CHAPTER II 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 



The oldest and most persistent belief holds that disease is an 

 infliction imposed on man by some supernatural power. This doctrine 

 was handed down by tradition to the earliest civilizations, was incor- 

 porated in their records and is held by many to-day. Some have 

 attributed disease to evil spirits and others have regarded it as a 

 dispensation of their gods. The Babylonians regarded disease "as 

 the work of demons which swarmed in the earth, air and water, and 

 against which long litanies and incantations were recited." In the 

 hand of the Jehovah of the Jews disease was a whip of chastisement 

 which fell at will on the chosen people or their enemies. "I will put 

 none of those diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the 

 Egyptians ; for I am the Lord that healeth thee." There is no book 

 of the middle ages down to the eighteenth century, describing an 

 epidemic which does not attribute it to the wrath of God. Job 

 ascribed his own pains to the "arrows of the Almighty." Luther 

 wrote that "pestilence, fever and other severe diseases are naught else 

 than the devil's work." Cotton Mather described disease as "flagellum 

 Dei pro pecatis mundi." 



"The American Indian medicine man or the Asiatic Samoyed does 

 his best to frighten away the demons of disease by assuming a terrify- 

 ing aspect, covering himself with the skins of animals so as to resemble 

 an enormous beast walking on his hind legs, resorting to such demon- 

 strations as shouting, raving, slapping his hands or shaking a rattle, 

 and pretending (or endeavoring) to extract the active principle of the 

 disease by sucking it through a hollow tube. . . . We may smile 

 at these phases of Shamanistic procedure, but, except for the noise, 

 they are not essentially different from the mind-medicine or faith- 

 healing of our own day. Both rely upon psychotherapy and sug- 

 gestion, and for a sick savage, the fantastic clamor made about him 

 might be conceivably as effective as the quieter methods of Christian 

 Science, to a modern nervous patient." (Garrison.) 



