A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



these, our race must have come to disaster. In point 

 of fact, he did learn to avoid them; and such evi- 

 dence implied, as has been said, an elementary knowl- 

 edge of toxicology. 



Coupled with this knowledge of things dangerous to 

 the human system, there must have grown up, at a 

 very early day, a belief in the remedial character of 

 various vegetables as agents to combat disease. Here, 

 of course, was a rudimentary therapeutics, a crude 

 principle of an empirical art of medicine. As just sug- 

 gested, the lower order of animals have an instinctive 

 knowledge that enables them to seek out remedial 

 herbs (though we probably exaggerate the extent of 

 this instinctive knowledge) ; and if this be true, man 

 must have inherited from his prehuman ancestors this 

 instinct along with the others. That he extended this 

 knowledge through observation and practice, and came 

 early to make extensive use of drugs in the treatment 

 of disease, is placed beyond cavil through the obser- 

 vation of the various existing barbaric tribes, nearly 

 all of whom practice elaborate systems of therapeutics. 

 We shall have occasion to see that even within his- 

 toric times the particular therapeutic measures em- 

 ployed were often crude, and, as we are accustomed 

 to say, unscientific; but even the crudest of them 

 are really based upon scientific principles, inasmuch 

 as their application implies the deduction of prin- 

 ciples of action from previous observations. Certain 

 drugs are applied to appease certain symptoms of 

 disease because in the belief of the medicine -man 

 such drugs have proved beneficial in previous similar 

 cases, 



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