of a high and liberal education";
adding, "For nearly a score of centuries, to the very close of the
Middle Ages, the four Pythagorean subjects of study--arithmetic,
geometry, astronomy, music--were the staple educational course, and were
bound together into a fourfold way of knowledge--the Quadrivium."(1)
With these words of due praise, our present excursion may fittingly
close.

(1) _Op. cit_., pp. 35, 37, and 38.

III. MEDICINE AND MAGIC

THERE are few tasks at once so instructive and so fascinating as the
tracing of the development of the human mind as manifested in the
evolution of scientific and philosophical theories. And this is,
perhaps, especially true when, as in the case of medicine, this
evolution has followed paths so tortuous, intersected by so many
fantastic byways, that one is not infrequently doubtful as to the true
road. The history of medicine is at once the history of human wisdom and
the history of human credulity and folly, and the romantic element (to
use the expression in its popular acceptation) thus introduced, whilst
making the subject more entertaining, by no means detracts from its
importance considered psychologically.

To whom the honour of having first invented medicines is due is unknown,
the origins of pharmacy being lost in the twilight of myth. OSIRIS and
ISIS, BACCHUS, APOLLO father of the famous physician AESCULAPIUS, and
CHIRON the Centaur, tutor of the latter, are among the many mythological
personages who have been accredited with the invention of physic. It
is certain that the art of compounding medicines is extraordinarily
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