Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/176

166 Plant-Worship, it was shown that powerful effects wrought on the body by plants, and the product of plants, are supposed to be due to spirits dwelling in the plants. Hence the medicine-man, or "mystery-man," being concerned solely with supernatural causation of one or other kind, foreshadows the physician only to the extent of using some of the same means, and not as having the same ideas.

As we shall presently see, it is rather from the priest properly so called, who deals with ghosts not antagonistically but sympathetically, that the physician originates.

While the medicine-man is distinctive of small and undeveloped societies, the priest proper arises along with social aggregation and the formation of established government. In the preceding division of this work, Chapters III, IV, and Y, we saw that since originally propitiation of the ghosts of parents and other members of each family is at first carried on by relatives, implying that the priestly function is generally diffused; and since this priestly function presently devolves on the eldest male of the family; and since, when chieftainship becomes settled and inheritable, the living chief makes sacrifices to the ghost of the dead chief, and sometimes does this on behalf of the people; there so arises an official priest, and it results that with enlargement of societies by union with subjugated tribes and the spread of the chieftain's power, now grown into royal power, over various subordinated groups, and the accompanying establishment of deputy rulers in these groups, who take with them the worship that arose in the conquering tribe, there is initiated a priesthood which, growing into a caste, becomes an agency for the dominant cult; and, from causes already pointed out, becomes the seat of culture in general.

From part of this culture, having its origin in preceding stages, comes greater knowledge of medicinal agents, which gradually cease to be conceived as acting supernaturally. Early civilizations show us the transition. Says Maspero of the ancient Egyptians:—

"The cure-workers are. . . divided into several categories. Some incline toward sorcery, and have faith in formulas and talismans only. . . . Others extol the use of drugs; they study the qualities of plants and minerals. . . and settle the exact time when they must he procured and applied. . . . The best doctors carefully avoid binding themselves exclusively to either method. . . their treatment is a mixture of remedies and exorcisms which vary from patient to patient. They are usually priests."

Along with this progress, there had gone on a differentiation of functions. Among the lower classes of the priesthood were the "pastophors, who. . . practiced medicine."