166 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Plant- Worship, it was shown that powerful effects wrought on 

 the body by plants, and the product of plants, are supposed to be 

 due to spirits dwelling in the plants. Hence the medicine-man, 

 or " mystery-man," being concerned solely with supernatural 

 causation of one or other kind, foreshadows the physician only to 

 the extent of using some of the same means, and not as having 

 the same ideas. 



As we shall presently see, it is rather from the priest properly 

 so called, who deals with ghosts not antagonistically but sympa- 

 thetically, that the physician originates. 



While the medicine-man is distinctive of small and unde- 

 veloped societies, the priest proper arises along with social aggre- 

 gation and the formation of established government. In the pre- 

 ceding division of this work, Chapters III, IV, and Y, we saw 

 that since originally propitiation of the ghosts of parents and 

 other members of each family is at first carried on by relatives, 

 implying that the priestly function is generally diffused ; and 

 since this priestly function presently devolves on the eldest male 

 of the family ; and since, when chieftainship becomes settled and 

 inheritable, the living chief makes sacrifices to the ghost of the 

 dead chief, and sometimes does this on behalf of the people ; there 

 so arises an official priest, and it results that with enlargement of 

 societies by union with subjugated tribes and the spread of the 

 chieftain's power, now grown into royal power, over various sub- 

 ordinated groups, and the accompanying establishment of deputy 

 rulers in these groups, who take with them the worship that arose 

 in the conquering tribe, there is initiated a priesthood which, 

 growing into a caste, becomes an agency for the dominant cult ; 

 and, from causes already pointed out, becomes the seat of culture 

 in general. 



From part of this culture, having its origin in preceding 

 stages, comes greater knowledge of medicinal agents, which 

 gradually cease to be conceived as acting supernaturally. Early 

 civilizations show us the transition. Says Maspero of the ancient 

 Egyptians : 



" The cure- workers are . . . divided into several categories. Some in- 

 cline toward sorcery, and have faith in formulas and talismans only. . . . 

 Others extol the use of drugs ; they study the qualities of plants and 

 minerals . . . and settle the exact time when they must he procured and 

 applied. . . . The best doctors carefully avoid binding themselves exclu- 

 sively to either method . . . their treatment is a mixture of remedies and 

 exorcisms which vary from patient to patient. They are usiially priests." 



Along with this progress, there had gone on a differentiation of 

 functions. Among the lower classes of the priesthood were the 

 " pastophors, who . . . practiced medicine." 



