Healing, the physician
Archimandrite Nikifor’s Biblical Encyclopedia
(Job 13:4). In the Bible, the word “physician” is mentioned for the first time in the Book of Genesis (50:2). However, there is some ground to suppose that physicians existed among the Hebrews even before this time: thus, for example, the circumcision performed on Isaac (Gen. 21:4), midwifery (midwives) at the difficult birth of Benjamin (Gen. 35:17), were evidently performed by persons more or less acquainted with the medical art (Gen. 50:2). Medical science flourished especially in Egypt.
In learning the wisdom of the Egyptians, Moses in all likelihood also studied the art of healing. Egypt, as Pliny remarks, abounded in diseases. Herodotus says that in Egypt each physician treated only one particular disease, and therefore on the banks of the Nile a great multitude of physicians practiced. Each family had to have a particular physician for each particular disease, such as, for example, for the eyes, ears, teeth, and so on, so that it is not surprising when we read, for example, in the Book of Genesis (50:2) the following words: “Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father” (that is, Jacob), namely, that the plural, not the singular, is used here.
Egyptian medical art was famed also in other countries. The Persian kings Cyrus and Darius made use of the help of Egyptian physicians. In the Bible there are also quite a few factual indications that the art of healing diseases according to their various kinds constituted a special profession (Prov. 17:22; Jer. 8:22; Ezek. 30:21; Matt. 9:12; Luke 4:23; Col. 4:14). Of course this science in antiquity was very simple and not very complex, and consisted chiefly in the treatment of wounds and external ailments: wounds, for example, were cleansed, bound, and softened with oil (Isa. 1:6).
Later, treating external ailments, physicians could become acquainted also with internal ones (2 Chron. 16:12), and even with mental ones (1 Sam. 16:16). Balm of Gilead was highly valued as a healing remedy. When Asa became diseased in his feet, so that the disease mounted to the upper parts of his body, he was condemned for this, that in his disease he sought not the Lord, but physicians (2 Chron. 16:12). “The woman with an issue of blood,” according to the testimony of the Evangelist Mark, “had suffered many things of many physicians” (Mark 5:26).
And the Evangelist Luke, being himself a physician, says of her that, “having spent all her living upon physicians, she could not be healed of any” (Luke 8:43). Physicians and healing are spoken of with particular approval in the Book of Jesus the son of Sirach (38:1–18); for example, the following expressions are especially notable: “Honor a physician with the honor due unto him for the uses which ye may have of him… The skill of the physician shall lift up his head… The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth… with such doth He heal men, and taketh away their pains… give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him… in their hands there is good success,” and so on.
The most commonly used remedies in antiquity for diseases, besides balm, were the following: oil, or olive oil, sometimes combined with wine (Luke 10:34), a plaster of figs, applied to boils (2 Kings 20:7) — Arab physicians recommended its use for all ripening boils — various other plasters (Wisd. of Sol. 16:12), parts of animals, such as, for example, heart, liver, and gall of fish against eye diseases (Tobit 6:5, 9), copper as a softening and vision-clearing remedy (1 Sam. 16:25–29 [as given]).
In the land of Israel there were also mineral springs, whose healing waters were used in the treatment of various diseases, as, for example, by King Herod (Josephus, Antiquities, book XVII, ch. 6:6–8).