Pharmacognosy is a division of materia medica, and includes the technical study of the crude materials from which drugs are derived. Its deliberation is limited to the animal and the vegetable kingdoms, but it is not a science with sharply defined boundaries, as it encroaches on so many avenues of knowledge - systematic botany, zoology, gross and minute anatomy, chemistry, and pharmacy.

Pharmacy is largely a chemical study. It deals with those manipulations by which the potent principles of drugs are rendered available for therapeutic purposes.

Therapeutics is the art and practice of treating abnormal bodily states; it is the application of the sciences of physiology, pathology, and nosology, and is the concern of the physician. A physician is an engineer who cannot construct but is skilled in conservation and repair. Therapeutics, then, has for its object the restitution to the normal, or, if such is impossible, the giving of comparative comfort to the invalid. Its range of activity, therefore, is extremely wide, and a combination of methods is necessary to the resourceful physician. The following general modes of treatment should be considered:

Suggestion Therapy. - There is little question that the oldest systematic form of therapeutics was a type of suggestion therapy. In the old type of "Temple Sleep" we find the earliest use of this form of therapy. Magnus1 has shown that the earliest relations of religion and medicine were to be found in the "Temple Sleep" procedure. To the earliest Egyptians priest and physician were one. There were priests not physicians it is true, but no physicians who had not priestly functions. Throughout the entire Egyptian civilization this double function flourished and even passed on into the Grecian system, where it persisted for centuries. We all know that certain organs of the body were under the care of certain gods or goddesses - some singly, some having charge of many organs if not the whole body. The early Egyptian god, Thoth, had the digestion under his particular care, and it is said that this mythical personage invented the clyster pipe. Thus the modern formula, "Fear God and keep the bowels open," is apparently of prehistoric Egyptian origin. The rationale of much of this priest therapy was to sleep in the temple of the god overnight. There in the quiet and repose of the holy place, providing it were not too popular, the god would appear to the sick one in the form of a dream, and would designate the remedy needed. Modern clairvoyant quacks pursue the same method. No. 59 for colds, so extensively advertised, is said to have been devised in a similar manner.

This method of treatment, it is known, was not uncommon even as late as the time of the Roman emperors.2 In the Greek temples all were allowed save those so hopelessly ill that it seemed foolish. The procedure for those patients admitted to the temple was for the priests to narrate the wonderful results to be obtained by the step which was to be taken; thus was desirable confidence imparted. Then various prayers and ceremonies were gone through with and certain sacrifices made; the sacrifice being the ancient analogue of the "fee." After the "preliminary" conditions had been complied with, the ancient priest, it may be observed, obtained his retaining fee in advance, those patients who were more1 "Relation of Medicine and Religion, Culturgeschichtliche Bilder aus der Ent-wickelung des drztlichen Standes, 1890.

2Vide Suetonius and Vespasian. Vespasianus, 7, No. 20.

well-to-do were placed in front of the statue of the god on the skin of the sacrificed ram, while the poor were permitted to lie down on a bundle of rags in one corner of the temple. Great stress was then laid on the character of the dreams the patient would have as he slept, for the advice of the god would come in the dream. History has recorded some fearful and wonderful dreams, aesculapius is said to have demanded 120 ounces of blood for one venesection. Aristides was put by the gods on a diet of raisins to cure what appeared to be neurasthenia from too much exhorting. It is significant that the ancient gods commanded their patients to go fishing, to go hunting and swimming, and frequent attendance of theatres was an urgent remedy. It was highly essential, in fact obligatory, that the priests should interpret the dreams.

The treatment of temple sleep was the result of a profound religious feeling, and it was carried out with great decorum and seriousness. Implicit and devout confidence in the gods was a sine qua non. Thus the temple sleep, separated from its religious accessories, is the prototype of the systematic treatment by suggestion, and this suggestion therapy strutting about in the garb of religion has remained an inseparable companion of the human race from the most remote times of Egyptian civilization up to the present day. With all peoples and at all times, even during our modern century, suggestion has been active in the garb of religion ; only that this religious garb has frequently changed according to altered religious and cultural ideas. Faith is one of the oldest therapeutic agencies of which anything is known. As Dr. Osler1 has so well said, "Faith in the Gods or in the Saints cures one, faith in little pills another, hypnotic suggestion a third, faith in a plain common doctor a fourth. In all ages the prayer of faith has healed the sick, and the mental attitude of the suppliant seems to be of more consequence than the powers to which the prayer is addressed. The cures in the temples of aeculapius, the miracles of the Saints, the remarkable cures of those noble men, the Jesuit missionaries, in this country, the modern miracles of Lourdes, and the wonder-workings of the so-called Christian Scientists are often genuine and must be considered in discussing the foundations of therapeutics." "Physicians use the same power every day. If a poor lass, paralyzed, apparently helpless, bed-ridden for years, comes to me, having worn out in mind, body, and estate a devoted family, and she in a few weeks or less by faith in me, and faith alone, takes up her bed and walks, the saints of old could not have done more." "The faith with which we work, the faith, indeed, which is available to-day in every-day life, has its limitations: it will not raise the dead: it will not put in a new eye in place of a bad one, nor will it cure cancer or pneumonia or knit a bone; but in spite of the nineteenth century restrictions, such as we find it, faith is a most precious commodity without which we should be very badly off."