8

EMPLOYMENT  PSYCHOLOGY

possess  some  infallible  formula,  some  unfailing  ritual.
Among  the  American  Indians,  the  medicine  man  was  a
powerful  physician  who,  by  dancing  wildly  and  beating
loudly  on  a  drum,  was  able  to  frighten  off  the  evil  spirit
which  had  taken  a  temporary  abode  in  the  patient’s
vitals.  At  a  later  day,  and  not  altogether  beyond  our
own  memory,  medicine  consisted  largely  of  home  remedies.
Sage  tea,  bitters,  avoidance  of  the  night  air,  a  rabbit’s
foot—these  and  many  other  cures  and  preventives  are
within  the  memory  of  the  present  generation.
Although  some  of  these  primitive  home  remedies  occasionally ­
  proved  useful  they  were,  in  general,  a  decided ­
  failure.  Their  failure  was  due  to  the  fact  that  their
use  did  not  rest  upon  a  scientific  knowledge  of  the  human
anatomy  and  of  the  exact  effects  upon  the  body  of  certain
drugs  and  expedients.  The  physician  of  that  day  knew
little  about  the  mechanism  of  circulation,  respiration,
and  digestion.  His  cures  were  due  more  or  less  to  shrewd
guesses.  To-day  the  guessing  method  has  been  largely
if  not  entirely  displaced,  and  a  scientific  method  has  taken
its  place.  A  physician  to-day  would  not  think  of  examining
a  man  without  registering  his  exact  temperature,  using
a  stethoscope  on  his  heart  and  lungs,  taking  his  bloodpressure,
  counting  his  pulse,  making  a  urinalysis,  etc.
All  of  these  measures  are  tests,  and  it  is  by  means  of  these
accurate  tests  that  the  physician  is  enabled  to  pronounce
a  reliable  verdict  on  a  man’s  bodily  condition.  Medicine
is  still  far  from  being  a  perfect  science,  but  it  is  at  least
so  far  perfect  that  its  general  superiority  over  the  older
methods  is  universally  conceded.
Psychology,  like  medicine,  has  had  its  evolution.  The
early  Greeks  thought  the  mind  a  fine  essence  or  a  very
subtle  gas,  which  animated  the  body  with  its  presence.