Page:Quackery Unmasked.djvu/13



early history of medicine is involved in much obscurity. Fable represents the healing art as a special gift from Heaven, and the first practitioners as having descended from the gods. For many centuries medical knowledge was confined almost entirely to the clergy. In the dark ages, when gross superstition held dominion over the minds of men, and polytheism peopled the universe with a multitude of deities, every disease was supposed to be the work of some angry god, and the benighted sufferers sought relief by various superstitious rites and ceremonies, which were intended to appease the wrath of some imaginary demon. They offered sacrifices, 2