6io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



before his time and had attained a certain degree of eminence. It 

 had not escaped his observation that only persons of mediocre ability 

 are loth to admit errors, while the reverse is true of genius, since there 

 still remains a large residuum of truth in its possession. 



Apropos of the intimate relationship existing between the study 

 of nature and the healing art, we find that the Eomans as early as the 

 time of Cicero called a natural philosopher physicus, while the science 

 itself was called physica, both words having been borrowed from the 

 Greek phystkos, that which pertains to nature, from physis, nature, 

 in the somewhat restricted sense of the term as used in antiquity. But 

 in medieval Latin physica had become the equivalent of medecina and 

 physicus that of medicus. In the older English, physic means both 

 natural philosophy, the modern physics, and the medical art as well as 

 drugs. The restricted signification 'to purge' and 'a purge' is com- 

 paratively recent. 



Shakspere uses both doctor and physician, the former generally in 

 the sense of teacher. Doctor also occurs in Middle English and later 

 Chaucer speaks of a ' doctour of Phisik.' In classical Latin the term 

 doctor means teacher, a sense in which it is used by Cicero, Horace and 

 others. It had no connection with medicine. In modern French 

 physicien- means one who occupies himself with physics, but in the 

 older language it had the signification of the English physician. The 

 French medecin, physician, is evidently from the Latin medicinus a 

 derivative from medicus, while our medicine, a remedial drug, is from 

 the same word in the feminine gender. In German the connection 

 with the English physician is preserved by Physihus alone, a term used 

 to designate an official whose functions correspond in the main with 

 our health-officer. Here too the term Doktor has long since usurped 

 the more specific Artzt, and Dolctorei is occasionally used for medicine, 

 e doctor's stuff.' The Gothic word lekeis, which is the Anglo-Saxon 

 laece and the English ' leech ' has nothing in common with either ex- 

 cept the meaning. This term doctor again brings to the physician 

 the same title that is borne by the scholar. Although it is given in 

 several departments such as law, theology, music, philosophy, and so 

 on, to the common man both in German and in English countries the 

 doctor represents only the physician. This is explained by the fact 

 that in most communities the only man or men bearing the title were 

 physicians. Of late years, however, especially in the United States, 

 doctors of divinity have become so common, not to mention other 

 doctors, that the designation has reached the stage of painful uncer- 

 tainty. What it now represents can only be determined by an investi- 

 gation of each individual on whom it has been conferred. 



No more convincing testimony to the small progress made in the 

 healing art from the earliest times until a little more than a century 



