essed by ghosts. The science of medicine
consisted in knowing how to persuade these ghosts to vacate the
premises. For thousands of years the diseased were treated with
incantations, with hideous noises, with drums and gongs. Everything was
done to make the visit of the ghost as unpleasant as possible, and they
generally succeeded in making things so disagreeable that if the ghost
did not leave, the patient did. These ghosts were supposed to be of
different rank, power and dignity. Now and then a man pretended to have
won the favor of some powerful ghost, and that gave him power over the
little ones. Such a man became an eminent physician.

It was found that certain kinds of smoke, such as that produced by
burning the liver of a fish, the dried skin of a serpent, the eyes of
a toad, or the tongue of an adder, were exceedingly offensive to the
nostrils of an ordinary ghost. With this smoke, the sick room would be
filled until the ghost vanished or the patient died.

It was also believed that certain words,--the names of the most powerful
ghosts,--when properly pronounced, were very effective weapons. It was
for a long time thought that Latin words were the best,--Latin being a
dead language, and known by the clergy. Others thought that two sticks
laid across each other and held before the wicked ghost would cause it
instantly to flee in dread away.

For thousands of years, the practice of medicine consisted in driving
these evil spirits out of the bodies of men.

In some instances, bargains and compromises were made with the ghosts.
One case is given where a multitude of devils traded a man for a herd
of swine. In this transaction the devils were the losers, as the swine
immediately drowned themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears
to have been almost universal, and is by no means yet extinct.

The contortions of the epileptic, the strange twitchings of those
afflicted with chorea, the shakings of palsy, dreams, trances, and the
numberless frightful phenomena produced by diseases of the nerves, were
all seized upon as so many proofs that the bodies of men were filled
with unclean and malignant ghosts.

Whoever endeavored to account for these things by natural causes,
whoever attempted to cure diseases by natural means, was denounced by
the church as an infidel. To explain anything was a crime. It was to the
interest of the priest that all phenomena should be accounted for by the
will and power of gods and