye appeared like the other malady. It might, for example, have been an aggravated general eczema, dependent upon such excesses of eating and drinking as a wealthy captain of the king’s host would be likely to indulge in. And if this supposition is correct, one cannot but admire the great practical wisdom of Elisha in advising Naaman to take seven baths--one a day presumably--in the river Jordan, a spot so far removed from his home that it would scarcely be possible for him to obtain any but the simplest kind of diet during this comparatively long period of time.