ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 7/ 
The priest deals with the ethics of man's nature 
through the higher faculties of the mind, "will, mem- 
ory, and understanding." These, and particularly the 
latter, are feebly developed and but little exercised by 
people in a state of savagery. The instances recorded 
in history are numerous where the Indian physician, 
priestly functions were engrafted upon a fame won by the art of 
medicine. Homer represents Apollo, a god of medicine, as arrest- 
ing a pestilential disease that existed in a Greek camp, at the earnest 
prayers of the priests, who thus recognized the distinctness and effi- 
cacy of the medical profession. 
A careful study might enable us to point out the origin and sequence 
of the various professions, which have arisen, one after the other, to 
meet the increasing wants of a developing civilization. W^e find that 
in Egypt medicine and all of the physical sciences, particularly hy- 
draulics, geometry, surveying, etc., as well as lav/-making and the 
administration of civil government, were all early assumed by the 
priesthood. This hierarchy wisely employed those skilled in the 
various departments^ but surrounded all their operations with such 
ceremonials and secrecy as to strike terror into the minds of the un- 
initiated. There fortunately grew up in the different departments of 
this theocratic government a desire for original investigations and a 
system of records of the facts observed, which were preserved in the 
temples, so that a sort of common law was evolved for the benefit of 
every department of the government, and a code of principles or law, 
for the guidance of human desires and industries. In this way, too, 
were collected the earliest observations of disease, and a record of 
them preserved, with the means found most effective in their care. 
Those wishing to prosecute the study into the origin of medicine 
will do well to consult Herodotus and Strabo. The former of these 
authors tells us that in Egypt the faculty was learned and divided into 
specialties. And Pliny informs us that the physicians of Egypt made 
post-mortem examinations to discover the hidden causes of disease. 
From Homer's Odyssey we learn that the physicians studied the nature 
and properties of drugs, that Egypt contained many that were salutary 
and others that were pernicious, and that her physicians were pos- 
sessed of knowledge exceeding that of other men. 
