as medicines.(1)

(1) See the late Mr A. C. WOOTTON'S excellent work, _Chronicles of
Pharmacy_ (2 vols, 1910), to which I gladly acknowledge my indebtedness.

Presumably the oldest theory concerning the causation of disease is that
which attributes all the ills of mankind to the malignant operations of
evil spirits, a theory which someone has rather fancifully suggested is
not so erroneous after all, if we may be allowed to apply the term "evil
spirits" to the microbes of modern bacteriology. Remnants of this theory
(which does--shall I say?--conceal a transcendental truth), that is,
in its original form, still survive to the present day in various
superstitious customs, whose absurdity does not need emphasising: for
example, the use of red flannel by old-fashioned folk with which to
tie up sore throats--red having once been supposed to be a colour very
angatonistic to evil spirits; so much so that at one time red cloth hung
in the patient's room was much employed as a cure for smallpox!

Medicine and magic have always been closely associated. Indeed, the
greatest name in the history of pharmacy is also what is probably the
greatest name in the history of magic--the reference, of course, being
to PARACELSUS (1493-1541). Until PARACELSUS, partly by his vigorous
invective and partly by his remarkable cures of various diseases,
demolished the old school of medicine, no one dared contest the
authority of GALEN (130-_circa_ 205) and AVICENNA (980--1037). GALEN'S
theory of disease was largely based upon that of the four humours
in man--bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile,--which were regarded as
related to (but not identical with) the four elements--fire, air, water,
and earth,--being supposed to have characters similar to these. Thus, to
bile, as to fire, were attributed the properties of hotness and dryness;
to blood and air those of hotness and moistness; to phlegm and water
those of coldness and moistness; and, finally, black bile, like earth,
was said to be cold and dry. GALEN supposed that an alteration in the
due proportion of these humours gives rise to disease, though he did not
consider this to be its only cause; thus, cancer, it was thought, might
result from an excess of black bile, and rheumatism from an excess of
phlegm. Drugs, GALEN argued, are of efficiency in the curing of disease,
according as they possess one or more of these so-called fundamental
properties, hotness, dryness, coldness, and moistness,