Note 24 — AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MEDICINE AMONG THE INDIANS OF NORTH-AMERICA; AND A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THEIR DISEASES AND REMEDIES WITH THOSE OF CIVILIZED NATIONS. Read before the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, on the 4th of February, 1774.

The principal employments of the Jews, like those of the Romans in their simple ages, consisted in war and husbandry. Their diet was plain, consisting chiefly of vegetables. Their only remedies were plasters and ointments; which were calculated for those diseases which are produced by accidents. In proportion as they receded from their simple customs, we find artificial diseases prevail among them. The leprosy made its appearance in their journey through the wilderness. King Asa's pains in his feet, were probably brought on by a fit of the gout. Saul and Nebuchadnezzar were afflicted with a melancholy. In the time of our Saviour, we find an account of all those diseases in Judea, which mark the declension of a people; such as, the palsy, epilepsy, mania, blindness, hæmorrhagia uterina, &c. It is unnecessary to suppose, that they were let loose at this juncture, on purpose to give our Saviour an opportunity of making them the chief subject of his miracles. They had been produced from natural causes, by the gradual depravity of their manners. It is remarkable, that our Saviour chose those artificial diseases for the subject of his miracles, in preference to natural diseases. The efforts of nature, and the operation of medicines, are too slow and uncertain in these cases to detract in the least from the validity of the miracle. He cured Peter's mother-in-law, it is true, of a fever; but to show that the cure was miraculous, the sacred historian adds (contrary to what is common after a fever), “that she arose immediately, and ministered unto them.”