"I'll tell you what now of the Devil: He's no such horrid creature; cloven-footed, Black, saucer-ey'd, his nostrils breathing fire, As these lying Christians make him."--MASSINGER. "If the cure be wrought, what matters it to the happy invalid ... whether the cure is wrought by the touch of the Divine hand or the overpowering influence of a great idea upon the nervous system? If our hunger be appeased, it matters little whether it is by manna rained down from heaven, or a wheaten loaf raised from the harvest field. Miraculous water from the rock does not quench the thirst better than that which bubbles from the village spring."--BERDOE. The advent of the Christian religion into the world, while purporting to minister especially to the spiritual life, had a wide-reaching and potent influence on the art of healing the body. We cannot sum up the effect by saying that this influence was either wholly good or bad--its relation to therapeutics was a mixed one. It can be truthfully said that nothing has retarded the science of medicine during the past two thousand years so much as the iron grip of decadent orthodoxy, and, on the other hand, no power has caused men and women so to sacrifice time, money, and even life itself for the care and nurture of the sick, as the example and precepts of Jesus Christ. For eighteen centuries this paradoxical position was held by the church, and the antithetical attitudes of hindrance and help continued to exist. As valuable as was the spirit instilled into the hearts of His followers by the tenderness of the Master, it was never sufficient to counterbalance the deterrent effects of the religion which they espoused. The retardation was caused by two related beliefs which permeated the church: The first was the doctrine of the power of demons in the lives of men, especially in the production of disease; and the second was the prevalence of the idea of the possibility and probability of the performance of miracles, particularly in the healing of diseases.