Abraham Jacobi has remarked that in America the history of medicine is almost never taught, and that as long as our universities do not teach it, the pupils feel encouraged to neglect it. Many reasons might be urged for the study of the history of science. It gives some idea of how men who have accomplished things have lived and thought and worked. It furnishes a perspective view of the way in which the medical disciplines, like others, have come into their present form. The continuity of development in science is brought to light. A medical historian has intimated that the history of medicine furnishes valuable and fruitful lessons of what not to do—lessons often neglected so that the same gross errors have been repeated over and over. Clifford once remarked that scientific thought is human progress itself; and few experiences can furnish a more wholesome reminder of the limitations of human knowledge and, above all, of the importance of rejecting superstition and maintaining the open mind, than the stories of the development of scientific truth. There is a tendency even among devotees of medicine to acquire an attitude of complacent belief in current doctrines and therapeutic procedures. This never makes for advancement either in the science of medicine or in the arts of practice. History serves to recall the need of the tolerant point of view and the willingness to listen to the new without preliminary bias.