remained only to be used by a few, who still report good results from it. In spite of the constancy of this succession of events, we are still quite ready to take up with enthusiasm new discoveries in science and their applications to medicine. We have not yet lost the feeling, common in earlier centuries, that all science was meant for man and that every new scientific development must have some special reference to him. CHAPTER VI QUACKERY AND MIND CURES Not less interesting than the therapeutic results obtained by men who in good faith were using inert remedies that they thought effective, are the cures obtained by men who had good reason to know that the therapeutic methods they were using were quite inefficient. Their good results, often loudly proclaimed by healed patients, are obtained entirely through the patients' minds. Usually these men are supposed to possess some wonderful therapeutic secret, which they have obtained by a fortunate discovery, or by long years of study, though usually their discovery is a myth and their long years of study a fable. So long as people can be brought to believe in their powers many cures are sure to follow their ministrations. The real secret is their knowledge of human nature. They induce people to tap new sources of vital energy in themselves, and somehow they succeed in bringing to their aid this law of reserve energy. Besides, in many cases the real reasons why patients continue to have certain symptoms once they have been initiated, is that their worry about themselves inhibits their natural curative power. This inhibition is prevented or obliterated by the change of mind produced by the quack, and then the _vis medicatrix naturae_ brings about a cure. Probably the oldest story that we have of a quack in our modern sense of the word is found in the Arabian Nights, some of the stories of which were old even in the time of Herodotus. One day Galen, famous for his work at Rome in the second century after Christ, found a wandering healer pursuing his avocation in his front yard. He found also that this man succeeded in relieving certain patients for whom he had been unable to do anything. He {47} found that the medicines prescribed were likely to do harm rather than good, yet many of the patients were benefited. Galen succeeded in winning the man's confidence, who told him his story. He had been a weaver, but his wife thought he was not making money enough to support her properly, so she had advised him to become a leech. After taking lessons from a wandering quack, he set up for himself. When Galen inquired as to his method of making a diagnosis, he found that he did it entirely by his knowledge of human nature. He was even able to tell what was the matter with patients at a distance when friends came to demand medicine for them.