(299) For the mysticism which gradually enveloped the School of Alexandria, see Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, De l'Ecole d'Alexandrie, Paris, 1845, vol. vi, p. 161. For the effect of the new doctrines on the Empire of the East, see Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 240. As to the more common miracles of healing and the acknowledgment of non-Christian miracles of healing by Christian fathers, see Fort, p. 84.



IV. THE ATTRIBUTION OF DISEASE TO SATANIC INFLUENCE.

—"PASTORAL MEDICINE" CHECKS SCIENTIFIC EFFORT.

Especially prejudicial to a true development of medical science among the first Christians was their attribution of disease to diabolic influence. As we have seen, this idea had come from far, and, having prevailed in Chaldea, Egypt, and Persia, had naturally entered into the sacred books of the Hebrews. Moreover, St. Paul had distinctly declared that the gods of the heathen were devils; and everywhere the early Christians saw in disease the malignant work of these dethroned powers of evil. The Gnostic and Manichaean struggles had ripened the theologic idea that, although at times diseases are punishments by the Almighty, the main agency in them is Satanic. The great fathers and renowned leaders of the early Church accepted and strengthened this idea. Origen said: "It is demons which produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the air, pestilences; they hover concealed in clouds in the lower atmosphere, and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen offer to them as gods." St. Augustine said: "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to these demons; chiefly do they torment fresh-baptized Christians, yea, even the guiltless, newborn infants." Tertullian insisted that a malevolent angel is in constant attendance upon every person. Gregory of Nazianzus declared that bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but that they are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St. Nilus and St. Gregory of Tours, echoing St. Ambrose, gave examples to show the sinfulness of resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the intercession of saints. St. Bernard, in a letter to certain monks, warned them that to seek relief from disease in medicine was in harmony neither with their religion nor with the honour and purity of their order. This view even found its way into the canon law, which declared the precepts of medicine contrary to Divine knowledge. As a rule, the leaders of the Church discouraged the theory that diseases are due to natural causes, and most of them deprecated a resort to surgeons and physicians rather than to supernatural means.(300)

(300) For Chaldean, Egyptian, and Persian ideas as to the diabolic origin of disease, see authorities already cited, especially Maspero and Sayce. For Origen, see the Contra Celsum, lib. viii, chap. xxxi. For Augustine, see De Divinatione Daemonum, chap. iii (p.585 of Migne, vol. xl). For Turtullian and Gregory of Nazianzus, see citations in Sprengel and in Fort, p. 6. For St. Nilus, see his life, in the Bollandise Acta Sanctorum. For Gregory of Tours, see his Historia Francorum, lib. v, cap. 6, and his De Mirac. S. Martini, lib. ii, cap. 60. I owe these citations to Mr. Lea (History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol. iii, p. 410, note). For the letter of St. Bernard to the monks of St. Anastasius, see his Epistola in Migne, tom. 182, pp. 550, 551. For the canon law, see under De Consecratione, dist. v, c. xxi, "Contraria sunt divinae cognitioni praecepta medicinae: a jejunio revocant, lucubrare non sinunt, ab omni intentione meditiationis abducunt." For the turning of the Greek mythology into a demonology as largely due to St. Paul, see I Corinthians x, 20: "The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God."

Out of these and similar considerations was developed the vast system of "pastoral medicine," so powerful not only through the Middle Ages, but even in modern times, both among Catholics and Protestants. As to its results, we must bear in mind that, while there is no need to attribute the mass of stories regarding miraculous cures to conscious fraud, there was without doubt, at a later period, no small admixture of belief biased by self-interest, with much pious invention and suppression of facts. Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches in all parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. Every cathedral, every great abbey, and nearly every parish church claimed possession of healing relics. While, undoubtedly, a childlike faith was at the bottom of this belief, there came out of it unquestionably a great development of the mercantile spirit. The commercial value of sundry relics was often very high. In the year 1056 a French ruler pledged securities to the amount of ten thousand solidi for the production of the relics of St. Just and St. Pastor, pending a legal decision regarding the ownership between him and the Archbishop of Narbonne. The Emperor of Germany on one occasion demanded, as a sufficient pledge for the establishment of a city market, the arm of St. George. The body of St. Sebastian brought enormous wealth to the Abbey of Soissons; Rome, Canterbury, Treves, Marburg, every great city, drew large revenues from similar sources, and the Venetian Republic ventured very considerable sums in the purchase of relics.

Naturally, then, corporations, whether lay or ecclesiastical, which drew large revenue from relics looked with little favour on a science which tended to discredit their investments.

Nowhere, perhaps, in Europe can the philosophy of this development of fetichism be better studied to-day than at Cologne. At the cathedral, preserved in a magnificent shrine since about the twelfth century, are the skulls of the Three Kings, or Wise Men of the East, who, guided by the star of Bethlehem, brought gifts to the Saviour. These relics were an enormous source of wealth to the cathedral chapter during many centuries. But other ecclesiastical bodies in that city were both pious and shrewd, and so we find that not far off, at the church of St. Gereon, a cemetery has been dug up, and the bones distributed over the walls as the relics of St. Gereon and his Theban band of martyrs! Again, at the neighbouring church of St. Ursula, we have the later spoils of another cemetery, covering the interior walls of the church as the bones of St. Ursula and her eleven thousand virgin martyrs: the fact that many of them, as anatomists now declare, are the bones of MEN does not appear in the Middle Ages to have diminished their power of competing with the relics at the other shrines in healing efficiency.

No error in the choice of these healing means seems to have diminished their efficacy. When Prof. Buckland, the eminent osteologist and geologist, discovered that the relics of St. Rosalia at Palermo, which had for ages cured diseases and warded off epidemics, were the bones of a goat, this fact caused not the slightest diminution in their miraculous power.

Other developments of fetich cure were no less discouraging to the evolution of medical science. Very important among these was the Agnus Dei, or piece of wax from the Paschal candles, stamped with the figure of a lamb and consecrated by the Pope. In 1471 Pope Paul II expatiated to the Church on the efficacy of this fetich in preserving men from fire, shipwreck, tempest, lightning, and hail, as well as in assisting women in childbirth; and he reserved to himself and his successors the manufacture of it. Even as late as 1517 Pope Leo X issued, for a consideration, tickets bearing a cross and the following inscription: "This cross measured forty times makes the height of Christ in his humanity. He who kisses it is preserved for seven days from falling-sickness, apoplexy, and sudden death."

Naturally, the belief thus sanctioned by successive heads of the Church, infallible in all teaching regarding faith and morals, created a demand for amulets and charms of all kinds; and under this influence we find a reversion to old pagan fetiches. Nothing, on the whole, stood more constantly in the way of any proper development of medical science than these fetich cures, whose efficacy was based on theological reasoning and sanctioned by ecclesiastical policy. It would be expecting too much from human nature to imagine that pontiffs who derived large revenues from the sale of the Agnus Dei, or priests who derived both wealth and honours from cures wrought at shrines under their care, or lay dignitaries who had invested heavily in relics, should favour the development of any science which undermined their interests.(301)

(301) See Fort's Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, pp. 211-213; also the Handbooks of Murray and Baedeker for North Germany, and various histories of medicine passim; also Collin de Plancy and scores of others. For the discovery that the relics of St. Rosaria at Palermo are simply the bones of a goat, see Gordon, Life of Buckland, pp. 94-96. For an account of the Agnes Dei, see Rydberg, pp. 62, 63; and for "Conception Billets," pp. 64 and 65. For Leo X's tickets, see Hausser (professor at Heidelberg), Period of Reformation, English translation, p. 17.



V. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO ANATOMICAL STUDIES.

Yet a more serious stumbling-block, hindering the beginnings of modern medicine and surgery, was a theory regarding the unlawfulness of meddling with the bodies of the dead. This theory, like so many others which the Church cherished as peculiarly its own, had really been inherited from the old pagan civilizations. So strong was it in Egypt that the embalmer was regarded as accursed; traces of it appear in Greco-Roman life, and hence it came into the early Church, where it was greatly strengthened by the addition of perhaps the most noble of mystic ideas—the recognition of the human body as the temple of the Holy Spirit. Hence Tertullian denounced the anatomist Herophilus as a butcher, and St. Augustine spoke of anatomists generally in similar terms.

But this nobler conception was alloyed with a medieval superstition even more effective, when the formula known as the Apostles' Creed had, in its teachings regarding the resurrection of the body, supplanted the doctrine laid down by St. Paul. Thence came a dread of mutilating the body in such a way that some injury might result to its final resurrection at the Last Day, and additional reasons for hindering dissections in the study of anatomy.

To these arguments against dissection was now added another—one which may well fill us with amazement. It is the remark of the foremost of recent English philosophical historians, that of all organizations in human history the Church of Rome has caused the greatest spilling of innocent blood. No one conversant with history, even though he admit all possible extenuating circumstances, and honour the older Church for the great services which can undoubtedly be claimed for her, can deny this statement. Strange is it, then, to note that one of the main objections developed in the Middle Ages against anatomical studies was the maxim that "the Church abhors the shedding of blood."

On this ground, in 1248, the Council of Le Mans forbade surgery to monks. Many other councils did the same, and at the end of the thirteenth century came the most serious blow of all; for then it was that Pope Boniface VIII, without any of that foresight of consequences which might well have been expected in an infallible teacher, issued a decretal forbidding a practice which had come into use during the Crusades, namely, the separation of the flesh from the bones of the dead whose remains it was desired to carry back to their own country.

The idea lying at the bottom of this interdiction was in all probability that which had inspired Tertullian to make his bitter utterance against Herophilus; but, be that as it may, it soon came to be considered as extending to all dissection, and thereby surgery and medicine were crippled for more than two centuries; it was the worst blow they ever received, for it impressed upon the mind of the Church the belief that all dissection is sacrilege, and led to ecclesiastical mandates withdrawing from the healing art the most thoughtful and cultivated men of the Middle Ages and giving up surgery to the lowest class of nomadic charlatans.

So deeply was this idea rooted in the mind of the universal Church that for over a thousand years surgery was considered dishonourable: the greatest monarchs were often unable to secure an ordinary surgical operation; and it was only in 1406 that a better beginning was made, when the Emperor Wenzel of Germany ordered that dishonour should no longer attach to the surgical profession.(302)

(302) As to religious scruples against dissection, and abhorrence of the Paraschites, or embalmer, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 216. For denunciation of surgery by the Church authorities, see Sprengel, vol. ii, pp. 432-435; also Fort, pp. 452 et seq.; and for the reasoning which led the Church to forbid surgery to priests, see especially Fredault, Histoire de la Medecine, p. 200. As to the decretal of Boniface VIII, the usual statement is that he forbade all dissections. While it was undoubtedly construed universally to prohibit dissections for anatomical purposes, its declared intent was as stated in the text; that it was constantly construed against anatomical investigations can not for a moment be denied. This construction is taken for granted in the great Histoire Litteraire de la France, founded by the Benedictines, certainly a very high authority as to the main current of opinion in the Church. For the decretal of Boniface VIII, see the Corpus Juris Canonici. I have also used the edition of Paris, 1618, where it may be found on pp. 866, 867. See also, in spite of the special pleading of Giraldi, the Benedictine Hist. Lit. de la France, tome xvi, p. 98.



VI. NEW BEGINNINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE.

In spite of all these opposing forces, the evolution of medical science continued, though but slowly. In the second century of the Christian era Galen had made himself a great authority at Rome, and from Rome had swayed the medical science of the world: his genius triumphed over the defects of his method; but, though he gave a powerful impulse to medicine, his dogmatism stood in its way long afterward.

The places where medicine, such as it thus became, could be applied, were at first mainly the infirmaries of various monasteries, especially the larger ones of the Benedictine order: these were frequently developed into hospitals. Many monks devoted themselves to such medical studies as were permitted, and sundry churchmen and laymen did much to secure and preserve copies of ancient medical treatises. So, too, in the cathedral schools established by Charlemagne and others, provision was generally made for medical teaching; but all this instruction, whether in convents or schools, was wretchedly poor. It consisted not in developing by individual thought and experiment the gifts of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, but almost entirely in the parrot-like repetition of their writings.

But, while the inherited ideas of Church leaders were thus unfavourable to any proper development of medical science, there were two bodies of men outside the Church who, though largely fettered by superstition, were far less so than the monks and students of ecclesiastical schools: these were the Jews and Mohammedans. The first of these especially had inherited many useful sanitary and hygienic ideas, which had probably been first evolved by the Egyptians, and from them transmitted to the modern world mainly through the sacred books attributed to Moses.

The Jewish scholars became especially devoted to medical science. To them is largely due the building up of the School of Salerno, which we find flourishing in the tenth century. Judged by our present standards its work was poor indeed, but compared with other medical instruction of the time it was vastly superior: it developed hygienic principles especially, and brought medicine upon a higher plane.

Still more important is the rise of the School of Montpellier; this was due almost entirely to Jewish physicians, and it developed medical studies to a yet higher point, doing much to create a medical profession worthy of the name throughout southern Europe.

As to the Arabians, we find them from the tenth to the fourteenth century, especially in Spain, giving much thought to medicine, and to chemistry as subsidiary to it. About the beginning of the ninth century, when the greater Christian writers were supporting fetich by theology, Almamon, the Moslem, declared, "They are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties." The influence of Avicenna, the translator of the works of Aristotle, extended throughout all Europe during the eleventh century. The Arabians were indeed much fettered by tradition in medical science, but their translations of Hippocrates and Galen preserved to the world the best thus far developed in medicine, and still better were their contributions to pharmacy: these remain of value to the present hour.(303)

(303) For the great services rendered to the development of medicine by the Jews, see Monteil, Medecine en France, p. 58; also the historians of medicine generally. For the quotation from Almamon, see Gibbon, vol. x, p. 42. For the services of both Jews and Arabians, see Bedarride, Histoire des Juifs, p. 115; also Sismondi, Histoire des Francais, tome i, p. 191. For the Arabians, especially, see Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire, Histoire d'Espagne, Paris, 1844, vol. iii, pp. 191 et seq. For the tendency of the Mosaic books to insist on hygienic rather than therapeutical treatment, and its consequences among Jewish physicians, see Sprengel, but especially Fredault, p.14.

Various Christian laymen also rose above the prevailing theologic atmosphere far enough to see the importance of promoting scientific development. First among these we may name the Emperor Charlemagne; he and his great minister, Alcuin, not only promoted medical studies in the schools they founded, but also made provision for the establishment of botanic gardens in which those herbs were especially cultivated which were supposed to have healing virtues. So, too, in the thirteenth century, the Emperor Frederick II, though under the ban of the Pope, brought together in his various journeys, and especially in his crusading expeditions, many Greek and Arabic manuscripts, and took special pains to have those which concerned medicine preserved and studied; he also promoted better ideas of medicine and embodied them in laws.

Men of science also rose, in the stricter sense of the word, even in the centuries under the most complete sway of theological thought and ecclesiastical power; a science, indeed, alloyed with theology, but still infolding precious germs. Of these were men like Arnold of Villanova, Bertrand de Gordon, Albert of Bollstadt, Basil Valentine, Raymond Lully, and, above all, Roger Bacon; all of whom cultivated sciences subsidiary to medicine, and in spite of charges of sorcery, with possibilities of imprisonment and death, kept the torch of knowledge burning, and passed it on to future generations.(304)

(304) For the progress of sciences subsidiary to medicine even in the darkest ages, see Fort, pp. 374, 375; also Isensee, Geschichte der Medicin, pp. 225 et seq.; also Monteil, p. 89; Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, bk. 3; also Kopp, Geschichte der Chemie. For Frederick II and his Medicinal-Gesetz, see Baas, p. 221, but especially Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, Leipsic, 1872, vol. iii, p. 259.

From the Church itself, even when the theological atmosphere was most dense, rose here and there men who persisted in something like scientific effort. As early as the ninth century, Bertharius, a monk of Monte Cassino, prepared two manuscript volumes of prescriptions selected from ancient writers; other monks studied them somewhat, and, during succeeding ages, scholars like Hugo, Abbot of St. Denis,—Notker, monk of St. Gall,—Hildegard, Abbess of Rupertsberg,—Milo, Archbishop of Beneventum,—and John of St. Amand, Canon of Tournay, did something for medicine as they understood it. Unfortunately, they generally understood its theory as a mixture of deductions from Scripture with dogmas from Galen, and its practice as a mixture of incantations with fetiches. Even Pope Honorius III did something for the establishment of medical schools; but he did so much more to place ecclesiastical and theological fetters upon teachers and taught, that the value of his gifts may well be doubted. All germs of a higher evolution of medicine were for ages well kept under by the theological spirit. As far back as the sixth century so great a man as Pope Gregory I showed himself hostile to the development of this science. In the beginning of the twelfth century the Council of Rheims interdicted the study of law and physic to monks, and a multitude of other councils enforced this decree. About the middle of the same century St. Bernard still complained that monks had too much to do with medicine; and a few years later we have decretals like those of Pope Alexander III forbidding monks to study or practise it. For many generations there appear evidences of a desire among the more broad-minded churchmen to allow the cultivation of medical science among ecclesiastics: Popes like Clement III and Sylvester II seem to have favoured this, and we even hear of an Archbishop of Canterbury skilled in medicine; but in the beginning of the thirteenth century the Fourth Council of the Lateran forbade surgical operations to be practised by priests, deacons, and subdeacons; and some years later Honorius III reiterated this decree and extended it. In 1243 the Dominican order forbade medical treatises to be brought into their monasteries, and finally all participation of ecclesiastics in the science and art of medicine was effectually prevented.(305)

(305) For statements as to these decrees of the highest Church and monastic authorities against medicine and surgery, see Sprengel, Baas, Geschichte der Medicin, p. 204, and elsewhere; also Buckle, Posthumous Works, vol. ii, p. 567. For a long list of Church dignitaries who practised a semi-theological medicine in the Middle Ages, see Baas, pp. 204, 205. For Bertharius, Hildegard, and others mentioned, see also Sprengel and other historians of medicine. For clandestine study and practice of medicine by sundry ecclesiastics in spite of the prohibition by the Church, see Von Raumer, Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p. 438. For some remarks on this subject by an eminent and learned ecclesiastic, see Ricker, O. S. B., professor in the University of Vienna, Pastoral-Psychiatrie, 1894, pp. 12,13.



VII. THEOLOGICAL DISCOURAGEMENT OF MEDICINE.

While various churchmen, building better than they knew, thus did something to lay foundations for medical study, the Church authorities, as a rule, did even more to thwart it among the very men who, had they been allowed liberty, would have cultivated it to the highest advantage.

Then, too, we find cropping out every where the feeling that, since supernatural means are so abundant, there is something irreligious in seeking cure by natural means: ever and anon we have appeals to Scripture, and especially to the case of King Asa, who trusted to physicians rather than to the priests of Jahveh, and so died. Hence it was that St. Bernard declared that monks who took medicine were guilty of conduct unbecoming to religion. Even the School of Salerno was held in aversion by multitudes of strict churchmen, since it prescribed rules for diet, thereby indicating a belief that diseases arise from natural causes and not from the malice of the devil: moreover, in the medical schools Hippocrates was studied, and he had especially declared that demoniacal possession is "nowise more divine, nowise more infernal, than any other disease." Hence it was, doubtless, that the Lateran Council, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, forbade physicians, under pain of exclusion from the Church, to undertake medical treatment without calling in ecclesiastical advice.

This view was long cherished in the Church, and nearly two hundred and fifty years later Pope Pius V revived it by renewing the command of Pope Innocent and enforcing it with penalties. Not only did Pope Pius order that all physicians before administering treatment should call in "a physician of the soul," on the ground, as he declares, that "bodily infirmity frequently arises from sin," but he ordered that, if at the end of three days the patient had not made confession to a priest, the medical man should cease his treatment, under pain of being deprived of his right to practise, and of expulsion from the faculty if he were a professor, and that every physician and professor of medicine should make oath that he was strictly fulfilling these conditions.

Out of this feeling had grown up another practice, which made the development of medicine still more difficult—the classing of scientific men generally with sorcerers and magic-mongers: from this largely rose the charge of atheism against physicians, which ripened into a proverb, "Where there are three physicians there are two atheists."(306)

(306) "Ubi sunt tres medici ibi sunt duo athei." For the bull of Pius V, see the Bullarium Romanum, ed. Gaude, Naples, 1882, tom. vii, pp. 430, 431.

Magic was so common a charge that many physicians seemed to believe it themselves. In the tenth century Gerbert, afterward known as Pope Sylvester II, was at once suspected of sorcery when he showed a disposition to adopt scientific methods; in the eleventh century this charge nearly cost the life of Constantine Africanus when he broke from the beaten path of medicine; in the thirteenth, it gave Roger Bacon, one of the greatest benefactors of mankind, many years of imprisonment, and nearly brought him to the stake: these cases are typical of very many.

Still another charge against physicians who showed a talent for investigation was that of Mohammedanism and Averroism; and Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at Christ."(307)

(307) For Averroes, see Renan, Averroes et l'Averroisme, Paris, 1861, pp. 327-335. For a perfectly just statement of the only circumstances which can justify a charge of atheism, see Rev. Dr. Deems, in Popular Science Monthly, February, 1876.

The effect of this widespread ecclesiastical opposition was, that for many centuries the study of medicine was relegated mainly to the lowest order of practitioners. There was, indeed, one orthodox line of medical evolution during the later Middle Ages: St. Thomas Aquinas insisted that the forces of the body are independent of its physical organization, and that therefore these forces are to be studied by the scholastic philosophy and the theological method, instead of by researches into the structure of the body; as a result of this, mingled with survivals of various pagan superstitions, we have in anatomy and physiology such doctrines as the increase and decrease of the brain with the phases of the moon, the ebb and flow of human vitality with the tides of the ocean, the use of the lungs to fan the heart, the function of the liver as the seat of love, and that of the spleen as the centre of wit.

Closely connected with these methods of thought was the doctrine of signatures. It was reasoned that the Almighty must have set his sign upon the various means of curing disease which he has provided: hence it was held that bloodroot, on account of its red juice, is good for the blood; liverwort, having a leaf like the liver, cures diseases of the liver; eyebright, being marked with a spot like an eye, cures diseases of the eyes; celandine, having a yellow juice, cures jaundice; bugloss, resembling a snake's head, cures snakebite; red flannel, looking like blood, cures blood-taints, and therefore rheumatism; bear's grease, being taken from an animal thickly covered with hair, is recommended to persons fearing baldness.(308)

(308) For a summary of the superstitions which arose under the theological doctrine of signatures, see Dr. Eccles's admirable little tract on the Evolution of Medical Science, p. 140; see also Scoffern, Science and Folk Lore, p. 76.

Still another method evolved by this theological pseudoscience was that of disgusting the demon with the body which he tormented—hence the patient was made to swallow or apply to himself various unspeakable ordures, with such medicines as the livers of toads, the blood of frogs and rats, fibres of the hangman's rope, and ointment made from the body of gibbeted criminals. Many of these were survivals of heathen superstitions, but theologic reasoning wrought into them an orthodox significance. As an example of this mixture of heathen with Christian magic, we may cite the following from a medieval medical book as a salve against "nocturnal goblin visitors": "Take hop plant, wormwood, bishopwort, lupine, ash-throat, henbane, harewort, viper's bugloss, heathberry plant, cropleek, garlic, grains of hedgerife, githrife, and fennel. Put these worts into a vessel, set them under the altar, sing over them nine masses, boil them in butter and sheep's grease, add much holy salt, strain through a cloth, throw the worts into running water. If any ill tempting occur to a man, or an elf or goblin night visitors come, smear his body with this salve, and put it on his eyes, and cense him with incense, and sign him frequently with the sign of the cross. His condition will soon be better."(309)

(309) For a list of unmentionable ordures used in Germany near the end of the seventeenth century, see Lammert, Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern, Wurzburg, 1869, p. 34, note. For the English prescription given, see Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and Star-craft of Early England, in the Master of the Rolls' series, London, 1865, vol. ii, pp. 345 and following. Still another of these prescriptions given by Cockayne covers three or four octavo pages. For very full details of this sort of sacred pseudo-science in Germany, with accounts of survivals of it at the present time, see Wuttke, Prof. der Theologie in Halle, Der Deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, Berlin, 1869, passim. For France, see Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation francaise, pp. 371 et seq.

As to surgery, this same amalgamation of theology with survivals of pagan beliefs continued to check the evolution of medical science down to the modern epoch. The nominal hostility of the Church to the shedding of blood withdrew, as we have seen, from surgical practice the great body of her educated men; hence surgery remained down to the fifteenth century a despised profession, its practice continued largely in the hands of charlatans, and down to a very recent period the name "barber-surgeon" was a survival of this. In such surgery, the application of various ordures relieved fractures; the touch of the hangman cured sprains; the breath of a donkey expelled poison; friction with a dead man's tooth cured toothache.(310)

(310) On the low estate of surgery during the Middle Ages, see the histories of medicine already cited, and especially Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, Hamburg, 1890, pp. 216 et seq.

The enormous development of miracle and fetich cures in the Church continued during century after century, and here probably lay the main causes of hostility between the Church on the one hand and the better sort of physicians on the other; namely, in the fact that the Church supposed herself in possession of something far better than scientific methods in medicine. Under the sway of this belief a natural and laudable veneration for the relics of Christian martyrs was developed more and more into pure fetichism.

Thus the water in which a single hair of a saint had been dipped was used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring had been dipped cured fevers; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumours; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher, throat diseases; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Gervase, rheumatism; St. Apollonia, toothache; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their names. Even as late as 1784 we find certain authorities in Bavaria ordering that any one bitten by a mad dog shall at once put up prayers at the shrine of St. Hubert, and not waste his time in any attempts at medical or surgical cure.(311) In the twelfth century we find a noted cure attempted by causing the invalid to drink water in which St. Bernard had washed his hands. Flowers which had rested on the tomb of a saint, when steeped in water, were supposed to be especially efficacious in various diseases. The pulpit everywhere dwelt with unction on the reality of fetich cures, and among the choice stories collected by Archbishop Jacques de Vitry for the use of preachers was one which, judging from its frequent recurrence in monkish literature, must have sunk deep into the popular mind: "Two lazy beggars, one blind, the other lame, try to avoid the relics of St. Martin, borne about in procession, so that they may not be healed and lose their claim to alms. The blind man takes the lame man on his shoulders to guide him, but they are caught in the crowd and healed against their will."(312)

(311) See Baas, p. 614; also Biedermann.

(312) For the efficacy of flowers, see the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, cited in Fort, p. 279; also pp. 457, 458. For the story of those unwillingly cured, see the Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University, London, 1890, pp. 52, 182.

Very important also throughout the Middle Ages were the medical virtues attributed to saliva. The use of this remedy had early Oriental sanction. It is clearly found in Egypt. Pliny devotes a considerable part of one of his chapters to it; Galen approved it; Vespasian, when he visited Alexandria, is said to have cured a blind man by applying saliva to his eves; but the great example impressed most forcibly upon the medieval mind was the use of it ascribed in the fourth Gospel to Jesus himself: thence it came not only into Church ceremonial, but largely into medical practice.(313)

(313) As to the use of saliva in medicine, see Story, Castle of St. Angelo, and Other Essays, London, 1877, pp. 208 and elsewhere. For Pliny, Galen, and others, see the same, p. 211; see also the book of Tobit, chap. xi, 2-13. For the case of Vespasian, see Suetonius, Life of Vespasian; also Tacitus, Historiae, lib. iv, c. 81. For its use by St. Francis Xavier, see Coleridge, Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, London, 1872.

As the theological atmosphere thickened, nearly every country had its long list of saints, each with a special power over some one organ or disease. The clergy, having great influence over the medical schools, conscientiously mixed this fetich medicine with the beginnings of science. In the tenth century, even at the School of Salerno, we find that the sick were cured not only by medicine, but by the relics of St. Matthew and others.

Human nature, too, asserted itself, then as now, by making various pious cures fashionable for a time and then allowing them to become unfashionable. Just as we see the relics of St. Cosmo and St. Damian in great vogue during the early Middle Ages, but out of fashion and without efficacy afterward, so we find in the thirteenth century that the bones of St. Louis, having come into fashion, wrought multitudes of cures, while in the fourteenth, having become unfashionable, they ceased to act, and gave place for a time to the relics of St. Roch of Montpellier and St. Catherine of Sienna, which in their turn wrought many cures until they too became out of date and yielded to other saints. Just so in modern times the healing miracles of La Salette have lost prestige in some measure, and those of Lourdes have come into fashion.(314)

(314) For one of these lists of saints curing diseaes, see Pettigrew, On Superstitions connected with Medicine; for another, see Jacob, Superstitions Populaires, pp. 96-100; also Rydberg, p. 69; also Maury, Rambaud, and others. For a comparison of fashions in miracles with fashions in modern healing agents, see Littre, Medecine et Medecins, pp. 118, 136 and elsewhere; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 143.

Even such serious matters as fractures, calculi, and difficult parturition, in which modern science has achieved some of its greatest triumphs, were then dealt with by relics; and to this hour the ex votos hanging at such shrines as those of St. Genevieve at Paris, of St. Antony at Padua, of the Druid image at Chartres, of the Virgin at Einsiedeln and Lourdes, of the fountain at La Salette, are survivals of this same conception of disease and its cure.

So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots of earth. In Ireland, hardly a parish has not had one such sacred centre; in England and Scotland there have been many; and as late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of the Roman Catholic Church, gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure wrought at a sacred well in Flintshire. In all parts of Europe the pious resort to wells and springs continued long after the close of the Middle Ages, and has not entirely ceased to-day. It is not at all necessary to suppose intentional deception in the origin and maintenance of all fetich cures. Although two different judicial investigations of the modern miracles at La Salette have shown their origin tainted with fraud, and though the recent restoration of the Cathedral of Trondhjem has revealed the fact that the healing powers of the sacred spring which once brought such great revenues to that shrine were assisted by angelic voices spoken through a tube in the walls, not unlike the pious machinery discovered in the Temple of Isis at Pompeii, there is little doubt that the great majority of fountain and even shrine cures, such as they have been, have resulted from a natural law, and that belief in them was based on honest argument from Scripture. For the theological argument which thus stood in the way of science was simply this: if the Almighty saw fit to raise the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha, why should he not restore to life the patient who touches at Cologne the bones of the Wise Men of the East who followed the star of the Nativity? If Naaman was cured by dipping himself in the waters of the Jordan, and so many others by going down into the Pool of Siloam, why should not men still be cured by bathing in pools which men equally holy with Elisha have consecrated? If one sick man was restored by touching the garments of St. Paul, why should not another sick man be restored by touching the seamless coat of Christ at Treves, or the winding-sheet of Christ at Besancon? And out of all these inquiries came inevitably that question whose logical answer was especially injurious to the development of medical science: Why should men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred observances, according to an overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts of Europe? (315)

(315) For sacred fountains in modern times, see Pettigrew, as above, p. 42; also Dalyell, Darker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 82 and following; also Montalembert, Les Moines d'Occident, tome iii, p. 323, note. For those in Ireland, with many curious details, see S. C. Hall, Ireland, its Scenery and Character, London, 1841, vol. i, p. 282, and passim. For the case in Flintshire, see Authentic Documents relative to the Miraculous Cure of Winifred White, of the Town of Wolverhampton, at Holywell, Flintshire, on the 28th of June, 1805, by John Milner, D. D., Vicar Apostolic, etc., London, 1805. For sacred wells in France, see Chevart, Histoire de Chartres, vol. i, pp. 84-89, and French local histories generally. For superstitions attaching to springs in Germany, see Wuttke, Volksaberglaube, Sections 12 and 356. For one of the most exquisitely wrought works of modern fiction, showing perfectly the recent evolution of miraculous powers at a fashionable spring in France, see Gustave Droz, Autour d'une Source. The reference to the old pious machinery at Trondhjem is based upon personal observation by the present writer in August, 1893.

Still another development of the theological spirit, mixed with professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold injury. Even to those who had become so far emancipated from allegiance to fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbidden to consult those who, as a rule, were the best. From a very early period of European history the Jews had taken the lead in medicine; their share in founding the great schools of Salerno and Montpellier we have already noted, and in all parts of Europe we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing art. The Church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were especially severe against these benefactors: that men who openly rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost, should heal the elect seemed an insult to Providence; preaching friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in state and church, while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed them.

Gregory of Tours tells us of an archdeacon who, having been partially cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin, sought further aid from a Jewish physician, with the result that neither the saint nor the Jew could help him afterward. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus III especially forbade Christians to employ them. The Trullanean Council in the eighth century, the Councils of Beziers and Alby in the thirteenth, the Councils of Avignon and Salamanca in the fourteenth, the Synod of Bamberg and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, the Council of Avignon in the sixteenth, with many others, expressly forbade the faithful to call Jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as John Geiler and John Herolt thundered from the pulpit against them and all who consulted them. As late as the middle of the seventeenth century, when the City Council of Hall, in Wurtemberg, gave some privileges to a Jewish physician "on account of his admirable experience and skill," the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that "it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor aided by the devil." Still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals, kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.(316)

(316) For the general subject of the influence of theological idea upon medicine, see Fort, History of Medical Economy during the Middle Ages, New York, 1883, chaps. xiii and xviii; also Colin de Plancy, Dictionnaire des Reliques, passim; also Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation francaise, Paris, 1885, vol. i, chap. xviii; also Sprengel, vol. ii, p. 345, and elsewhere; also Baas and others. For proofs that the School of Salerno was not founded by the monks, Benedictine or other, but by laymen, who left out a faculty of theology from their organization, see Haeser, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, vol. i, p. 646; also Baas. For a very strong statement that married professors, women, and Jews were admitted to professional chairs, see Baas, pp. 208 et seq.; also summary by Dr. Payne, article in the Encyc. Brit. Sprengel's old theory that the school was founded by Benedictines seems now entirely given up; see Haeser and Bass on the subject; also Daremberg, La Medecine, p. 133. For the citation from Gregory of Tours, see his Hist. Francorum, lib. vi. For the eminence of Jewish physicians and proscription of them, see Beugnot, Les Juifs d'Occident, Paris, 1824, pp. 76-94; also Bedarride, Les Juifs en France, en Italie, et en Espagne, chaps. v, viii, x, and xiii; also Renouard, Histoire de la Medecine, Paris, 1846, tome i, p. 439; also especially Lammert, Volksmedizin, etc., in Bayern, p. 6, note. For Church decrees against them, see the Acta Conciliorum, ed. Hardouin, vol. x, pp. 1634, 1700, 1870, 1873, etc. For denunciations of them by Geiler and others, see Kotelmann, Gesundheitspflege im Mittelalter, pp. 194, 195. For a list of kings and popes who persisted in having Jewish physicians and for other curious information of the sort, see Prof. Levi of Vercelli, Cristiani ed Ebrei nel Medio Evo, pp. 200-207; and for a very valuable summary, see Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii, pp. 265-271.



VIII. FETICH CURES UNDER PROTESTANTISM.—THE ROYAL TOUCH.

The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine. Luther, as is well known, again and again ascribed his own diseases to "devils' spells," declaring that "Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death," and that "he poisons the air"; but that "no malady comes from God." From that day down to the faith cures of Boston, Old Orchard, and among the sect of "Peculiar People" in our own time, we see the results among Protestants of seeking the cause of disease in Satanic influence and its cure in fetichism.

Yet Luther, with his sturdy common sense, broke away from one belief which has interfered with the evolution of medicine from the dawn of Christianity until now. When that troublesome declaimer, Carlstadt, declared that "whoso falls sick shall use no physic, but commit his case to God, praying that His will be done," Luther asked, "Do you eat when you are hungry?" and the answer being in the affirmative, he continued, "Even so you may use physic, which is God's gift just as meat and drink is, or whatever else we use for the preservation of life." Hence it was, doubtless, that the Protestant cities of Germany were more ready than others to admit anatomical investigation by proper dissections.(317)

(317) For Luther's belief and his answer to Carlstadt, see his Table Talk, especially in Hazlitt's edition, pp. 250-257; also his letters passim. For recent "faith cures," see Dr. Buckley's articles on Faith Healing and Kindred Phenomena, in The Century, 1886. For the greater readiness of Protestant cities to facilitate dissections, see Toth, Andreas Vesalius, p. 33.

Perhaps the best-known development of a theological view in the Protestant Church was that mainly evolved in England out of a French germ of theological thought—a belief in the efficacy of the royal touch in sundry diseases, especially epilepsy and scrofula, the latter being consequently known as the king's evil. This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and came down from reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint to Protestant debauchees upon the English throne, with ever-increasing miraculous efficacy.

Testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. As a simple matter of fact, there are no miracles of healing in the history of the human race more thoroughly attested than those wrought by the touch of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, the Stuarts, and especially of that chosen vessel, Charles II. Though Elizabeth could not bring herself fully to believe in the reality of these cures, Dr. Tooker, the Queen's chaplain, afterward Dean of Lichfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge to the cures wrought by her, as also does William Clowes, the Queen's surgeon. Fuller, in his Church History, gives an account of a Roman Catholic who was thus cured by the Queen's touch and converted to Protestantism. Similar testimony exists as to cures wrought by James I. Charles I also enjoyed the same power, in spite of the public declaration against its reality by Parliament. In one case the King saw a patient in the crowd, too far off to be touched, and simply said, "God bless thee and grant thee thy desire"; whereupon, it is asserted, the blotches and humours disappeared from the patient's body and appeared in the bottle of medicine which he held in his hand; at least so says Dr. John Nicholas, Warden of Winchester College, who declares this of his own knowledge to be every word of it true.

But the most incontrovertible evidence of this miraculous gift is found in the case of Charles II, the most thoroughly cynical debauchee who ever sat on the English throne before the advent of George IV. He touched nearly one hundred thousand persons, and the outlay for gold medals issued to the afflicted on these occasions rose in some years as high as ten thousand pounds. John Brown, surgeon in ordinary to his Majesty and to St. Thomas's Hospital, and author of many learned works on surgery and anatomy, published accounts of sixty cures due to the touch of this monarch; and Sergeant-Surgeon Wiseman devotes an entire book to proving the reality of these cures, saying, "I myself have been frequent witness to many hundreds of cures performed by his Majesty's touch alone without any assistance of chirurgery, and these many of them had tyred out the endeavours of able chirurgeons before they came thither." Yet it is especially instructive to note that, while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula, and in none were so many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of that disease: the bills of mortality show this clearly, and the reason doubtless is the general substitution of supernatural for scientific means of cure. This is but one out of many examples showing the havoc which a scientific test always makes among miracles if men allow it to be applied.

To James II the same power continued; and if it be said, in the words of Lord Bacon, that "imagination is next of kin to miracle—a working faith," something else seems required to account for the testimony of Dr. Heylin to cures wrought by the royal touch upon babes in their mothers' arms. Myth-making and marvel-mongering were evidently at work here as in so many other places, and so great was the fame of these cures that we find, in the year before James was dethroned, a pauper at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, petitioning the General Assembly to enable him to make the voyage to England in order that he may be healed by the royal touch.

The change in the royal succession does not seem to have interfered with the miracle; for, though William III evidently regarded the whole thing as a superstition, and on one occasion is said to have touched a patient, saying to him, "God give you better health and more sense," Whiston assures us that this person was healed, notwithstanding William's incredulity.

As to Queen Anne, Dr. Daniel Turner, in his Art of Surgery, relates that several cases of scrofula which had been unsuccessfully treated by himself and Dr. Charles Bernard, sergeant-surgeon to her Majesty, yielded afterward to the efficacy of the Queen's touch. Naturally does Collier, in his Ecclesiastical History, say regarding these cases that to dispute them "is to come to the extreme of scepticism, to deny our senses and be incredulous even to ridiculousness." Testimony to the reality of these cures is indeed overwhelming, and a multitude of most sober scholars, divines, and doctors of medicine declared the evidence absolutely convincing. That the Church of England accepted the doctrine of the royal touch is witnessed by the special service provided in the Prayer-Book of that period for occasions when the King exercised this gift. The ceremony was conducted with great solemnity and pomp: during the reading of the service and the laying on of the King's hands, the attendant bishop or priest recited the words, "They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover"; afterward came special prayers, the Epistle and Gospel, with the blessing, and finally his Majesty washed his royal hands in golden vessels which high noblemen held for him.

In France, too, the royal touch continued, with similar testimony to its efficacy. On a certain Easter Sunday, that pious king, Louis XIV, touched about sixteen hundred persons at Versailles.

This curative power was, then, acknowledged far and wide, by Catholics and Protestants alike, upon the Continent, in Great Britain, and in America; and it descended not only in spite of the transition of the English kings from Catholicism to Protestantism, but in spite of the transition from the legitimate sovereignty of the Stuarts to the illegitimate succession of the House of Orange. And yet, within a few years after the whole world held this belief, it was dead; it had shrivelled away in the growing scientific light at the dawn of the eighteenth century.(318)

(318) For the royal touch, see Becket, Free and Impartial Inquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil, 1772, cited in Pettigrew, p. 128, and elsewhere; also Scoffern, Science and Folk Lore, London, 1870, pp. 413 and following; also Adams, The Healing Art, London, 1887, vol. i, pp. 53-60; and especially Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. i, chapter on The Conversion of Rome; also his History of England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, chap. i. For curious details regarding the mode of conducting the ceremony, see Evelyn's Diary; also Lecky, as above. For the royal touch in France, and for a claim to its possession in feudal times by certain noble families, see Rambaud, Hist. de la Civ. francaise, p. 375.



IX. THE SCIENTIFIC STRUGGLE FOR ANATOMY.

We may now take up the evolution of medical science out of the medieval view and its modern survivals. All through the Middle Ages, as we have seen, some few laymen and ecclesiastics here and there, braving the edicts of the Church and popular superstition, persisted in medical study and practice: this was especially seen at the greater universities, which had become somewhat emancipated from ecclesiastical control. In the thirteenth century the University of Paris gave a strong impulse to the teaching of medicine, and in that and the following century we begin to find the first intelligible reports of medical cases since the coming in of Christianity.

In the thirteenth century also the arch-enemy of the papacy, the Emperor Frederick II, showed his free-thinking tendencies by granting, from time to time, permissions to dissect the human subject. In the centuries following, sundry other monarchs timidly followed his example: thus John of Aragon, in 1391, gave to the University of Lerida the privilege of dissecting one dead criminal every three years.(319)

(319) For the promotion of medical science and practice, especially in the thirteenth century, by the universities, see Baas, pp. 222-224.

During the fifteenth century and the earlier years of the sixteenth the revival of learning, the invention of printing, and the great voyages of discovery gave a new impulse to thought, and in this medical science shared: the old theological way of thinking was greatly questioned, and gave place in many quarters to a different way of looking at the universe.

In the sixteenth century Paracelsus appears—a great genius, doing much to develop medicine beyond the reach of sacred and scholastic tradition, though still fettered by many superstitions. More and more, in spite of theological dogmas, came a renewal of anatomical studies by dissection of the human subject. The practice of the old Alexandrian School was thus resumed. Mundinus, Professor of Medicine at Bologna early in the fourteenth century, dared use the human subject occasionally in his lectures; but finally came a far greater champion of scientific truth, Andreas Vesalius, founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle waged by this man is one of the glories of our race.

From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for real knowledge he risked the most terrible dangers, and especially the charge of sacrilege, founded upon the teachings of the Church for ages. As we have seen, even such men in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and the decretal of Pope Boniface VIII was universally construed as forbidding all dissection, and as threatening excommunication against those practising it. Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear; despite ecclesiastical censure, great opposition in his own profession, and popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that could give useful results. No peril daunted him. To secure material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets and charnel-houses, braving the fires of the Inquisition and the virus of the plague. First of all men he began to place the science of human anatomy on its solid modern foundations—on careful examination and observation of the human body: this was his first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by one considered even greater.

Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent men devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to Aristotle; just as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas; so, in the time of Vesalius, such men made every effort to link Christianity to Galen. The cry has been the same in all ages; it is the same which we hear in this age for curbing scientific studies: the cry for what is called "sound learning." Whether standing for Aristotle against Bacon, or for Aquinas against Erasmus, or for Galen against Vesalius, the cry is always for "sound learning": the idea always has been that the older studies are "SAFE."

At twenty-eight years of age Vesalius gave to the world his great work on human anatomy. With it ended the old and began the new; its researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art.

To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw must come, Vesalius dedicated the work to the Emperor Charles V, and in his preface he argues for his method, and against the parrot repetitions of the mediaeval text-books; he also condemns the wretched anatomical preparations and specimens made by physicians who utterly refused to advance beyond the ancient master. The parrot-like repeaters of Galen gave battle at once. After the manner of their time their first missiles were epithets; and, the vast arsenal of these having been exhausted, they began to use sharper weapons—weapons theologic.

In this case there were especial reasons why the theological authorities felt called upon to intervene. First, there was the old idea prevailing in the Church that the dissection of the human body is forbidden to Christians: this was used with great force against Vesalius, but he at first gained a temporary victory; for, a conference of divines having been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege, gave a decision in the negative.

The reason was simple: the great Emperor Charles V had made Vesalius his physician and could not spare him; but, on the accession of Philip II to the throne of Spain and the Netherlands, the whole scene changed. Vesalius now complained that in Spain he could not obtain even a human skull for his anatomical investigations: the medical and theological reactionists had their way, and to all appearance they have, as a rule, had it in Spain ever since. As late as the last years of the eighteenth century an observant English traveller found that there were no dissections before medical classes in the Spanish universities, and that the doctrine of the circulation of the blood was still denied, more than a century and a half after Sarpi and Harvey had proved it.

Another theological idea barred the path of Vesalius. Throughout the Middle Ages it was believed that there exists in man a bone imponderable, incorruptible, incombustible—the necessary nucleus of the resurrection body. Belief in a resurrection of the physical body, despite St. Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, had been incorporated into the formula evolved during the early Christian centuries and known as the Apostles' Creed, and was held throughout Christendom, "always, everywhere, and by all." This hypothetical bone was therefore held in great veneration, and many anatomists sought to discover it; but Vesalius, revealing so much else, did not find it. He contented himself with saying that he left the question regarding the existence of such a bone to the theologians. He could not lie; he did not wish to fight the Inquisition; and thus he fell under suspicion.

The strength of this theological point may be judged from the fact that no less eminent a surgeon than Riolan consulted the executioner to find out whether, when he burned a criminal, all the parts were consumed; and only then was the answer received which fatally undermined this superstition. Yet, in 1689 we find it still lingering in France, stimulating opposition in the Church to dissection. Even as late as the eighteenth century, Bernouilli having shown that the living human body constantly undergoes a series of changes, so that all its particles are renewed in a given number of years, so much ill feeling was drawn upon him, from theologians, who saw in this statement danger to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that for the sake of peace he struck out his argument on this subject from his collected works.(320)

(320) For permissions to dissect the human subject, given here and there during the Middle Ages, see Roth's Andreas Vesalius, Berlin, 1892, pp. 3, 13 et seq. For religious antipathies as a factor in the persecution of Vesalius, see the biographies by Boerhaave and Albinos, 1725; Burggraeve's Etudes, 1841; also Haeser, Kingsley, and the latest and most thorough of all, Roth, as above. Even Goethals, despite the timidity natural to a city librarian in a town like Brussels, in which clerical power is strong and relentless, feels obliged to confess that there was a certain admixture of religious hatred in the treatment of Vesalius. See his Notice Biographique sur Andre Vesale. For the resurrection bones, see Roth, as above, pp. 154, 155, and notes. For Vesalius, see especially Portal, Hist. de l'Anatomie et de la Chirurgie, Paris, 1770, tome i, p. 407. For neglect of dissection and opposition to Harvey's discovery in Spain, see Townsend's Travels, edition of 1792, cited in Buckle, History of Civilization in England, vol. ii, pp. 74, 75. Also Henry Morley, in his Clement Marot, and Other Essays. For Bernouilli and his trouble with the theologians, see Wolf, Biographien zur Culturgeschichte der Schweiz, vol. ii, p. 95. How different Mundinus's practice of dissection was from that of Vesalius may be seen by Cuvier's careful statement that the entire number of dissections by the former was three; the usual statement is that there were but two. See Cuvier, Hist. des Sci. Nat., tome ii, p. 7; also Sprengel, Fredault, Hallam, and Littre. Also Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, vol. iii, p. 328; also, for a very full statement regarding the agency of Mundinus in the progress of Anatomy, see Portal, vol. i, pp. 209-216.

Still other encroachments upon the theological view were made by the new school of anatomists, and especially by Vesalius. During the Middle Ages there had been developed various theological doctrines regarding the human body; these were based upon arguments showing what the body OUGHT TO BE, and naturally, when anatomical science showed what it IS, these doctrines fell. An example of such popular theological reasoning is seen in a widespread belief of the twelfth century, that, during the year in which the cross of Christ was captured by Saladin, children, instead of having thirty or thirty-two teeth as before, had twenty or twenty-two. So, too, in Vesalius's time another doctrine of this sort was dominant: it had long been held that Eve, having been made by the Almighty from a rib taken out of Adam's side, there must be one rib fewer on one side of every man than on the other. This creation of Eve was a favourite subject with sculptors and painters, from Giotto, who carved it upon his beautiful Campanile at Florence, to the illuminators of missals, and even to those who illustrated Bibles and religious books in the first years after the invention of printing; but Vesalius and the anatomists who followed him put an end among thoughtful men to this belief in the missing rib, and in doing this dealt a blow at much else in the sacred theory. Naturally, all these considerations brought the forces of ecclesiasticism against the innovators in anatomy.(321)

(321) As to the supposed change in the number of teeth, see the Gesta Philippi Augusti Francorum Regis,... descripta a magistro Rigardo, 1219, edited by Father Francois Duchesne, in Histories Francorum Scriptores, tom. v, Paris, 1649, p. 24. For representations of Adam created by the Almighty out of a pile of dust, and of Eve created from a rib of Adam, see the earlier illustrations in the Nuremberg Chronicle. As to the relation of anatomy to theology as regards to Adam's rib, see Roth, pp. 154, 155.

A new weapon was now forged: Vesalius was charged with dissecting a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II admit, he became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, apparently undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world.

And yet not lost. In this century a great painter has again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil Vesalius again stands on earth, and we look once more into his cell. Its windows and doors, bolted and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which he labours; the corpse of the plague-stricken beneath his hand ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays from the canvas, which strengthen us for the good fight in this age.(322)

(322) The original painting of Vesalius at work in his cell, by Hamann, is now at Cornell University.

His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion: his poor, blind foes aided in destroying one of religion's greatest apostles. What was his influence on religion? He substituted, for the repetition of worn-out theories, a conscientious and reverent search into the works of the great Power giving life to the universe; he substituted, for representations of the human structure pitiful and unreal, representations revealing truths most helpful to the whole human race.

The death of this champion seems to have virtually ended the contest. Licenses to dissect soon began to be given by sundry popes to universities, and were renewed at intervals of from three to four years, until the Reformation set in motion trains of thought which did much to release science from this yoke.(323)

(323) For a curious example of weapons drawn from Galen and used against Vesalius, see Lewes, Life of Goethe, p. 343, note. For proofs that I have not overestimated Vesalius, see Portal, ubi supra. Portal speaks of him as "le genie le plus droit qu'eut l'Europe"; and again, "Vesale me parait un des plus grands hommes qui ait existe." For the charge that anatomists dissected living men—against men of science before Vesalius's time—see Littre's chapter on Anatomy. For the increased liberty given anatomy by the Reformation, see Roth's Vesalius, p. 33.



X. THEOLOGICAL OPPOSITION TO INOCULATION, VACCINATION, AND THE USE OF ANAESTHETICS.

I hasten now to one of the most singular struggles of medical science during modern times. Early in the last century Boyer presented inoculation as a preventive of smallpox in France, and thoughtful physicians in England, inspired by Lady Montagu and Maitland, followed his example. Ultra-conservatives in medicine took fright at once on both sides of the Channel, and theology was soon finding profound reasons against the new practice. The French theologians of the Sorbonne solemnly condemned it; the English theologians were most loudly represented by the Rev. Edward Massey, who in 1772 preached and published a sermon entitled The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation. In this he declared that Job's distemper was probably confluent smallpox; that he had been inoculated doubtless by the devil; that diseases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin; and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is "a diabolical operation." Not less vigorous was the sermon of the Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled Inoculation an Indefensible Practice. This struggle went on for thirty years. It is a pleasure to note some churchmen—and among them Madox, Bishop of Worcester—giving battle on the side of right reason; but as late as 1753 we have a noted rector at Canterbury denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the primatial city, and many of his brethren following his example.

The same opposition was vigorous in Protestant Scotland. A large body of ministers joined in denouncing the new practice as "flying in the face of Providence," and "endeavouring to baffle a Divine judgment."

On our own side of the ocean, also, this question had to be fought out. About the year 1721 Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, a physician in Boston, made an experiment in inoculation, one of his first subjects being his own son. He at once encountered bitter hostility, so that the selectmen of the city forbade him to repeat the experiment. Foremost among his opponents was Dr. Douglas, a Scotch physician, supported by the medical profession and the newspapers. The violence of the opposing party knew no bounds; they insisted that inoculation was "poisoning," and they urged the authorities to try Dr. Boylston for murder. Having thus settled his case for this world, they proceeded to settle it for the next, insisting that "for a man to infect a family in the morning with smallpox and to pray to God in the evening against the disease is blasphemy"; that the smallpox is "a judgment of God on the sins of the people," and that "to avert it is but to provoke him more"; that inoculation is "an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite." Among the mass of scriptural texts most remote from any possible bearing on the subject one was employed which was equally cogent against any use of healing means in any disease—the words of Hosea: "He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up."

So bitter was this opposition that Dr. Boylston's life was in danger; it was considered unsafe for him to be out of his house in the evening; a lighted grenade was even thrown into the house of Cotton Mather, who had favoured the new practice, and had sheltered another clergyman who had submitted himself to it.

To the honour of the Puritan clergy of New England, it should be said that many of them were Boylston's strongest supporters. Increase and Cotton Mather had been among the first to move in favour of inoculation, the latter having called Boylston's attention to it; and at the very crisis of affairs six of the leading clergymen of Boston threw their influence on Boylston's side and shared the obloquy brought upon him. Although the gainsayers were not slow to fling into the faces of the Mathers their action regarding witchcraft, urging that their credulity in that matter argued credulity in this, they persevered, and among the many services rendered by the clergymen of New England to their country this ought certainly to be remembered; for these men had to withstand, shoulder to shoulder with Boylston and Benjamin Franklin, the same weapons which were hurled at the supporters of inoculation in Europe—charges of "unfaithfulness to the revealed law of God."

The facts were soon very strong against the gainsayers: within a year or two after the first experiment nearly three hundred persons had been inoculated by Boylston in Boston and neighbouring towns, and out of these only six had died; whereas, during the same period, out of nearly six thousand persons who had taken smallpox naturally, and had received only the usual medical treatment, nearly one thousand had died. Yet even here the gainsayers did not despair, and, when obliged to confess the success of inoculation, they simply fell back upon a new argument, and answered: "It was good that Satan should be dispossessed of his habitation which he had taken up in men in our Lord's day, but it was not lawful that the children of the Pharisees should cast him out by the help of Beelzebub. We must always have an eye to the matter of what we do as well as the result, if we intend to keep a good conscience toward God." But the facts were too strong; the new practice made its way in the New World as in the Old, though bitter opposition continued, and in no small degree on vague scriptural grounds, for more than twenty years longer.(324)

(324) For the general subject, see Sprengel, Histoire de la Medecine, vol. vi, pp. 39-80. For the opposition of the Paris faculty of Theology to inoculation, see the Journal de Barbier, vol. vi, p. 294; also the Correspondance de Grimm et Diderot, vol. iii, pp. 259 et seq. For bitter denunciations of inoculation by the English clergy, and for the noble stand against them by Madox, see Baron, Life of Jenner, vol. i, pp. 231, 232, and vol. ii, pp. 39, 40. For the strenuous opposition of the same clergy, see Weld, History of the Royal Society, vol. i, p. 464, note; also, for its comical side, see Nichol's Literary Illustrations, vol. v, p. 800. For the same matter in Scotland, see Lecky's History of the Eighteenth Century, vol. ii, p. 83. For New England, see Green, History of Medicine in Massachusetts, Boston, 1881, pp. 58 et seq; also chapter x of the Memorial History of Boston, by the same author and O. W. Holmes. For a letter of Dr. Franklin's, see Massachusetts Historical Collections, second series, vol. vii, p. 17. Several most curious publications issued during the heat of the inoculation controversy have been kindly placed in my hands by the librarians of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Historical Society, among them A Reply to Increase Mather, by John Williams, Boston, printed by J. Franklin, 1721, from which the above scriptural arguments are cited. For the terrible virulence of the smallpox in New England up to the introduction of the inoculation, see McMaster, History of the People of the United States, first edition, vol. i, p. 30.

The steady evolution of scientific medicine brings us next to Jenner's discovery of vaccination. Here, too, sundry vague survivals of theological ideas caused many of the clergy to side with retrograde physicians. Perhaps the most virulent of Jenner's enemies was one of his professional brethren, Dr. Moseley, who placed on the title-page of his book, Lues Bovilla, the motto, referring to Jenner and his followers, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do": this book of Dr. Moseley was especially indorsed by the Bishop of Dromore. In 1798 an Anti-vaccination Society was formed by physicians and clergymen, who called on the people of Boston to suppress vaccination, as "bidding defiance to Heaven itself, even to the will of God," and declared that "the law of God prohibits the practice." As late as 1803 the Rev. Dr. Ramsden thundered against vaccination in a sermon before the University of Cambridge, mingling texts of Scripture with calumnies against Jenner; but Plumptre and the Rev. Rowland Hill in England, Waterhouse in America, Thouret in France, Sacco in Italy, and a host of other good men and true, pressed forward, and at last science, humanity, and right reason gained the victory. Most striking results quickly followed. The diminution in the number of deaths from the terrible scourge was amazing. In Berlin, during the eight years following 1783, over four thousand children died of the smallpox; while during the eight years following 1814, after vaccination had been largely adopted, out of a larger number of deaths there were but five hundred and thirty-five from this disease. In Wurtemberg, during the twenty-four years following 1772, one in thirteen of all the children died of smallpox, while during the eleven years after 1822 there died of it only one in sixteen hundred. In Copenhagen, during twelve years before the introduction of vaccination, fifty-five hundred persons died of smallpox, and during the sixteen years after its introduction only one hundred and fifty-eight persons died of it throughout all Denmark. In Vienna, where the average yearly mortality from this disease had been over eight hundred, it was steadily and rapidly reduced, until in 1803 it had fallen to less than thirty; and in London, formerly so afflicted by this scourge, out of all her inhabitants there died of it in 1890 but one. As to the world at large, the result is summed up by one of the most honoured English physicians of our time, in the declaration that "Jenner has saved, is now saving, and will continue to save in all coming ages, more lives in one generation than were destroyed in all the wars of Napoleon."

It will have been noticed by those who have read this history thus far that the record of the Church generally was far more honourable in this struggle than in many which preceded it: the reason is not difficult to find; the decline of theology enured to the advantage of religion, and religion gave powerful aid to science.

Yet there have remained some survivals both in Protestantism and in Catholicism which may be regarded with curiosity. A small body of perversely ingenious minds in the medical profession in England have found a few ardent allies among the less intellectual clergy. The Rev. Mr. Rothery and the Rev. Mr. Allen, of the Primitive Methodists, have for sundry vague theological reasons especially distinguished themselves by opposition to compulsory vaccination; but it is only just to say that the great body of the English clergy have for a long time taken the better view.

Far more painful has been the recent history of the other great branch of the Christian Church—a history developed where it might have been least expected: the recent annals of the world hardly present a more striking antithesis between Religion and Theology.

On the religious side few things in the history of the Roman Church have been more beautiful than the conduct of its clergy in Canada during the great outbreak of ship-fever among immigrants at Montreal about the middle of the present century. Day and night the Catholic priesthood of that city ministered fearlessly to those victims of sanitary ignorance; fear of suffering and death could not drive these ministers from their work; they laid down their lives cheerfully while carrying comfort to the poorest and most ignorant of our kind: such was the record of their religion. But in 1885 a record was made by their theology. In that year the smallpox broke out with great virulence in Montreal. The Protestant population escaped almost entirely by vaccination; but multitudes of their Catholic fellow-citizens, under some vague survival of the old orthodox ideas, refused vaccination; and suffered fearfully. When at last the plague became so serious that travel and trade fell off greatly and quarantine began to be established in neighbouring cities, an effort was made to enforce compulsory vaccination. The result was, that large numbers of the Catholic working population resisted and even threatened bloodshed. The clergy at first tolerated and even encouraged this conduct: the Abbe Filiatrault, priest of St. James's Church, declared in a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which has offended the Lord; it is to punish our pride that God has sent us smallpox." The clerical press went further: the Etendard exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than submit to vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was forced to pander to the same sentiment. The Board of Health struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circular to the Catholic clergy, imploring them to recommend vaccination; but, though two or three complied with this request, the great majority were either silent or openly hostile. The Oblate Fathers, whose church was situated in the very heart of the infected district, continued to denounce vaccination; the faithful were exhorted to rely on devotional exercises of various sorts; under the sanction of the hierarchy a great procession was ordered with a solemn appeal to the Virgin, and the use of the rosary was carefully specified.

Meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among the Protestants, raged with ever-increasing virulence among the Catholics; and, the truth becoming more and more clear, even to the most devout, proper measures were at last enforced and the plague was stayed, though not until there had been a fearful waste of life among these simple-hearted believers, and germs of scepticism planted in the hearts of their children which will bear fruit for generations to come.(325)

(325) For the opposition of concientious men to vaccination in England, see Baron, Life of Jenner, as above; also vol. ii, p. 43; also Dun's Life of Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 248, 249; also Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. For a multitude of statistics ahowing the diminution of smallpox after the introduction of vaccination, see Russell, p. 380. For the striking record in London for 1890, see an article in the Edinburgh review for January, 1891. The general statement referred to was made in a speech some years since by Sir Spencer Wells. For recent scattered cases of feeble opposition to vaccination by Protestant ministers, see William White, The Great Delusion, London, 1885, passim. For opposition of the Roman Catholic clergy and peasantry in Canada to vaccination during the smallpox plague of 1885, see the English, Canadian, and American newspapers, but especially the very temperate and accurate correspondence in the New York Evening Post during September and October of that year.

Another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has allied itself with the retrograde party in medical science is found in the history of certain remedial agents; and first may be named cocaine. As early as the middle of the sixteenth century the value of coca had been discovered in South America; the natives of Peru prized it highly, and two eminent Jesuits, Joseph Acosta and Antonio Julian, were converted to this view. But the conservative spirit in the Church was too strong; in 1567 the Second Council of Lima, consisting of bishops from all parts of South America, condemned it, and two years later came a royal decree declaring that "the notions entertained by the natives regarding it are an illusion of the devil."

As a pendant to this singular mistake on the part of the older Church came another committed by many Protestants. In the early years of the seventeenth century the Jesuit missionaries in South America learned from the natives the value of the so-called Peruvian bark in the treatment of ague; and in 1638, the Countess of Cinchon, Regent of Peru, having derived great benefit from the new remedy, it was introduced into Europe. Although its alkaloid, quinine, is perhaps the nearest approach to a medical specific, and has diminished the death rate in certain regions to an amazing extent, its introduction was bitterly opposed by many conservative members of the medical profession, and in this opposition large numbers of ultra-Protestants joined, out of hostility to the Roman Church. In the heat of sectarian feeling the new remedy was stigmatized as "an invention of the devil"; and so strong was this opposition that it was not introduced into England until 1653, and even then its use was long held back, owing mainly to anti-Catholic feeling.