EMERGENCE OF MODERN MEDICINE— ALVAREZ 423 



about looking for a new host. But when the cages were made of wire 

 gauze too fine for the passage of fleas, or when ordinary cages were 

 suspended some distance off the floor, too high for a flea to jump in, 

 none of the guinea pigs succumbed. 



At last, then, the essential facts about the disease were available, 

 and bubonic plague could no longer range as a terrible scourge up and 

 down the earth. Now, whenever a few cases appear in a city, health 

 officers rush in and destroy rats and fleas, and the epidemic is stopped 

 before it can get well started. 



I wish I had time to tell more of the fascinating stories of the detec- 

 tive work that has been done in tracking down one little messenger of 

 death after another, and learning so much about its life habits that 

 health officers can destroy it or stop it from propagating, but I must 

 hurry on. Those who have read Zinsser's delightful book on Rats, 

 Lice, and History and De KJruif's Microbe Hunters already know 

 how fascinating these stories can be, 



EVERY WORTH-WHILE DISCOVERY OF THE PAST IS USED TODAY 



I must hurry on to point out a fact which to me is a source of pride, 

 and this is that every worth-while discovery ever made and remem- 

 bered, and every accurate bit of information ever obtained and passed 

 onward by the ancient herb doctors and by all true students of dis- 

 ease throughout the ages is used in scientific medicine today. I feel 

 that every well-educated regular physician today is the lineal de- 

 scendant and heir of the old herb doctor and primitive surgeon, just 

 as every faith healer and every u-regular practitioner who treats all 

 cases alike, and every ignorant quack who treats by hocus-pocus of 

 one kind or another is a lineal descendant of the witch doctor. 



In my library I have translations of the two oldest medical papyri 

 in the world. So far as scholars can tell, these two books date back 

 to between two and three thousand years before Christ. The Smith 

 papyrus was written by a remarkably modem surgeon who described 

 the several types of fracture of the skull and the symptoms that go 

 with each so clearly that we can follow him today. He sutured 

 wounds and brought their edges together with adhesive tape; he knew 

 that an injury to one side of the brain caused paralysis of the other 

 side of the body, and he was often able to pick the patient who would 

 die and the others who would probably get well. If he could only 

 wake up today, to crawl out of his sarcophagus, I believe that a 

 modem brain surgeon would find in him a helpful associate, and 

 would defer to his judgment in the handling of many a wound. 



The other ancient book, the Ebers papyrus, is not so satisfying 

 today, because the witch doctor had too much to do with writing it. 

 It is largely a collection of prescriptions in which drugs are mixed 

 with unpleasant things such as the dried excrement of men and 



