448 APPENDIX 



what are specifically human characteristics. Now, as we have 

 seen, there is a considerable power of medical self-help in all the 

 more highly organised animals, as well as the power of helping 

 each other seen among those who live in communities, even 

 among the smallest of the small. We shall, therefore, be pre- 

 pared for the conclusion that both these attainments will be 

 manifested in primaeval man whose origin lies among the great 

 class of mammals. Our means of determining the condition of 

 mankind in this respect are, in the first place, our knowledge of 

 the period of childhood in human beings, and in the second, our 

 knowledge of the life of savage peoples at the present time. 



Of course the human child can only be considered in regard 

 to this matter when it has outgrown the period of infancy, and 

 has attained to the powers of speech, and of the free use of its 

 limbs. Even then it is in some matters quite helpless and de- 

 pendent on the goodwill of its surroundings. But it soon begins 

 to feel for others' misfortunes. The sight of its mother's tears 

 makes it unhappy ; the cries of its brothers or sisters when in 

 pain call forth sympathetic weeping, and soon the dormant social 

 instinct awakes within it and compels it to take the liveliest 

 interest in the pains of other children or adults. In a few years 

 the child gains some knowledge of what is done by others in 

 these and other cases of internal or external disease, and the 

 desire to follow the example of its elders arises in the heart of 

 the little Samaritan. We need only watch a child at play to 

 notice how it will try to soothe a crying infant with a helpful 

 word, how it will stroke and rub the bruised foot of another who 

 has fallen down, or attempt to staunch the bleeding wound of a 

 third with a handkerchief soaked in cold water. 



All this has been learnt from its elders. We must therefore, 

 if we are to find the still remoter origin of therapeutics, find out 

 what the adult man in the savage state can do for internal or 

 external pains. And here we are on the right path, for the 

 unanimous testimony of all travellers and investigators tells us 

 that savages must be looked upon as nothing more than big, 

 simple-minded children. As there are now in existence such 

 tribes as the Xingus in Brazil which, left behind in the march 

 of civilisation, are still living in the Stone Age, we may rightly 

 conclude that the methods of healing now obtaining among 

 these are the same as those which were practised by prehistoric 

 palaeolithic man. 



