the sick were cured not only by medicine, but by the relics of St. Matthew and others.

Human nature, too, asserted itself, then as now, by making various pious cures fashionable for a time and then allowing them to become unfashionable. Just as we see the relics of St. Cosmo and St. Damian in great vogue during the early Middle Ages, but out of fashion and without effcacy afterward, so we find in the thirteenth century that the bones of St. Louis, having come into fashion, wrought multitudes of cures, while in the fourteenth, having become unfashionable, they ceased to act, and gave place for a time to the relics of St. Roch of Montpellier and St. Catherine of Sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures until they too became out of date and yielded to other saints. Just so in modern times the healing miracles of La Salette have lost prestige in some measure, and those of Lourdes have come into fashion.*

Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult parturition, in which modern science has achieved some of its greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour the ex votos hanging at such shrines as those of St. Geneviève at Paris, of St. Antony at Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of the Virgin at Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette, are survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure.

So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots of earth. In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such sacred centre; in England and Scotland there have been many; and as late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of the Roman Catholic Church, gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure wrought at a sacred well in Flintshire. In all parts of Europe the pious resort to wells and springs continued long after the close of the Middle Ages, and has not entirely ceased to-day.

It is not at all necessary to suppose intentional deception.

*For one of these lists of saints curing diseases, see Pettigrew, On Superstitions connected with Medicine; for another, see Jacob, Superstitions Populaires, pp. 96-100; also Rydberg, p. 69; also Maury, Rambaud, and others. For a comparison of fashions in miracles with fashions in modern healing agents, see Littré, Médecine et Médecins, pp. 118, 136, and elsewhere; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 143.

in the origin and maintenance of all fetich cures. Although two different judicial investigations of the modern miracles at La Salette have shown their origin tainted with fraud, and though the recent restoration of the Cathedral of Trondhjem has revealed the fact that the healing powers of the sacred spring which once brought such great reve nues to that shrine were assisted by angelic voices spoken through a tube in the walls, not unlike the pious machinery discovered in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, there is little doubt that the great majority of fountain and even shrine cures, such as they have been, have resulted from a natural law, and that belief in them was based on honest argument from Scripture. For the theological argument which thus stood in the way of science was simply this: if the Almighty saw fit to raise the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha, why should he not restore to life the patient who touches at Cologne the bones of the Wise Men of the East who followed the star of the Nativity? If Naaman was cured by dipping himself in the waters of the Jordan, and so many others by going down into the Pool of Siloam, why should not men still be cured by bathing in pools which men equally holy with Elisha have consecrated? If one sick man was restored by touching the garments of St. Paul, why should not another sick man be restored by touching the seamless coat of Christ at Treves, or the winding-sheet of Christ at Besançon? And out of all these inquiries came inevitably that question whose logical answer was especially injurious to the development of medical science: Why should men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred observances, according to an overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts of Europe? *

*For sacred fountains in modern times, see Pettigrew, as above, p. 42; also Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 82 and following; also Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, tome iii, p. 323, note. For those in Ireland, with many curious details, see S. C. Hall, Ireland, its Scenery and Character, London, 1841, vol. i, p. 282, and passim. For the case in Flintshire, see Authentic Documents relative to the Miraculous Cure of Winifred White, of the Town of Wolverhampton, at Holywell, Flintshire, on the 28th of June, 1805, by John Milner, D. D., Vicar Apostolic, etc., London, 1805. For sacred wells in France, see Chevart,

Still another development of the theological spirit, mixed with professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold injury. Even to those who had become so far emancipated from allegiance to fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbidden to consult those who, as a rule, were the best. From a very early period of European history the Jews had taken the lead in medicine; their share in founding the great schools of Salerno and Montpellier we have already noted, and in all parts of Europe we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing art. The Church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were especially severe against these benefactors: that men who openly rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost, should heal the elect seemed an insult to Providence; preaching friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in state and church, while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed them.

Gregory of Tours tells us of an archdeacon who, having been partially cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin, sought further aid from a Jewish physician, with the result that neither the saint nor the Jew could help him afterward. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus III especially forbade Christians to employ them. The Trullanean Council in the eighth century, the Councils of Béziers and Alby in the thirteenth, the Councils of Avignon and Salamanca in the fourteenth, the Synod of Bamberg and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, the Council of Avignon in the sixteenth, with many others, expressly forbade the faithful to call Jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as John Geiler and John Herolt thundered from the pulpit against them and all who consulted them. As late as the middle of the seventeenth century, when the City Council of Hall, in Würtemberg, gave some privileges to a Jewish physician.

Histoire de Chartres, vol. i, pp. 84-89, and French local histories generally. For superstitions attaching to springs in Germany, see Wuttke, Volksaberglaube, §§ 12 and 356. For one of the most exquisitely wrought works of modern fiction, showing perfectly the recent evolution of miraculous powers at a fashionable spring in France, see Gustave Droz, Autour d'une Source. The reference to the old pious machinery at Trondhjem is based upon personal observation by the present writer in August, 1893.

"on account of his admirable experience and skill," the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that "it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor aided by the devil." Still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals, kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.*

VIII. FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM.-THE ROYAL

TOUCH.

The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine. Luther, as is well known, again and again ascribed his own diseases to "devils' spells," declaring that "Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death," and that "he poisons the air"; but that "no malady comes from God." From that day down to the faith cures of Boston, Old Orchard, and among the sect of "Peculiar People" in our own time, we see the results among Protestants of seeking the cause of disease in Satanic influence and its cure in fetichism.

* For the general subject of the influence of theological ideas upon medicine, see Fort, History of Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, New York, 1883, chaps. xiii and xviii; also Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire des Reliques, passim; also Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation française, Paris, 1885, vol. i, chap. xviii; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 345, and elsewhere; also Baas and others. For proofs that the School of Salerno was not founded by the monks, Benedictine or other, but by laymen, who left out a faculty of theology from their organization, see Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, vol. i, p. 646; also Baas. For a very striking statement that married professors, women, and Jews were admitted to professional chairs, see Baas, pp. 208 et seq.; also summary by Dr. Payne, article in the Encyc. Brit. Sprengel's old theory that the school was founded by Benedictines seems now entirely given up; see Haeser and Baas on the subject; also Daremberg, La Médecine, p. 133. For the citation from Gregory of Tours, see his Hist. Francorum, lib. vi. For the eminence of Jewish physicians and proscription of them, see Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pp. 76-94; also Bédarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italie, et en Espagne, chaps. v, viii, x, and xiii; also Rénouard, Histoire de la Médecine, Paris, 1846, tome i, p. 439; also, especially, Lammert, Volksmedizin, etc., in Bayern, p. 6, note. For Church decrees against them, see the Acta Conciliorum, ed. Hardouin, vol. x, pp. 1634, 1700, 1870, 1973, etc. For denunciations of them by Geiler and others, see Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, pp. 194, 195. For a list of kings and popes who persisted in having Jewish physicians and for other curious information of the sort, see Prof. Levi of Vercelli, Cristiani ed Ebrei nel Medio Evo, pp. 200-207; and for a very valuable summary, see Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, pp. 265–271.

Yet Luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away from one belief which has interfered with the evolution of medicine from the dawn of Christianity until now. When that troublesome declaimer, Carlstadt, declared that "whoso falls sick shall use no physic, but commit his case to God, praying that His will be done," Luther asked, "Do you eat when you are hungry?" and the answer being in the affirmative, he continued, "Even so you may use physic, which is God's gift just as meat and drink is, or whatever else we use for the preservation of life." Hence it was, doubtless, that the Protestant cities of Germany were more ready than others to admit anatomical investigation by proper dissections.*

Perhaps the best-known development of a theological view in the Protestant Church was that mainly evolved in England out of a French germ of theological thought-a belief in the efficacy of the royal touch in sundry diseases, especially epilepsy and scrofula, the latter being consequently known as the king's evil. This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and came down from reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint to Protestant debauchees upon the English throne, with ever-increasing miraculous efficacy.

Testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. As a simple matter of fact, there are no miracles of healing in the history of the human race more thoroughly attested than those wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the Stuarts, and especially of that chosen vessel, Charles II. Though Elizabeth could not bring herself fully to believe in the reality of these cures, Dr. Tooker, the Queen's chaplain, afterward Dean of Lichfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the cures wrought by her, as also does William Clowes, the Queen's surgeon. Fuller, in his Church History, gives an account of a Roman Catholic who was thus cured

*For Luther's belief and his answer to Carlstadt, see his Table Talk, especially in Hazlitt's edition, pp. 250-257; also his letters passim. For recent faith cures," see Dr. Buckley's articles on Faith Healing and Kindred Phenomena, in The Century, 1886. For the greater readiness of the Protestant cities to facilitate dissections, see Roth, Andreas Vesalius, p. 33.