art there is that
in medicine which makes of the physician a practical Christian. Nor is
there aught in medicine, either in its traditions, history, study, or
practice, that in the lover of his art should ever make him anything but
a philosophical and practical religionist. The physician, such as is
actively engaged in the daily practice of his profession, instead of
having no religion, is really a practical religionist, and, although he
may subscribe to no outer ceremonial form or dogma, his life is such
that a Confucian, a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Hebrew can behold in him
the practitioner of the essence of either of their religions,--a
conception carried out by Lessing, in his play of "Nathan the Wise,"
where the Jew, the Saracen, and Crusader teach the impressive lesson
that nobleness is bound by no confession of faith or religion; showing
the principle that should guide true religion.

The Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Boston University, has given a very
interesting and intelligent relation of the connections that exist
between medicine and the Old Testament, in the light of
nineteenth-century science.[50] The article in question is interesting
in its logical reasons as to why the Bible was inspired by a superior
power, as well as in the comparisons it lays before us of the medicine
of the Pagans and that of the Bible, during the early history of the
world. After reviewing the false, crude, and senseless vagaries and
superstitious notions that passed for medicine from the period of the
Trojan war, in 1184 B.C., to the dissolution of the Pythagorean Society,
500 B.C.--periods which existed after the writing of the books of
Moses,--and the period between 500 B.C. and 320 B.C., or the philosophic
era of medicine, during which flourished the father of our present
system of medicine, an era of advancement, but which in our eyes is
still full of errors and unscientific conclusions. From these two
periods we span over centuries of darkness for science and medicine to
the ages of Ambroise Pare and the more modern fathers of our art, who by
perseverance finally extricated medicine from the mass of magical and
superstitious rubbish which, like barnacles, had clung to it during its
passage through the dark and ignorant ages. After this review our author
turns to the Bible and discourses in this wise:--

"Turning our attention to the Bible, we take the position that, though
it was not designed to teach the science of medicine, sti