yet the chance knowledge of the marvellous effect of gifted springs
is probably as ancient as any sound knowledge as to medicine
whatever. No doubt it was mere casual luck at first that tried these
springs and found them answer. Somebody by accident tried them and
by that accident was instantly cured. The chance which happily
directed men in this one case, misdirected them in a thousand cases.
Some expedition had answered when the resolution to undertake it was
resolved on under an ancient tree, and accordingly that tree became
lucky and sacred. Another expedition failed when a magpie crossed
its path, and a magpie was said to be unlucky. A serpent crossed the
path of another expedition, and it had a marvellous victory, and
accordingly the serpent became a sign of great luck (and what a
savage cannot distinguish from it--a potent deity which makes luck).
Ancient medicine is equally unreasonable: as late down as the Middle
Ages it was full of superstitions founded on mere luck. The
collection of prescriptions published under the direction of the
Master of the Rolls abounds in such fancies as we should call them.
According to one of them, unless I forget, some disease--a fever, I
think--is supposed to be cured by placing the patient between two
halves of a hare and a pigeon recently killed. [Footnote: Readers of
Scott's life will remember that an admirer of his in humble life
proposed to cure him of inflammation of the bowels by making him
sleep a whole night on twelve smooth stones, painfully collected by
the admirer from twelve brooks, which was, it appeared, a recipe of
sovereign traditional power. Scott gravely told the proposer that he
had mistaken the charm, and that the stones were of no virtue unless
wrapped up in the petticoat of a widow who never wished to marry
again, and as no such widow seems to have been forthcoming, he
escaped the remedy.] Nothing can be plainer than that there is no
ground for this kind of treatment, and that the idea of it arose out