In this way medicine had its rise from
the experience of the recovery of some, of the death of others,
distinguishing the hurtful from the salutary things" (Book I). The
association of ideas was suggestive--the plant eyebright was used for
centuries in diseases of the eye because a black speck in the flower
suggested the pupil of the eye. The old herbals are full of similar
illustrations upon which, indeed, the so-called doctrine of signatures
depends. Observation came, and with it an ever widening experience. No
society so primitive without some evidence of the existence of a healing
art, which grew with its growth, and became part of the fabric of its
organization.
With primitive medicine, as such, I cannot deal, but I must refer to
the oldest existing evidence of a very extraordinary practice, that of
trephining. Neolithic skulls with disks of bone removed have been found
in nearly all parts of the world. Many careful studies have been made
of this procedure, particularly by the great anatomist and surgeon,
Paul Broca, and M. Lucas-Championniere has covered the subject in a
monograph.(2) Broca suggests that the trephining was done by scratching
or scraping, but, as Lucas-Championniere holds, it was also done by a
series of perforations made in a circle with flint instruments, and a
round piece of skull in this way removed; traces of these drill-holes
have been found.
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