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 oc 
casionally proved useful they were, in general, a de 
cided 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 blood- 
pressure, 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.