forbidding the practice of medicine by ''Empirics, peddlers of 

 theriaca, tooth-drawers, alchemists, distillers, ruined trades- 

 men, Jews, dealers in the black art and old women ac- 

 customed to attend the sick." 



A superficial survey of the condition of the healing art 



PREPARATION OF THERIAC. 



From Brunschwick's "Destillirbuch," Strassburg, 1500. 



in the sixteenth century would fill a volume with a painful 

 exhibition of ignorance, superstition and folly. Pliny long 

 ago wrote that medicine was born of magic, was fortified by 

 astrology and acquired all its splendor and authority from 

 religion, associations that exerted malign influence on man- 

 kind in civilized countries for centuries and still inflicts misery 



101 



