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.
Nothing exposed the Jews to more odium in ages when they were held
most odious, than the reputation which they possessed as physicians.
There is a remarkable instance of the esteem in which they were held
for their supposed superiority in this art as late as the middle of
the sixteenth century. Francis I. after a long illness in which he
found no benefit from his own physicians, dispatched a courier into
Spain, requesting Charles V. to send him the most skilful Jewish
practitioner in his dominions. This afforded matter for merriment to
the Spaniards; the Emperor however gave orders to make enquiry for
one, and when he could hear of none who would trust himself in that
character, he sent a New-Christian physician, with whom he supposed
Francis would be equally satisfied. But when this person arrived in
France, the King by way of familiar discourse sportively asked him if
he were not yet tired of expecting the Messiah? Such a question
produced from the new Convert a declaration that he was a Christian,
upon which the King dismissed him immediately without consulting him,
and sent forthwith to Constantinople for a Jew. The one who came found
it necessary to prescribe nothing more for his royal patient than
Asses milk.
This reputation in which their physicians were held was owing in great
measure to the same cause which gave them their superiority in trade.
The general celebrity which they had obtained in the dark ages, and
which is attested by Eastern tales as well as by European history,
implies that they had stores of knowledge which were not accessible to
other people. And indeed as they communicated with all parts of the
known world, and with parts of it which were unknown to the Christian
nations, they had means of obtaining the drugs of the East, and the
knowledge of what remedies were in use there, which was not of less
importance in an art, founded, as far as it was of any avail, wholly
upon experience. That knowledge they reserved to themselves, perhaps
as much with a view to national as to professional interests.
Nicolas Antonio sent to Bertolacci a manuscript entitled _Otzar
Haanijm_, that is, “the Treasure of the Poor,” written by a certain
Master Julian in the Portuguese language, but in rabbinical
characters. It was a collection of simple receipts for all diseases,
and appears to have been written thus that it might be serviceable to
those only who were acquainted with Hebrew. There was good policy in
this. A king's physician in those days was hardly a less important
person than a king's confessor; with many princes indeed he would be
the more influential of the two, as being the most useful, and
frequently the best informed; and in those times of fearful
insecurity, it might fall within his power, like Mordecai, to avert
some great calamity from his nation.
Among the articles which fantastic superstition, or theories not less
fantastic had introduced into the _materia medica_, there were some
which seemed more appropriate to the purposes of magic than of
medicine, and some of an atrocious kind. Human fat was used as an
unguent,—that of infants as a cosmetic. Romances mention baths of
children's blood; and there were times and countries in which such a
remedy was as likely to be prescribed, as imagined in fiction. It was
believed that deadly poisons might be extracted from the human
body;—and they who were wicked enough to administer the product, would
not be scrupulous concerning the means whereby it was procured. One
means indeed was by tormenting the living subject. To such practices
no doubt Harrison alludes when, speaking, in Elizabeth's reign, of
those who graduated in the professions of law or physic, he says, “one
thing only I mislike in them, and that is their usual going into
Italy, from whence very few without special grace do return good men,
whatever they pretend of conference or practice; chiefly the
physicians, who under pretence of seeking of foreign simples, do
oftentimes learn the framing of such compositions as were better
unknown than practised, as I have often heard alleged.” The suspicion
of such practices attached more to the Jewish than to any other
physicians, because of the hatred with which they were supposed to
regard all Christians, a feeling which the populace in every country,
and very frequently the Rulers also did every thing to deserve. The
general scandal of atheism lay against the profession; but to be a Jew
was in common opinion to be worse than an atheist, and calumnies were
raised against the Jew Physicians on the specific ground of their
religion, which, absurd and monstrous as they were, popular credulity
was ready to receive. One imputation was that they made it a point of
conscience to kill one patient in five, as a sacrifice of atonement
for the good which they had done to the other four. Another was that
the blood of a Christian infant was always administered to a Jewess in
child-bed, and was esteemed so necessary an ingredient in their
superstitious ceremonies or their medical practice at such times, that
they exported it in a dried and pulverized form to Mahommedan
countries, where it could not be obtained fresh.
There are some pages in Jackson's Treatise upon the Eternal Truth of
Scripture and Christian Belief, which occurring in a work of such
excellent worth, and coming from so profound and admirable a writer,
must be perused by every considerate reader with as much sorrow as
surprize. They show to what a degree the most judicious and charitable
mind may be deluded when seeking eagerly for proofs of a favorite
position or important doctrine, even though the position and the
doctrine should be certainly just. Forgetful of the excuse which he
has himself suggested for the unbelief of the Jews since the
destruction of Jerusalem, saying, with equal truth and felicity of
expression, that “their stubborness is but a strong hope malignified,
or, as we say, grown wild and out of kind,” he gives credit to the old
atrocious tales of their crucifying Christian children, and finds in
them an argument for confirming our faith at which the most
iron-hearted supralapsarian might shudder. For one who passes much of
his time with books, and with whom the dead are as it were living and
conversing, it is almost as painful to meet in an author whom he
reveres and loves, with anything which shocks his understanding and
disturbs his moral sense, as it is to perceive the faults of a dear
friend. When we discover aberrations of this kind in such men, it
should teach us caution for ourselves as well as tolerance for others;
and thus we may derive some benefit even from the errors of the wise
and good.
That the primitive Christians should have regarded the Jews with
hostile feelings as their first persecutors, was but natural, and that
that feeling should have been aggravated by a just and religious
horror for the crime which has drawn upon this unhappy nation it's
abiding punishment. But it is indeed strange that during so many
centuries this enmity should have continued to exist, and that no
sense of compassion should have mitigated it. For the Jews to have
inherited the curse of their fathers was in the apprehension of
ordinary minds to inherit their guilt; and the cruelties which man
inflicted upon them were interpreted as proofs of the continued wrath
of Heaven, so that the very injuries and sufferings which in any other
case would have excited commiseration, served in this to close the
heart against it. Being looked upon as God's outlaws, they were
everywhere placed as it were under the ban of humanity. And while
these heart-hardening prepossessions subsisted against them in full
force, the very advantages of which they were in possession rendered
them more especial objects of envy, suspicion and popular hatred. In
times when literature had gone to decay throughout all Christendom,
the Jews had not partaken of the general degradation. They had Moses
and the Prophets whose everlasting lamps were kept trimmed amongst
them, and burning clearly through the dark when the light of the
Gospel had grown dim in the socket, and Monkery and Popery had well
nigh extinguished it. They possessed a knowledge of distant countries
which was confined to themselves; for being dispersed every where,
they travelled every where with the advantage of a language which was
spoken by the Children of Israel wherever they were found, and nowhere
by any other people. As merchants therefore and as statesmen they had
opportunities peculiar to themselves. In both capacities those Princes
who had any sense of policy found them eminently useful. But wealth
made them envied, and the way in which they increased it by lending
money made them odious in ages when to take any interest was accounted
usury. That odium was aggravated whenever they were employed in
raising taxes; and as they could not escape odium, they seem sometimes
to have braved it in despite or in despair, and to have practised
extortion if not in defiance of public opinion, at least as a species
of retaliation for the exactions which they themselves endured, and
the frauds which unprincipled debtors were always endeavouring to
practise upon them.
But as has already been observed, nothing exposed them to greater
obloquy than the general opinion which was entertained of their skill
in medicine, and of the flagitious practices with which it was
accompanied. The conduct of the Romish Church tended to strengthen
that obloquy, even when it did not directly accredit the calumnies
which exasperated it. Several Councils denounced excommunication
against any persons who should place themselves under the care of a
Jewish Physician, for it was pernicious and scandalous they said, that
Christians who ought to despise and hold in horror the enemies of
their holy religion, should have recourse to them for remedies in
sickness. They affirmed that medicines administered by such impious
hands became hurtful instead of helpful; and moreover that the
familiarity thus produced between a Jewish practitioner and a
Christian family, gave occasion to great evil and to many crimes. The
decree of the Lateran Council by which physicians were enjoined under
heavy penalties to require that their patients should confess and
communicate before they administered any medicines to them, seems to
have been designed as much against Jewish practitioners as heretical
patients. The Jews on their part were not more charitable when they
could express their feelings with safety. It appears in their own
books that a physician was forbidden by the Rabbis to attend upon
either a Christian or Gentile, unless he dared not refuse; under
compulsion it was lawful, but he was required to demand payment for
his services, and never to attend any such patients gratuitously.