SOME ESSEX DOCTORS. 81
interest in Human Society are in some cases as hostile to Man
as their opposite numbers in the animal kingdom, they are, when
taken as a whole, as kindly and benevolent as their animal
colleagues seem the reverse. It is largely owing to these lowly
organisms that the litter left when Man and other organisms
die becomes converted into material that favours the growth
of the higher plants which supply Human Society with the
"corn and wine and oil" it consumes. Nor should Human
Society forget that it is to the agency of Man's symbiotic partners
of this humble class that it owes its three great privileges of
"bread, and cheese, and beer."
Remembering these benefits we may therefore close, with a
cheerful note of gratitude to the kindly organisms that have of
their own mere motion been graciously pleased to establish
symbiotic partnership with Man, this desultory sketch of some
of the many relationships of Biology with Human Society.
SOME ESSEX DOCTORS.
By STEPHEN J. BARNS.
[Read March 4th, 1933.]
ON the occasion of our last meeting Mrs. Hatley exhibited
photographs of a skull with a cranial wound which Sir
Robert Armstrong Jones suggested might have been the result
of trepanning. Although this was an undoubted wound due
to violence, the information was elicited that in some rude
and primitive way the surgical operation of trepanning was
actually performed in prehistoric times. The victim of such
a wound would doubtless consult, and place himself under the
care of, the medicine man of his tribe to be patched up, so that he
in his turn might playfully tap his enemy with a flint implement.
There is little doubt that through all the ages surgery and
medicine have been practised by more or less qualified personages,
the desire for relief and cure being as old as pain and suffering.
It seems only natural that early man should utilise herbs and
plants as an antidote to his banes, and probably, either in their
natural state, or in the way of infusions and decoctions, the
herbs of the fields, their roots and fruit, were used as palliatives,
curatives and stimulants. As an instance, Hezekiah the King
lay sick unto death, afflicted, among other things, with a grievous