medicine

• origin in magic

81:2.9When asked where fire came from, the sim­ple story of An­don and the flint was soon re­placed by the leg­end of how some Prometheus stole it from heaven. The an­cients sought a super­nat­u­ral ex­pla­na­tion for all nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena not within the range of their per­sonal com­pre­hen­sion; and many mod­erns con­tinue to do this. The de­per­son­al­iza­tion of so-called nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena has re­quired ages, and it is not yet com­pleted. But the frank, hon­est, and fear­less search for true causes gave birth to mod­ern sci­ence: It turned as­trol­ogy into as­tron­omy, alchemy into chem­istry, and magic into med­i­cine.

90:4.1The en­tire life of an­cient men was pro­phy­lac­tic; their re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure a tech­nique for dis­ease pre­ven­tion. And re­gard­less of the er­ror in their the­o­ries, they were whole­hearted in putting them into ef­fect; they had un­bounded faith in their meth­ods of treat­ment, and that, in it­self, is a pow­er­ful rem­edy.

90:4.2The faith re­quired to get well un­der the fool­ish min­is­tra­tions of one of these an­cient shamans was, af­ter all, not ma­te­ri­ally dif­fer­ent from that which is re­quired to ex­pe­ri­ence heal­ing at the hands of some of his later-day suc­ces­sors who en­gage in the non­sci­en­tific treat­ment of dis­ease.

90:4.3The more prim­i­tive tribes greatly feared the sick, and for long ages they were care­fully avoided, shame­fully ne­glected. It was a great ad­vance in hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism when the evo­lu­tion of shaman­craft pro­duced priests and med­i­cine men who con­sented to treat dis­ease. Then it be­came cus­tom­ary for the en­tire clan to crowd into the sick­room to as­sist the shaman in howl­ing the dis­ease ghosts away. It was not un­com­mon for a woman to be the di­ag­nos­ing shaman, while a man would ad­min­is­ter treat­ment. The usual method of di­ag­nos­ing dis­ease was to ex­am­ine the en­trails of an an­i­mal.

90:4.4Dis­ease was treated by chant­ing, howl­ing, lay­ing on of hands, breath­ing on the pa­tient, and many other tech­niques. In later times the re­sort to tem­ple sleep, dur­ing which heal­ing sup­pos­edly took place, be­came wide­spread. The med­i­cine men even­tu­ally es­sayed ac­tual surgery in con­nec­tion with tem­ple slum­ber; among the first op­er­a­tions was that of trephin­ing the skull to al­low a headache spirit to es­cape. The shamans learned to treat frac­tures and dis­lo­ca­tions, to open boils and ab­scesses; the shamanesses be­came adept at mid­wifery.

90:4.5It was a com­mon method of treat­ment to rub some­thing mag­i­cal on an in­fected or blem­ished spot on the body, throw the charm away, and sup­pos­edly ex­pe­ri­ence a cure. If any­one should chance to pick up the dis­carded charm, it was be­lieved he would im­me­di­ately ac­quire the in­fec­tion or blem­ish. It was a long time be­fore herbs and other real medicines were in­tro­duced. Mas­sage was de­vel­oped in con­nec­tion with in­can­ta­tion, rub­bing the spirit out of the body, and was pre­ceded by ef­forts to rub med­i­cine in, even as mod­erns at­tempt to rub lin­i­ments in. Cup­ping and suck­ing the af­fected parts, to­gether with blood­let­ting, were thought to be of value in get­ting rid of a dis­ease-pro­duc­ing spirit.

90:4.6Since wa­ter was a po­tent fe­tish, it was uti­lized in the treat­ment of many ail­ments. For long it was be­lieved that the spirit caus­ing the sick­ness could be elim­i­nated by sweat­ing. Va­por baths were highly re­garded; nat­u­ral hot springs soon blos­somed as prim­i­tive health re­sorts. Early man dis­cov­ered that heat would re­lieve pain; he used sun­light, fresh an­i­mal or­gans, hot clay, and hot stones, and many of these meth­ods are still em­ployed. Rhythm was prac­ticed in an ef­fort to in­flu­ence the spir­its; the tom-toms were uni­ver­sal.

• belief in plant remedies

90:4.7Among some peo­ple dis­ease was thought to be caused by a wicked con­spir­acy be­tween spir­its and an­i­mals. This gave rise to the be­lief that there ex­isted a benef­i­cent plant rem­edy for ev­ery an­i­mal-caused dis­ease. The red men were es­pe­cially de­voted to the plant the­ory of uni­ver­sal reme­dies; they al­ways put a drop of blood in the root hole left when the plant was pulled up.

• belief disease spirits driven out by foul-smelling and bad-tasting m.
• cocoa, quinine, oil, wine, opium, castor oil among earliest

90:4.8Fast­ing, di­et­ing, and coun­terir­ri­tants were of­ten used as re­me­dial mea­sures. Hu­man se­cre­tions, be­ing def­i­nitely mag­i­cal, were highly re­garded; blood and urine were thus among the ear­li­est medicines and were soon aug­mented by roots and var­i­ous salts. The shamans be­lieved that dis­ease spir­its could be driven out of the body by foul-smelling and bad-tast­ing medicines. Purg­ing very early be­came a rou­tine treat­ment, and the val­ues of raw co­coa and qui­nine were among the ear­li­est phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal dis­cov­er­ies.

90:4.9The Greeks were the first to evolve truly ra­tio­nal meth­ods of treat­ing the sick. Both the Greeks and the Egyp­tians re­ceived their med­i­cal knowl­edge from the Eu­phrates val­ley. Oil and wine was a very early med­i­cine for treat­ing wounds; cas­tor oil and opium were used by the Sume­ri­ans. Many of these an­cient and ef­fec­tive se­cret reme­dies lost their power when they be­came known; se­crecy has al­ways been es­sen­tial to the suc­cess­ful prac­tice of fraud and su­per­sti­tion. Only facts and truth court the full light of com­pre­hen­sion and re­joice in the il­lu­mi­na­tion and en­light­en­ment of sci­en­tific re­search.

164:1.3But Je­sus dis­cerned the lawyer’s mo­tive, and in­stead of falling into the trap, he pro­ceeded to tell his hear­ers a story, a story which would be fully ap­pre­ci­ated by any Jeri­cho au­di­ence. Said Je­sus: “A cer­tain man was go­ing down from Je­ru­sa­lem to Jeri­cho, and he fell into the hands of cruel brig­ands, who robbed him, stripped him and beat him, and de­part­ing, left him half dead. Very soon, by chance, a cer­tain priest was go­ing down that way, and when he came upon the wounded man, see­ing his sorry plight, he passed by on the other side of the road. And in like man­ner a Levite also, when he came along and saw the man, passed by on the other side. Now, about this time, a cer­tain Samar­i­tan, as he jour­neyed down to Jeri­cho, came across this wounded man; and when he saw how he had been robbed and beaten, he was moved with com­pas­sion, and go­ing over to him, he bound up his wounds, pour­ing on oil and wine, and set­ting the man upon his own beast, brought him here to the inn and took care of him. And on the mor­row he took out some money and, giv­ing it to the host, said: ‘Take good care of my friend, and if the ex­pense is more, when I come back again, I will re­pay you.’ Now let me ask you: Which of these three turned out to be the neigh­bor of him who fell among the rob­bers?” And when the lawyer per­ceived that he had fallen into his own snare, he an­swered, “He who showed mercy on him.” And Je­sus said, “Go and do like­wise.”

72:7.2In all in­dus­try first at­ten­tion is paid to health; cer­tain phases of phys­i­cal well-be­ing are re­garded as in­dus­trial and com­mu­nity pre­rog­a­tives, but in­di­vid­ual and fam­ily health prob­lems are mat­ters of per­sonal con­cern only. In med­i­cine, as in all other purely per­sonal mat­ters, it is in­creas­ingly the plan of gov­ern­ment to re­frain from in­ter­fer­ing.

149:5.2“Si­mon, some per­sons are nat­u­rally more happy than oth­ers. Much, very much, de­pends upon the will­ing­ness of man to be led and di­rected by the Fa­ther’s spirit which lives within him. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures the words of the wise man, ‘The spirit of man is the can­dle of the Lord, search­ing all the in­ward parts’? And also that such spirit-led mor­tals say: ‘The lines are fallen to me in pleas­ant places; yes, I have a goodly her­itage.’ ‘A lit­tle that a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked,’ for ‘a good man shall be sat­is­fied from within him­self.’ ‘A merry heart makes a cheer­ful coun­te­nance and is a con­tin­ual feast. Bet­ter is a lit­tle with the rev­er­ence of the Lord than great trea­sure and trou­ble there­with. Bet­ter is a din­ner of herbs where love is than a fat­ted ox and ha­tred there­with. Bet­ter is a lit­tle with righ­teous­ness than great rev­enues with­out rec­ti­tude.’ ‘A merry heart does good like a med­i­cine.’ ‘Bet­ter is a hand­ful with com­po­sure than a super­abun­dance with sor­row and vex­a­tion of spirit.’

164:3.153. But Je­sus had a third rea­son for re­sort­ing to these ma­te­rial means in con­nec­tion with this unique trans­ac­tion: This was a mir­a­cle wrought purely in obe­di­ence to his own choos­ing, and thereby he de­sired to teach his fol­low­ers of that day and all sub­se­quent ages to re­frain from de­spis­ing or ne­glect­ing ma­te­rial means in the heal­ing of the sick. He wanted to teach them that they must cease to re­gard mir­a­cles as the only method of cur­ing hu­man dis­eases.