ABSTRACT
There is no subject which has given rise to more rational and irrational discussions than medicine. For the uncultured mind it is purely a procedure employed for the cure of disease. The physician is a kind of machine which furnishes remedies for human suffering ; he has learned this trade and knows what curative means are applicable to a given disease. People who have no notion of the hierarchy and linking up of human knowledge of things, and who believe that an art, a science, or any kind of practical work can be learnt singly and without fundamental notions, are representative of the state of the human mind before anything was known and when all science could be summed up in a knowledge of the position of a few stars. For at this primitive epoch medicine existed, although in a very embryonic state, and as it certainly had the instinct of preservation for its origin, man tried to protect himself against hostile elements and to avoid unfavourable conditions respecting his health. This rudimentary hygiene was the first medicine known.
