The first steps taken by science according to this method, which indeed had been suggested long ago, but which was first clearly laid down by Bacon, were slow and halting. Religious and philosophical doctrines still weighed heavily on inquiring minds, so that the new method was not followed with any great courage. None the less progress was achieved, until at length the great problems of humanity opened out. More than two thousand years before the birth of exact science, Buddha had given voice to the chief grievances of the human race. “Behold, O monks, the holy truth as to suffering,” he had proclaimed in the Sermon at Benares, “birth is suffering, old age is suffering, disease is suffering, and death is suffering.” Science, in its slow progress, passing from particular to general, reached first one of these four sorrows, the suffering due to disease. In the Buddhist legend that I quoted in chap. vi., the sight of a sick man “whose senses were weakened, who drew his breath with difficulty, whose limbs were shrivelled, whose bowels were wrung with pain, and his body pitifully soiled with excrement,” suggested to Buddha the reflection that “health is no more than the idle vision of a dream while fear and disease are horrible realities. What wise man, having seen the thing that life is, can still think of joy or of pleasure? Woe upon health which is assailed by so many maladies.” When Buddha, who was a young prince, asked of his father the gift “that he might always remain full of health, and that he should be smitten by no disease,” his father, who was the king, replied: “You ask me what is impossible; in that my son, I can do nothing.” From that day, every religion has busied itself with the cure and prevention of disease. They believed that the causes of these were the influence of evil spirits or the visitations of God; and as remedies they prescribed sacrifice and prayer and anything that might avert the anger of God. Even at the present day, similar medicine is used by primitive races. In Sumatra for instance, when it is impossible to arrest the flow of blood from a wound, the disaster is ascribed to an evil spirit (Polasièq) who is sucking the wound and making it incurable. In Nias, when bleeding from the nose occurs in children, it is supposed to be due to the father having killed a cock during the pregnancy of the mother. The indispensable remedy is to make sacrifice to the outraged deity. No doubt there co-exist with such practices of primitive races, certain useful rules, based on correct observation or on experience. It is a common practice to try all manner of remedies on the sick; although most do harm, now and again something useful may be discovered. Such vulgar medicine has undoubted merit, but it cannot be compared with the results of scientific medicine, which are drawn from rigorous experiment.