ancient.  There is a papyrus in the British Museum containing medical prescriptions which was written about 1200 B.C.; and the famous EBERS papyrus, which is devoted to medical matters, is reckoned to date from about the year 1550 B.C.  It is interesting to note that in the prescriptions given in this latter papyrus, as seems to have been the case throughout the history of medicine, the principle that the efficacy of a medicine is in proportion to its nastiness appears to have been the main idea.  Indeed, many old medicines contained ingredients of the most disgusting nature imaginable:  a mediaeval remedy known as oil of puppies, made by cutting up two newly-born puppies and boiling them with one pound of live earthworms, may be cited as a comparatively pleasant example of the remedies (?) used in the days when all sorts of excreta were prescribed 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