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Rh of Galen had its adherents, influencing all of the newer systems. And suggestive therapeutics was rampant in most grotesque and fanciful forms. Witchcraft, superstition and cabalism were fostered even at the various European courts. As Roswell Park says in his History of Medicine: “With delightful satire Harvey divided the physicians of the day into six classes—the Ferrea, Asinaria, Jesuitica, Aquaria, Laniaria and Stercoraria—according as their favorite systems of treatment were the administration of iron, asses’ milk, cinchona, mineral water, venesection or purgatives.”

That history repeats itself is a truism well illustrated in medicine to-day. The new cellular pathology, founded by Virchow and Cohnheim and elaborated by innumerable men since; the discovery of parasitism and the germ theory by Davaine, Pasteur and Koch; antisepsis by Lister; the introduction of anesthesia by Morton, Simpson and Koller; the application of more exact methods in diagnosis by Skoda and others, and many other innovations and discoveries have revolutionized medicine in the nineteenth century. The transition period of to-day is very analogous to that of the seventeenth century.

Suggestive therapeutics has its advocates in the Emmanuel movement, Lourdes water, Christian Science, New Thought, faith cure and psycho-therapy. The uric acid theory is a curious survival of the old chemical system. The iatro-chemical system is the prototype of Metchnikoff’s theory of longevity. And, strange to relate, despite the claims of wonderful [6]