ABSTRACT
Cities allowed men to concentrate together, to specialize, and forced them to communicate more effectively with each other. Primitive peoples in a few places especially favored by nature developed cities that sometimes grew into empires. Prehistoric man evidently did practice some sort of medicine, but how and under what conditions can only be conjectured, since these people have left no written records. In all societies, however, the truly sick man was weak and helpless and could not fulfill the tasks that were normally expected of him. Once civilization developed, changes in living habits effected changes in social structure, technology, and ideology, and these in turn affected medicine and nursing. Healing appeared as the successful result of a contest between invisible beings of good and evil. The great civilizations that grew up between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers did not have the political unity or continuity that was so apparent in Egypt, perhaps because they were less geographically protected.
