The Evolution of Modern Medicine | Page 6

recognition of
mystical agencies which control the dark, "uncharted region" about
him--to use Prof. Gilbert Murray's phrase-- and were responsible for
everything he could not understand, and particularly for the mysteries
of disease. Pliny remarks that physic "was early fathered upon the
gods"; and to the ordinary non-medical mind, there is still something
mysterious about sickness, something outside the ordinary standard.
[*] II Chronicles xvi, 12.
Modern anthropologists claim that both religion and medicine took
origin in magic, "that spiritual protoplasm," as Miss Jane Harrison calls
it. To primitive man, magic was the setting in motion of a spiritual
power to help or to hurt the individual, and early forms may still be
studied in the native races. This power, or "mana," as it is called, while
possessed in a certain degree by all, may be increased by practice.
Certain individuals come to possess it very strongly: among native
Australians today it is still deliberately cultivated. Magic in healing
seeks to control the demons, or forces; causing disease; and in a way it
may be thus regarded as a "lineal ancestor of modern science"
(Whetham), which, too, seeks to control certain forces, no longer,
however, regarded as supernatural.
Primitive man recognized many of these superhuman agencies relating
to disease, such as the spirits of the dead, either human or animal,
independent disease demons, or individuals who might act by
controlling the spirits or agencies of disease. We see this today among
the negroes of the Southern States. A Hoodoo put upon a negro may, if
he knows of it, work upon him so powerfully through the imagination
that he becomes very ill indeed, and only through a more powerful

magic exercised by someone else can the Hoodoo be taken off.
To primitive man life seemed "full of sacred presences" (Walter Pater)
connected with objects in nature, or with incidents and epochs in life,
which he began early to deify, so that, until a quite recent period, his
story is largely associated with a pantheon of greater and lesser gods,
which he has manufactured wholesale. Xenophanes was the earliest
philosopher to recognize man's practice of making gods in his own
image and endowing them with human faculties and attributes; the
Thracians, he said, made their gods blue-eyed and red-haired, the
Ethiopians, snub-nosed and black, while, if oxen and lions and horses
had hands and could draw, they would represent their gods as oxen and
lions and horses. In relation to nature and to disease, all through early
history we find a pantheon full to repletion, bearing testimony no less
to the fertility of man's imagination than to the hopes and fears which
led him, in his exodus from barbarism, to regard his gods as "pillars of
fire by night, and pillars of cloud by day."
Even so late a religion as that of Numa was full of little gods to be
invoked on special occasions--Vatican, who causes the infant to utter
his first cry, Fabulinus, who prompts his first word, Cuba, who keeps
him quiet in his cot, Domiduca, who watches over one's safe
home-coming (Walter Pater); and Numa believed that all diseases came
from the gods and were to be averted by prayer and sacrifice. Besides
the major gods, representatives of Apollo, AEsculapius and Minerva,
there were scores of lesser ones who could be invoked for special
diseases. It is said that the young Roman mother might appeal to no
less than fourteen goddesses, from Juno Lucina to Prosa and Portvorta
(Withington). Temples were erected to the Goddess of Fever, and she
was much invoked. There is extant a touching tablet erected by a
mourning mother and inscribed:
Febri divae, Febri Sancte, Febri magnae Camillo amato pro Filio meld
effecto. Posuit.
It is marvellous what a long line of superhuman powers, major and
minor, man has invoked against sickness. In Swinburne's words:

God by God flits past in thunder till his glories turn to shades, God by
God bears wondering witness how his Gospel flames and fades; More
was each of these, while yet they were, than man their servant seemed;
Dead are all of these, and man survives who made them while he
dreamed.
Most of them have been benign and helpful gods. Into the dark chapters
relating to demonical possession and to witchcraft we cannot here enter.
They make one cry out with Lucretius (Bk. V):
O genus infelix humanum, talia divis Cum tribuit facta atque iras
adjunxit acerbas! Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis
Vulnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris.
In every age, and in every religion there has been justification for his
bitter words, "tantum religio potuit suadere malorum"--"Such wrongs
Religion in her train doth bring"--yet, one outcome of "a belief in
spiritual beings"--as Tylor defines religion-- has been that man has built
an altar of righteousness