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150 THE MIDDLE AGES.
century the custom arose in certain towns of Gaul e.g. in
Aries, Treves, Macon and Rouen of laying children, of
whom it was wished to be rid, before the Church doors.
The priests took care of these poor abandoned infants
and caused them to be reared. The first foundling
hospitals appear to have arisen at Treves, Angers and
Milan*
Unfortunately the care which the Christians devoted,
to the sick and helpless did not always manifest itself'
in this noble and reasonable manner. The words of ST.I
JAMES:f "Is any sick among you? let him call for the
elders of the Church and let them pray over him anointing
him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of
faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up "
display ignorance and superstition in so far as they pronounce
the help of the doctor to be superfluous, and the
power of prayer to be sufficient to heal the sick. It was a
return to that theurgical point of view from which diseases
were looked upon as punishments inflicted by God and only
to be removed by penance and prayers. The sufferers came
now to the Christian Church as they formerly did to the
temple of ASKLEPIOS to request advice and aid from the
priests. Happy recoveries, the cause of which was ascribed,
to the intercession of a saint, resulted in an increased throng
of sick people. And thus, especially in Churches where the
bones of saints reposed, there became developed a kind of,
worship, hardly distinguishable from that offered at the
temples of ASKLEPIOS.J The sick spent nights there in
fasting and prayer, hoping that the saint would appear to
them in a dream or a vision and would indicate the remedy
suited to effect their recovery, and the priests interpreted
the hallucinations and dreams of the patients, wrote down
the histories of the successful cases which occurred, and
took care that by means of pictorial representations of
* CHASTEL op. cit. S. 53, 138.
t Gen. Ep. St. James, c. 5, v. 14, 15.
X ALB. MARIGNAN : La me'decine dans l'eglise au sixieme siecle, Paris 1887