ese ghosts upon the science of
medicine.

According to them, all of the diseases were produced as a punishment by
the good ghosts, or out of pure malignity by the bad ones. There were,
properly speaking, no diseases; the sick were simply possessed by
ghosts. The science of medicine consisted in knowing how to persuade
these ghosts to vacate the premises and for thousands of years all
diseases were treated with incantations, hideous noises, with the
beating of drums and gongs; everything was done to make the position of
a ghost as unpleasant as possible; and they generally succeeded in
making things so disagreeable that if the ghost did not leave, the
patient died. These ghosts were supposed to be different in rank,
power and dignity. Now, then, a man pretended to have won the favor of
some powerful ghost who gave him power over the little ones. Such a
man became a very great physician. It was found that a certain kind of
smoke was exceedingly offensive to the nostrils of your 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, when
properly pronounced, were the most effective weapons, for it was for a
long time supposed that Latin words were the best, I suppose because
Latin was a dead language. For thousands of years medicine consisted
in driving the devils out of men. In some instances bargains and
promises were made with the ghosts. One case is given where a
multitude of devils traded a man off for a herd of swine. In this
transaction the devils were the losers, the swine having immediately
drowned themselves in the sea. This idea of disease appears to have
been almost universal and is not yet extinct. The contortions of the
epileptic, the strange twitching of those afflicted with cholera, were
all seized as proof that the bodies of men were filled with vile and
malignant spirits. Whoever endeavored to account for these things by
natural causes; whoever endeavored to cure disease by natural means was
denounced as an Infidel. To explain anything was a crime. It was to
the interest of the sacerdotal class that all things should be
accounted for by the will and power of God and the devil. The moment
it is admitted that all phenomena are within the domain of the natural,
and that all the prayers in the world cannot change one solitary fact,
the necessity for the priest disappears. Religion breathes the idea o