The healing gods of ancient civilizations / by Walter Addison Jayne.

  • Jayne, Walter Addison, 1853-1929.
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The healing gods of ancient civilizations / by Walter Addison Jayne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    other sciences, gained sufficient headway to break loose from ancient authority and traditions and to find oppor¬ tunities for unprejudiced investigation, experiment, and adoption of new principles. During the succeeding years medicine has intrenched itself behind numerous demon¬ strations of newly discovered facts, and it has finally been accorded a high place among the sciences, although retaining many of its time-honored characteristics as an art. Throughout all history of human progress, from the primitive state to the higher intellectual levels, the race has shown a strong conservatism of opinion, an ever- constant tendency to cling to old beliefs and customs while tentatively accepting newer conceptions prompted by a broader, better knowledge of the workings of na¬ ture’s laws, upon which advances in civilization have been based. Mankind instinctively is dependent upon the Supreme Power for life and all benefits, and it is not a matter for surprise that many in our communities, reject¬ ing modern professional ideas of disease, its causes, and its treatment, prefer to rely, as did the people of old, upon divinity for the preservation of health and for relief from all physical ills. The prevalence of this faith, side by side with ‘new thought’ and the many variant forms of mental healing resulting from modern psychological studies, excites a very special interest in the types of belief of those ancient peoples who exercised the religious healing function, and suggests a historical study of these beliefs and the methods employed in such healing by the representatives of the pagan religions of the pre- Christian era, without, however, any attempt to appraise the relative values of divine, mental, and material healing practices. In the following studies, the early types of ancient and primitive healing are considered only as they pertain to