The Babylonian system of therapeutics was not unlike the Egyptian as far as incantations were concerned. Many of these have been discovered. The formulas usually consist of a description of the disease and its symptoms, a desire for deliverance from it, and an order for it to depart. Some draughts were given which may have had some medicinal effect, but they were supposed to be enchanted drinks. Knots were supposed to have some magical effect on diseases, and conjurations were also wrought by the power of numbers. The Book of Daniel shows the official recognition given to magicians, astrologers, and sorcerers. The Jews seem to have got their early medical knowledge from the Egyptians, and changed it only in so far as their religion made it necessary, for with them as with others the healing art was a part of the religion, and the Levites were the sole practitioners. Much valuable medical knowledge was mixed with much that could only have had a mental influence. Disease was considered a punishment for sin, and hence the cure was religious rather than medical. The disease might be inflicted by God direct, and the cure would be a proof of his forgiveness; it might also be inflicted by Satan or the spirits of the air with the permission of Jehovah, and the cure would then be brought about by exorcism. There seems to have been a rather elaborate system of demonology among the Jews, who were at one time the chief exponents of the doctrine, and consequently the principal exorcists. Among the Jews a prominent "demoness of sickness is Bath-Chorin. She touches the hands and lower limbs by night. Many diseases are caused by demons." According to Josephus, "to demons may be ascribed leprosy, rabies, asthma, cardiac diseases, nervous diseases, which last are the specialty of evil demons, such as epilepsy." Incantations were in use among the later Jews, and amulets of neck-chains like serpents and ear-rings were employed to protect the wearers against the evil eye and similar troubles. In India, medicine became a separate science very early, according to the sacred books, the Vedas. Notwithstanding this, demonology played a large part in the production of disease according to their theories, and religious observances were helpful in the cures. Among the oldest documents which we possess relative to the practice of medicine, are the various treatises contained in the collection which bears the name of Hippocrates (460-375 B. C.). He was the first physician to relieve medicine from the trammels of superstition and the delusions of philosophy.