THE EVOLUTION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.* 



How primitive man treated disease and eased pain is now 

 mainly a matter of pure conjecture. General inferences 

 may be drawn from the methods of modern savages and 

 the traditions carried into historic time. Till men suffered 

 by the mere sight of suifering in others, no effort was likely 

 to be put forth to still the pain felt by a neighbor, or stay 

 the ravages of disease upon him. Side by side with the 

 development of the altruistic fellow-feeling has gone on the 

 Evolution of Medicine. 



There looms up with the dawn of history an indefinite 

 mass of distorted facts and pure fiction from which modern 

 Physical Science as well as modern Medical Science has 

 been born. To fully realize the process by which the change 

 went on is exceedingly difficult, owing to our inability to 

 put ourselves, in fancy, into the queer mental states of our 

 progenitors. It is hard for us to believe that they were as 

 thoroughly steeped in superstition as the facts force us to 

 acknowledge. Supernaturalism wove itself into every 

 thought and controlled every act. The ghost-theory ex- 

 plained every fact of their experience. Winds and waves, 

 falling bodies, light and darkness, disease and death, were 

 all the direct results of the wills of ghosts. Our modern 

 savages are in this same frame of mind, and show neither 

 surprise nor wonder at anything that occurs. To them, our 

 telephones and telegraphs, railway-trams, and machinery 

 of all kinds, are as simple and understandable as is the 

 shooting of an arrow from their bow. Their belief in 

 magic by ghost-power is thorough, unwavering and radical. 

 It no more occurs to them to question this than it does to 

 us to question that twice two is equal to four. Their only 

 cause of wonder is the occasional failure of civilized man 

 to do some miraculous thing they think he should be able 

 to do by his magic. 



This way of thinking keeps savages, and kept primitive 

 man, in incessant and abject terror of the forces of Nature, 



*CopYKiGHT, 1890, by James H. West. 



