the ladder of service.  During the days of slavery the interests of the master demanded that he should direct the general social and moral life of the slave, and should provide especially for his physical well-being.  The sudden severance of this tie left the Negro wholly without intimate guidance and direction.  The ignorant must be enlightened, the sick must be healed, and the poor must have the gospel preached to them.  The situation and circumstances under which the race found itself demanded that its professional class, for the most part, should be men of their own blood and sympathies.  The needed service could not be effectively performed by those who assumed and asserted racial arrogance, and bestowed their professional service as cold crumbs that fell from the master’s table.  The professional class who are to uplift and direct the lowly must not say, “So far shalt thou come, but not any farther,” but rather, “Where I am, there ye shall be also.”

There is no more pathetic chapter in the history of human struggle than the emergence of the smothered ambition of this race to meet the social exigencies involved in the professional needs of the masses.  In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the plowhand was transformed into a priest, the barber into a bishop, the housemaid into a schoolmistress, the day-laborer into a lawyer, and the porter into a physician.  These high places of intellectual and professional authority, into which they found themselves thrust by stress of social necessity, had to be operated with at least some semblance of conformity to the standards which had been established by the European through the traditions of the ages.  The higher place in society occupied by the choicest members of the white race, and that too after long years of arduous preparation, had to be assumed by black men 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.