the limbs, etc., etc. I
have noticed that this planet has such enormous power over living
creatures, that children born at the first quarter of the declining
moon are more subject to illness, so that children born when there is
no moon, if they live, are weak, delicate, and sickly, or are of little
mind or idiots. Those who are born under the house of the moon
which is Cancer, are of a phlegmatic disposition." [371]

That the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans believed in the
deleterious influence of the moon on the health of man, is very
evident. The Talmud refers the words, "Though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death" (Ps. xxiii. 4) "to him who sleeps in
the shadow of the moon." [372] Another Psalm (cxxi. 6) reads,
literally, "By day the sun shall not smite thee, and the moon in the
night." In the Greek Testament we find further proof of this belief.
Among those who thronged the Great Teacher (Matt. iv. 24) were
the seleniaxomenoi (_lunatici_, Beza; _i lunatici_, Diodati; _les
lunatiques_, French version; "those who were lunatick"). The
Revised Version of 1881 reads "epileptic," but that is a comment, not
a translation. So again (Matt. xvii. 15) we read of a boy who was
"lunatick"--seleniaxetai. On which Archbishop Trench remarks,
"Of course the word originally, like mania (from mene) and
lunaticus, arose from the widespread belief of the evil influence of
the moon on the human frame." [373] Jerome attributes all this
superstition to daemons, of which men were the dupes. "The
_lunatics_," he says, "were not really smitten by the moon, but were
believed to be so, through the subtlety of the daemons, who by
observing the seasons of the moon sought to bring an evil report
against the creature, that it might redound to the blasphemy of the
Creator." [374] Demons or no demons, faith in moonstroke is clear
enough. Pliny was of opinion that the moon induced drowsiness and
stupor in those who slept under her beams. Galen, in the second
century, taught that those who were born when the moon was
falciform, or sickle-shaped, were weak and short-lived, while those
born during the full moon were vigorous and of long life. He also
took notice of the lunar influence in epilepsy [375] of which fearful
malady a modern physician writes, "This disease has been known
from the earliest antiquity, and is remarkable as being that malady
which, even beyond insanity, was made the foundation of the
doctrine of possession by ev