Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/32

16 have developed as rivals to the priest-physician, or may have been mistrusted by him from jealous motives. As he tended to monopolize power this jealousy must have often centred on the old women who, in very ancient countries and among primitive, tribes, were, as we know, so greatly revered, as shown in the expression "wise women" applied to them, and who no doubt were prominent as care-takers for the sick through prehistoric ages. It seems probable that, in time, the witch idea grew out of friction arising in this relationship of the sick room and medical supremacy. So far back as we know anything about witches, they were credited with uncanny powers of causing illness and wasting disease, and this superstition must have arisen at a most remote period. It lingers today in isolated communities, in modified form, always based on some knowledge of herbs, or magnetic power, in the person suspected.

The practical skill of primitive man became, in time, quite admirable in certain kinds of disease, and even more so in surgery. He evolved a rude but efficacious mode of treatment for fevers and rheumatism, learned to massage, bleed, cup, and apply fomentations; became skilled in bone setting, trephining, amputating limbs, and checking