"Relying on physical remedies alone was often seen as downright ungodly: in England, Puritan minister John Sym advised "caution" that people "dote not upon, nor trust, or ascribe too much to physical means; but that we carefully look and pray to God for a blessing by the warrantable use of them." To do otherwise--to rely on a physic or powder alone--would be to put the material above the spiritual. That was why a strictly mechanical approach to medicine was considered dangerously atheistic."