“Deorum immortalium inventioni consecrata est Ars Medica.”--CICERO, _Tusculan. Quaest._, Lib. 3. The earliest medical practitioners of any sort and among all peoples would almost certainly be, as we should designate them, herbalists; women in many cases. How they came to acquire knowledge of the healing properties of herbs it is futile to discuss. Old writers often guess that they got hints by watching animals. Their own curiosity, suggesting experiments, would probably be a more fruitful source of their science, and from accidents, both happy and fatal, they would gradually acquire empiric learning. Very soon these herb experts would begin to prepare their remedies so as to make them easier to take or apply, making infusions, decoctions, and ointments. Thus the Art of Pharmacy would be introduced. The herbalists and pharmacists among primitive tribes would accumulate facts and experience, and finding that their skill and services had a market value which enabled them to live without so much hard work as their neighbours, they would naturally surround their knowledge with mystery, and keep it to themselves or in particular families. The profession of medicine being thus started, the inevitable theories of supernatural powers causing diseases would be encouraged, because these would promote the mystery already gathering round the practice of medicine, and from them would follow incantations, exorcisms, the association of priestcraft with the healing arts, and the superstitions, credulities, and impostures which have been its constant companions, and which are still too much in evidence. THE INVENTORS OF MEDICINE Medicine and Magic consequently became intimately associated, and useful facts, superstitious practices, and conscious and unconscious deceptions, became blended into a mosaic which formed a fixed and reverenced System of Medicine. Again the supernatural powers were called in and the credit of the revelation of this Art, that is its total fabric, was attributed either to a divine being who had brought it from above, or to some gifted and inspired creature, who in consequence had been admitted into the family of the deities.