A similar theory was elaborated in Persia. Naturally,
then, the Old Testament, so precious in showing the evolution of
religious and moral truth among men, attributes such diseases as
the leprosy of Miriam and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the
dysentery of Jehoram, the withered hand of Jeroboam, the fatal
illness of Asa, and many other ills, to the wrath of God or the
malice of Satan; while, in the New Testament, such examples as
the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of the fever, the casting
out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of the person whom
"the devil ofttimes casteth into the fire"--of which case one of
the greatest modern physicians remarks that never was there a
truer description of epilepsy--and various other episodes, show
this same inevitable mode of thought as a refracting medium
through which the teachings and doings of the Great Physician
were revealed to future generations.
In Greece, though this idea of an occult evil agency in
producing bodily ills appeared at an early period, there also
came the first beginnings, so far as we know, of a really
scientific theory of medicine.
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