St.Bernard, in a letter to certain monks, warned them that to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony neither with their religion nor with the honour and purity of their order.

This view even found its way into the canon law, which declared the precepts of medicine contrary to Divine knowledge.

As a rule, the leaders of the Church discouraged the theory that diseases are due to natural causes, and most of them deprecated a resort to surgeons and physicians rather than to supernatural means.( 300) (300) For Chaldean, Egyptian, and Persian ideas as to the diabolic origin of disease, see authorities already cited, especially Maspero and Sayce.

For Origen, see the Contra Celsum, lib.

viii, chap.xxxi.