The diseases of the Bible / by Sir Risdon Bennett.

  • James Risdon Bennett
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The diseases of the Bible / by Sir Risdon Bennett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    have a distinct reprobation of the non-acknowledgment of this, in the case of Asa, who, ' when his disease was exceeding great, sought not to the Lor.d, but to the physicians ' ^—relying solely on human means. And of the inadequacy of these means alone we have an example, if any be needed, in the case of the woman with the issue of blood, 'who had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any.' ^ But that human means are both sanctioned and enjoined is evident, and there is nothing that would justify either a culpable neglect of human aid, or a recourse to superstitious observances. There appears, however, to have been a tendency in the Hebrew mind^ as with the Assyrians and other Orientals, to refer afflictions to evil spirits, which must be borne in mind, especially when considering the subject of demoniacal possession. When nothing is distinctly stated to the contrary, we are justified in assuming that the diseases, whether inflicted in the ordinary course of Providence or not, were subject to the same ordinary laws as those of the present day. Some of the diseases mentioned in the Bible are simply named, or so briefly described, that we can only surmise what they were. And with regard to others it will be well to admit m limine that the most learned physicians of the present day find it difficult to identify them with any particular forms of disease with which they are familiar. Nor can this be matter of surprise, both because the diseases in question were described, in the Old Testament at least, by non-professional writers, and at a time when nothing deserving the name of medical science existed; and also because diseases alter much in their characteristics with lapse of time and change of * 2 Chron. xvi. 12. « Luke viii. 43; Mark v. 26.
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