The Evolution of Modern Medicine | Page 7

in his heart. The comparative method applied
to the study of his religious growth has shown how man's thoughts have
widened in the unceasing purpose which runs through his spiritual no
less than his physical evolution. Out of the spiritual protoplasm of
magic have evolved philosopher and physician, as well as priest. Magic
and religion control the uncharted sphere--the supernatural, the
superhuman: science seeks to know the world, and through knowing, to
control it. Ray Lankester remarks that Man is Nature's rebel, and goes
on to say: "The mental qualities which have developed in Man, though
traceable in a vague and rudimentary condition in some of his animal
associates, are of such an unprecedented power and so far dominate
everything else in his activities as a living organism, that they have to a
very large extent, if not entirely, cut him off from the general operation
of that process of Natural Selection and survival of the fittest which up
to their appearance had been the law of the living world. They justify
the view that Man forms a new departure in the gradual unfolding of
Nature's predestined scheme. Knowledge, reason, self-consciousness,
will, are the attributes of Man."[1] It has been a slow and gradual
growth, and not until within the past century has science organized

knowledge-- so searched out the secrets of Nature, as to control her
powers, limit her scope and transform her energies. The victory is so
recent that the mental attitude of the race is not yet adapted to the
change. A large proportion of our fellow creatures still regard nature as
a playground for demons and spirits to be exorcised or invoked.
[1] Sir E. Ray Lankester: Romanes Lecture, "Nature and Man," Oxford
Univ. Press, 1905, p. 21.
Side by side, as substance and shadow--"in the dark backward and
abysm of time," in the dawn of the great civilizations of Egypt and
Babylon, in the bright morning of Greece, and in the full noontide of
modern life, together have grown up these two diametrically opposite
views of man's relation to nature, and more particularly of his personal
relation to the agencies of disease.
The purpose of this course of lectures is to sketch the main features of
the growth of these two dominant ideas, to show how they have
influenced man at the different periods of his evolution, how the lamp
of reason, so early lighted in his soul, burning now bright, now dim,
has never, even in his darkest period, been wholly extinguished, but
retrimmed and refurnished by his indomitable energies, now shines
more and more towards the perfect day. It is a glorious chapter in
history, in which those who have eyes to see may read the fulfilment of
the promise of Eden, that one day man should not only possess the
earth, but that he should have dominion over it! I propose to take an
aeroplane flight through the centuries, touching only on the tall peaks
from which may be had a panoramic view of the epochs through which
we pass.
ORIGIN OF MEDICINE
MEDICINE arose out of the primal sympathy of man with man; out of
the desire to help those in sorrow, need and sickness.
In the primal sympathy Which having been must ever be; In the
soothing thoughts that spring Out of human suffering.

The instinct of self-preservation, the longing to relieve a loved one, and
above all, the maternal passion--for such it is--gradually softened the
hard race of man--tum genus humanum primum mollescere coepit. In
his marvellous sketch of the evolution of man, nothing illustrates more
forcibly the prescience of Lucretius than the picture of the growth of
sympathy: "When with cries and gestures they taught with broken
words that 'tis right for all men to have pity on the weak." I heard the
well-known medical historian, the late Dr. Payne, remark that "the
basis of medicine is sympathy and the desire to help others, and
whatever is done with this end must be called medicine."
The first lessons came to primitive man by injuries, accidents, bites of
beasts and serpents, perhaps for long ages not appreciated by his
childlike mind, but, little by little, such experiences crystallized into
useful knowledge. The experiments of nature made clear to him the
relation of cause and effect, but it is not likely, as Pliny suggests, that
he picked up his earliest knowledge from the observation of certain
practices in animals, as the natural phlebotomy of the plethoric
hippopotamus, or the use of emetics from the dog, or the use of
enemata from the ibis. On the other hand, Celsus is probably right in
his account of the origin of rational medicine. "Some of the sick on
account of their eagerness took food on the first day, some on account
of loathing abstained; and