1. Origin and history. This vague expression, coined approximately a century ago, needs to be defined, chiefly because medicine over the past century has reached the level of a methodical science. All the older material is outdated and of interest now only for historians and ethnologists. The figure of the priest-doctor found at the beginning of the development was a result of the conviction that man in his birth (heredity) and death was especially subject to higher powers, which even medicine had …