basis of practical experiment and experience. The science of medicine was
developed by man in his groping to relieve pain and to curb disease, and
was not handed down ready made from the skies. In this groping, the
African, like the rest of the children of men, has been feeling after the
right remedies, if haply he might find them.

It was inevitable that the prevailing practice of conjuration in Africa
should be found among Negroes after they had been transferred to the new
continent. The conjure man was well known in every slave community. He
generally turned his art, however, to malevolent rather than benevolent
uses; but this was not always the case. Not infrequently these medicine men
gained such wide celebrity among their own race as to attract the attention
of the whites. As early as 1792 a Negro by the name of Cesar[1] had gained
such distinction for his curative knowledge of roots and herbs that the
Assembly of South Carolina purchased his freedom and gave him an annuity of
one hundred pounds.

That slaves not infrequently held high rank among their own race as
professional men may be seen from the advertisements of colonial days. A
runaway Negro named Simon was in 1740 advertised in _The Pennsylvania
Gazette_[2] as being able to "bleed and draw teeth" and "pretending to be
a great doctor among his people." Referring in 1797 to a fugitive slave of
Charleston, South Carolina, _The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser_[3]
said: "He passes for a Doctor among people of his color and it is supposed
practices in that capacity about town." The contact of such practitioners
with the white race was due to the fact that the profession of the barber
was at one time united with that of the physician. The practice of
phlebotomy was considered an essential part of the doctor's work. As the
Negro early became a barber and the profession was united with that of
the physician, it is natural to suppose that he too would assume the