Magic and medicine went hand in hand in ancient times, and remained together down to the middle ages. Old herbals largely compiled from the lore of ancient women form a link in the chain of tradition, the first ring of which may have been formed in Egypt or in Greece. There is no doubt that women from an early date tried to cure disease. Homer makes mention of Hecamede and her healing potions. There seems little doubt that there were Greek women who applied themselves to a complete study of medicine and contributed to the advance of medical science. This traditional belief in the power of women to cure disease survives in the folk to-day.[10] In view of the widespread veneration of a peculiar psychic quality of woman, a power of prophecy and a property of divinity which has made her an object of fear and worship, it may be well to review the modern explanations of the origin of this unique feminine power. Herbert Spencer was of the opinion that feminine penetration was an ability to distinguish quickly the passing feelings of those around and was the result of long ages of barbarism during which woman as the weaker sex was obliged to resort to the arts of divination and to cunning to make up for her lack of physical force and to protect herself and her offspring.[11] In like vein Käthe Schirmacher, a German feminist, says: "The celebrated intuition of woman is nothing but an astonishing refinement of the senses through fear.... Waiting in fear was made the life task of the sex."[12] Lester F. Ward had a somewhat different view.[13] He thought that woman's psychic power came from the sympathy based on the maternal instinct, which "though in itself an entirely different faculty, early blended with or helped to create, the derivative reason-born faculty of altruism." With Ward's view Olive Schreiner agrees, saying: "We have no certain proof that it is so at present, but woman's long years of servitude and physical subjection, and her experience as childbearer and protector of infancy, may be found in the future to have endowed her ... with an exceptional width of human sympathy and instinctive comprehension."[14] In all probability Lombroso came nearer to the truth in his explanation of feminine penetration. "That woman is more subject to hysteria is a known fact," he says, "but few know how liable she is to hypnotic phenomena, which easily opens up the unfoldment of spiritual faculties.... The history of observation proves that hysteria and hypnotism take the form of magic, sorcery, and divination or prophecy, among savage peoples. 'Women,' say the Pishawar peoples, 'are all witches; for several reasons they may not exert their inborn powers.' ... In the Slave Coast hysterical women are believed to be possessed with spirits. The Fuegians believed that there had been a time when women wielded the empire through her possession of the secrets of sorcery."[8, pp.85f.]