without personal or formal fitness. The stronger and more
aggressive natures pushed themselves into these higher callings by sheer
force of untutored energy and uncontrolled ambition.

An accurate study of the healing art as practiced by Negroes in Africa as
well as its continuance after transplantation in America would form an
investigation of great historical interest. This, however, is not the
purpose of this paper. It is sufficient to note the fact that witchcraft
and the control of disease through roots, herbs, charms and conjuration are
universally practiced on the continent of Africa. Indeed, the medicine man
has a standing and influence that is sometimes superior to that of kings
and queens. The natives of Africa have discovered their own materia medica
by actual practice and experience with the medicinal value of minerals and
plants. It must be borne in mind that any pharmacopeia must rest upon the
basis of practical experiment and experience. The science of medicine was
developed by man in his groping to relieve pain and to curb disease, and
was not handed down ready made from the skies. In this groping, the
African, like the rest of the children of men, has been feeling after the
right remedies, if haply he might find them.

It was inevitable that the prevailing practice of conjuration in Africa
should be found among Negroes after they had been transferred to the new
continent. The conjure man was well known in every slave community. He
generally turned his art, however, to malevolent rather than benevolent
uses; but this was not always the case. Not infrequently these medicine men
gained such wide celebrity among their own race as to attract the attention
of the whites. As early as 1792 a Negro by the name of Cesar[1] had gained
such distinction for his curative knowledge of roots and herbs that the
Assembly of South Carolina purchased his freedom and gave him an annuity of
one hundred pounds.

That slaves not infrequently held high rank among their own race as
professional men may be seen from the advertisements of colonial days. A
runaway Negro named Simon was in 1740 advertised in _The Pennsylvania
Gazette_[2] as being able to "bleed and draw teeth" and "pretending to be
a great doctor among his people." Referring in 1797 to a fugitive slave of
Charleston, South Carolina, _The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser_[3]
said: "He passes for a Doctor among people of his color and it is supposed
practices in tha