July 17, 1003.] 



SCIENCE. 



67 



and foriniilie -would coiiuterwork his 

 power. In some instances, in fact, the 

 phj-sician attempted by magic to compel 

 the powers of darkness to act in opposition 

 to each other, and thus, by dividing their 

 power for evil, to rescue the victim of their 

 cruel wrath. Unless the physician's 

 magic influence, or his orenda, to use the 

 Indian word given by Powell to express 

 the influence which he thus acquired over 

 deities with mischievous tendencies, was 

 competent to accomplish this result, he 

 was regarded an unsuccessful practitioner 

 and had little fame and less pecuniary 

 reward. 



"^^^lile among many barbarous nations 

 the priest and physician became one and 

 the same, and the physician soon degen- 

 erated into a magician and wonder-worker, 

 the conception of disease as a visitation of 

 God has never disappeared, and even now 

 dominates belief and influences conduct. 

 Disease is considered a judgment upon a 

 sinful individual or an erring nation, to be 

 removed by fasting, humiliation and 

 prayer, rather than by remedies and sani- 

 tary measures. I have ^\dtnessed a day 

 of fasting to arrest the scourge of cholera, 

 and a few days ago I read in a newspaper 

 of the blessing of throats with prayer and 

 candles upon a saint day to prevent the 

 development of diphtheria. Allied to this 

 is also the Christian Science conception of 

 bodily disease as sin, due to a lack of faith 

 in the power and immanence of God. If 

 such conceptions are true, why should we 

 study medicine at all? As students of 

 rational medicine we believe otherwise. 

 At any rate, we do not go to so-called re- 

 ligious teachers to learn the scientific laws 

 of health and disease. 



The early conditions of pioneer life in 

 America were not such as to foster the 

 study of medicine. It is true that many 

 well-equipped medical men, educated in 

 England or on the continent, emigrated 



originally with the colonists and practised 

 the healing art among the early settlers. 

 These men, however, raised up in their 

 turn an inferior class of pi-actitioners 

 throiigh a system of apprenticeship. Ap- 

 prentices were found in all parts of the 

 country who saw the sick in connection 

 with their preceptors, and thus acquired a 

 degree of familiarity with the aspects of 

 ordinary disease. Opportunities for the 

 study of medicine in the modern sense did 

 not exist. There were no schools of anat- 

 omy or facilities for dissection of the hu- 

 man body. A few practitioners after the 

 expiration of their apprenticeship went 

 abroad to Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Ley- 

 den, but the majority were prevented by 

 poverty and lack of leisure from availing 

 themselves of these opportunities for med- 

 ical study. Dr. "Welch in a recent ad- 

 dress here has called attention to the cler- 

 ical physicians who flourished in New 

 England, ' those ministers of the soul and 

 comforters of the sick ' who did much to 

 keep the spirit of scientific medicine alive 

 but who probably did comparatively little 

 to promote the better study of medicine. 

 They were amateurs rather than physi- 

 cians. They enjoyed medicine and dabbled 

 in it, but did not live by it. An occasional 

 woman also at this early day bore an honor- 

 able part in practical medicine. Ouchter- 

 loney, of Louisville, for example, speaks of 

 Mrs. Frances Coomes, of Kentucky, in the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, who was 

 probably the fii-st female physician upon 

 this continent. She was self-taught, but 

 had remarkable vigor of intellect, original- 

 ity, fertility of resource and strength of 

 character, whose fame as a surgeon, physi- 

 cian and obstetrician extended far beyond 

 the limits of her state. Her operating 

 table was a huge black walnut log, whose 

 upper surface had been rudely smoothed, 

 her instruments were fashioned by herself 

 from domestic cutlery, her ligatures were 



