"Saw Bones," that's how some referred to surgeons during the American Civil War. In the 1860's medicine was so primitive that it was thought to be safer to cut off a seriously wounded arm or leg rather than risk infection spreading to the entire body. A surgeon had to saw through the bones as quickly and cleanly as possible since modern anaesthetics and antibiotics were unknown. If that was generally the state of medicine in the 1860's, think what it must have been like a thousand or two thousand years earlier! We do have some insights; for instance, the Greek historian Herodotus tells of the Babylonian way of handling illness in the 400's BC "They bring their sick into the town square, since they do not use doctors. Each invalid is then approached and given advise by passerby who have either suffered from the same sort of ailment themselves or know someone else who has...These prescribe what they did to recover or what they know others did who recovered. You are not allowed to go by a sick person without asking what's the matter with him." P. 107, Travel in the Ancient World, Lionel Casson.

Some 400 years later, during the times of Christ, things seemed to have improved very little. "Medicine is the only one of the arts of Greece that serious Romans have not yet begun to practice. Even though it is lucrative, very few Roman citizens have touched it. . . . .And so it happens that this is the only one of all the arts, by heaven, in which trust is at once put in any man who declares himself a doctor." So says Pliny the Elder (born 23 AD and died 79 AD) who wrote a 37 volume work called Natural History. Pliny's negative remarks were because there was no state certification or supervision of people who simply declared themselves to be doctors. However, Pliny did record hundreds of remedies you will not want to try at home. He reports, "But we have shown that the most effective protection against snakes is the spittle of a fasting person. . . . . We spit against illnesses like epilepsy, that is, we repel contagion; in similar manner we repel witchcraft and the danger in meeting a person lame in the right leg. . . . . For broken bones a quick remedy is the ashes of the jawbone of a boar or swine; likewise boiled lard, tied round the broken bone, knits it with marvellous rapidity. . . . . For patients afflicted with melancholy, calf's dung boiled in wine is a remedy. Lethargic persons are aroused by applying to the nostrils the calluses from an ass's legs steeped in vinegar, or the fumes of goat's horns or hair, or wild boar's liver." For further enlightening reading see Roman Civilization, Volume II, Edited by Naphtali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold, "Medicine," p. 223.

It was in the midst of this pagan darkness that the teachings of Christ began to flourish through the practice of Christian charity. Philip Schaff writes, "It is impossible to overestimate the moral effect of the teaching and example of Christ, and of St. Paul's seraphic praise of charity upon the development of this cardinal virtue in all ages and countries. We bow in reverence before the truly apostolic succession of those missionaries, bishops, monks, nuns, kings, nobles, and plain men and women, rich or poor, know and unknown, who, from gratitude to Christ and pure love to the fellow-men, sacrificed home, health, wealth, life itself, to humanize and Christianize savages, to feed the hungry, to give drink to the thirsty, to entertain the stranger, to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to call on the prisoner, to comfort the dying." History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff, Volume IV, pp.356-7, "Christian Charity."

The outgrowth of Christ's teachings is that Christians are credited with starting hospitals in the Roman Empire. "Every congregation was a charitable society, and took care of its widows and orphans, of strangers and prisoners, and sent help to distant congregations in need. . . . . charity assumed an institutional form, and built hospitals and houses of refuge for the strangers, the poor, the sick, the aged, the orphans. . . . The great fathers and bishops of the fourth and fifth centuries set an illustrious example of plain living and high thinking, of self-denial and liberality, and were never weary in their sermons and writings in enjoining their duty of charity." Ibid. p.356.
Philip Schaff also quotes the historian Lecky in The History of European Morals, "For the first time in the history of mankind, it [charity] has inspired many thousands of men and women, at the sacrifice of worldly interests. . . . .to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. It has covered the globe with countless institutions of mercy, absolutely unknown to the whole Pagan world." Ibib. p. 362. (emphasis supplied)

Today, Christian hospitals and Christian health care workers circle the earth and continue to care for the sick, the aged and dieing---and the whole movement finds its roots and marching orders in your family Bible.

Blessings in your study of God's Word!

Marvin Hunt

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Blessings!
Marvin Hunt

Http://www.biblehistory.com

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