Jesus had no more idea than his countrymen of a rational medical science; he believed, like every one else, that healing was to be effected by religious practices, and such a belief was perfectly consistent.  From the moment that disease was regarded as the punishment of sin,[1] or as the act of a demon,[2] and by no means as the result of physical causes, the best physician was the holy man who had power in the supernatural world.  Healing was considered a moral act; Jesus, who felt his moral power, would believe himself specially gifted to heal.  Convinced that the touching of his robe,[3] the imposition of his hands,[4] did good to the sick, he would have been unfeeling, if he had refused to those who suffered, a solace which it was in his power to bestow.  The healing of the sick was considered as one of the signs of the kingdom of God, and was always associated with the emancipation of the poor.[5] Both were the signs of the great revolution which was to end in the redress of all infirmities.

[Footnote 1:  John v. 14, ix. 1, and following, 34.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. ix. 32, 33, xii. 22; Luke xiii. 11, 16.]

[Footnote 3:  Luke viii. 45, 46.]

[Footnote 4:  Luke iv. 40.]

[Footnote 5:  Matt. xi. 5, xv. 30, 31; Luke ix. 1, 2, 6.]

One of the species of cure which Jesus most frequently performed, was exorcism, or the expulsion of demons.  A strange disposition to believe in demons pervaded all minds.  It was a universal opinion, not only in Judea, but in the whole world, that demons seized hold of the bodies of certain persons and made them act contrary to their will.  A Persian div, often named in the Avesta,[1] Aeschma-daeva, the “div of concupiscence,” adopted by the Jews under the name of Asmodeus,[2] became the cause of all the hysterical afflictions of women.[3] Epilepsy, mental and nervous maladies,[4] in which the patient seems no longer to belong to himself, and infirmities, the cause of which is not apparent, as deafness, dumbness,[5] were explained in the same manner.  The admirable treatise, “On Sacred Disease,” by Hippocrates, which set forth the true principles of medicine on this subject, four centuries and a half before Jesus, had not banished from the world so great an error.  It was supposed that there were processes more or less efficacious for driving away the demons; and the occupation of exorcist was a regular profession like that of physician.[6] There is no doubt that Jesus had in his lifetime the reputation of possessing the greatest secrets of this art.[7] There were at that time many lunatics in Judea, doubtless in consequence of the great mental excitement.  These mad persons, who were permitted to go at large, as they still are in the same districts, inhabited the abandoned sepulchral caves, which were the ordinary retreat of vagrants.  Jesus had great influence over these unfortunates.[8] A thousand singular incidents were related in connection with his cures, in which