264 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



medicine among primitive peoples ; its growth among the 

 Greeks, the Jews, the Egyptians, the Romans, and the 

 Arabians; its condition and limitations during the Mid- 

 dle Ages; with a summary of the important advances 

 which were made ; an account of the development of the 

 natural sciences in the 17th and 18th centuries and the 

 influence of the development of physics and chemistry 

 on medicine ; an account of the slow development of the 

 microscope and its final perfection ; of the influence which 

 this 'discovery had on biology; of the development of 

 organic chemistry by Liebig; of cellular pathology by 

 Virchow; of bacteriology by Pasteur; and of present-day 

 surgery by Lister; of the marvelous development of the 

 last fifty years and of the men who made this develop- 

 ment possible, with a summary of the leading men in the 

 different fields who are at present regarded as leaders. 

 Such a course would not only be intensely interesting, if 

 illustrated with lantern slides and moving picture films, 

 but it would also give the young medical student the his- 

 torical background which he is, today, entirely lacking. 



In connection with each epoch or period of medical de- 

 velopment, attention would be called to the different 

 sects, cults, and schools which prevailed at that time. 

 Most physicians, I have found, are familiar with and 

 bitterly hostile to the cults of their own day, which they 

 regard as entirely unique, present-day phenomena. 

 They do not realize that every period iri medicine has 

 had its own peculiar brand of pseudo-medicine; that 

 every generation has had its fads and its sects; that be- 

 fore the chiropractor was the osteopath; before the os- 

 teopath, the eclectic; before the eclectic, the botanical 

 doctor and the Thompsonian; before that, the homeo- 

 path; before Hahnemann, the Perkins' tractors, Bishop 

 Berkeley's tar-water, and the stone extractors of previ- 

 ous generations. There has always been the sectarian, 

 the faddist, and the follower of fantastic cults. Attempt 

 to suppress him is the breath of his nostrils and only 

 gives him so much free advertising. The only way to 

 combat him is to learn his own particular fad more thor- 

 oughly than he knows it himself so that he can be the 

 more readily refuted and discountenanced. This would 



