I had only to pass a wall and I was in the burial-ground. It was thinly

tenanted as I remember it, but now populous with the silent immigrants of

more than a whole generation. There lay the dead I had left, the two or

three students of the Seminary; the son of the worthy pair in whose house

I lived, for whom in those days hearts were still aching, and by whose

memory the house still seemed haunted. A few upright stones were all

that I recollect. But now, around them were the monuments of many of the

dead whom I remembered as living. I doubt if there has been a more

faithful reader of these graven stones than myself for many a long day.

I listened to more than one brief sermon from preachers whom I had often

heard as they thundered their doctrines down upon me from the throne-like

desk. Now they spoke humbly out of the dust, from a narrower pulpit, from

an older text than any they ever found in Cruden's Concordance, but there

was an eloquence in their voices the listening chapel had never known.

There were stately monuments and studied inscriptions, but none so

beautiful, none so touching, as that which hallows the resting-place of

one of the children of the very learned Professor Robinson: "Is it well

with the child? And she answered, It is well."

While I was musing amidst these scenes in the mood of Hamlet, two old

men, as my little ghost called them, appeared on the scene to answer to

the gravedigger and his companion. They christened a mountain or two for

me, "Kearnsarge" among the rest, and revived some old recollections, of

which the most curious was "Basil's Cave." The story was recent, when I

was there, of one Basil, or Bezill, or Buzzell, or whatever his name

might have been, a member of the Academy, fabulously rich, Orientally

extravagant, and of more or less lawless habits. He had commanded a cave

to be secretly dug, and furnished it sumptuously, and there with his

companions indulged in revelries such as the daylight of that consecrated

locality had never looked upon. How much truth there was in it all I

will not pretend to say, but I seem to remember stamping over every rock

that sounded hollow, to question if it were not the roof of what was once

Basil's Cave.

The sun was getting far past the meridian, and I sought a shelter under

which to partake of the hermit fare I had brought with me. Following the

slope of the hill northward behind the cemetery, I found a pleasant clump

of trees grouped about some rocks, disposed so as to give a seat, a

table, and a shade. I left my benediction on this pretty little natural

caravansera, and a brief record on one of its white birches, hoping to

visit it again on some sweet summer or autumn day.

Two scenes remained to look upon,--the Shawshine River and the Indian

Ridge. The streamlet proved to have about the width with which it flowed

through my memory. The young men and the boys were bathing in its

shallow current, or dressing and undressing upon its banks as in the days

of old; the same river, only the water changed; "The same boys, only the

names and the accidents of local memory different," I whispered to my

little ghost.

The Indian Ridge more than equalled what I expected of it. It is well

worth a long ride to visit. The lofty wooded bank is a mile and a half

in extent, with other ridges in its neighborhood, in general running

nearly parallel with it, one of them still longer. These singular

formations are supposed to have been built up by the eddies of

conflicting currents scattering sand and gravel and stones as they swept

over the continent. But I think they pleased me better when I was taught

that the Indians built them; and while I thank Professor Hitchcock, I

sometimes feel as if I should like to found a chair to teach the

ignorance of what people do not want to know.

"Two tickets to Boston." I said to the man at the station.

But the little ghost whispered, "When you leave this place you leave me

behind you."

"One ticket to Boston, if you please. Good by, little ghost."

I believe the boy-shadow still lingers around the well-remembered scenes

I traversed on that day, and that, whenever I revisit them, I shall find

him again as my companion.

THE PULPIT AND THE PEW.

The priest is dead for the Protestant world. Luther's inkstand did not

kill the devil, but it killed the priest, at least for us: He is a loss

in many respects to be regretted. He kept alive the spirit of reverence.

He was looked up to as possessing qualities superhuman in their nature,

and so was competent to be the stay of the weak and their defence against

the strong. If one end of religion is to make men happier in this world

as well as in the next, mankind lost a great source of happiness when the

priest was reduced to the common level of humanity, and became only a

minister. Priest, which was presbyter, corresponded to senator, and was

a title to respect and honor. Minister is but the diminutive of

magister, and implies an obligation to render service.

It was promised to the first preachers that in proof of their divine

mission they should have the power of casting out devils and talking in

strange tongues; that they should handle serpents and drink poisons with

impunity; that they should lay hands on the sick and they should recover.

The Roman Church claims some of these powers for its clergy and its

sacred objects to this day. Miracles, it is professed, are wrought by

them, or through them, as in the days of the apostles. Protestantism

proclaims that the age of such occurrences as the apostles witnessed is

past. What does it know about miracles? It knows a great many records

of miracles, but this is a different kind of knowledge.

The minister may be revered for his character, followed for his

eloquence, admired for his learning, loved for his amiable qualities, but

he can never be what the priest was in past ages, and is still, in the

Roman Church. Dr. Arnold's definition may be found fault with, but it

has a very real meaning. "The essential point in the notion of a priest

is this: that he is a person made necessary to our intercourse with God,

without being necessary or beneficial to us morally,--an unreasonable,

immoral, spiritual necessity." He did not mean, of course, that the

priest might not have all the qualities which would recommend him as a

teacher or as a man, but that he had a special power, quite independent

of his personal character, which could act, as it were, mechanically;

that out of him went a virtue, as from the hem of his Master's raiment,

to those with whom his sacred office brought him in contact.

It was a great comfort to poor helpless human beings to have a tangible

personality of like nature with themselves as a mediator between them and

the heavenly powers. Sympathy can do much for the sorrowing, the

suffering, the dying, but to hear God himself speaking directly through

human lips, to feel the touch of a hand which is the channel of

communication with the unseen Omnipotent, this was and is the privilege

of those who looked and those who still look up to a priesthood. It has

been said, and many who have walked the hospitals or served in the

dispensaries can bear witness to the truth of the assertion, that the

Roman Catholics know how to die. The same thing is less confidently to

be said of Protestants. How frequently is the story told of the most

exemplary Protestant Christians, nay, how common is it to read in the

lives of the most exemplary Protestant ministers, that they were beset

with doubts and terrors in their last days! The blessing of the viaticum

is unknown to them. Man is essentially an idolater,--that is, in bondage

to his imagination,--for there is no more harm in the Greek word eidolon

than in the Latin word imago. He wants a visible image to fix his

thought, a scarabee or a crux ansata, or the modern symbols which are to

our own time what these were to the ancient Egyptians. He wants a

vicegerent of the Almighty to take his dying hand and bid him godspeed on

his last journey. Who but such an immediate representative of the

Divinity would have dared to say to the monarch just laying his head on

the block, "Fils de Saint Louis, monte au ciel"?

It has been a long and gradual process to thoroughly republicanize the

American Protestant descendant of the ancient priesthood. The history of

the Congregationalists in New England would show us how this change has

gone on, until we have seen the church become a hall open to all sorts of

purposes, the pulpit come down to the level of the rostrum, and the

clergyman take on the character of a popular lecturer who deals with

every kind of subject, including religion.

Whatever fault we may find with many of their beliefs, we have a right to

be proud of our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers among the clergy. They were

ready to do and to suffer anything for their faith, and a faith which

breeds heroes is better than an unbelief which leaves nothing worth being

a hero for. Only let us be fair, and not defend the creed of Mohammed

because it nurtured brave men and enlightened scholars, or refrain from

condemning polygamy in our admiration of the indomitable spirit and

perseverance of the Pilgrim Fathers of Mormonism, or justify an inhuman

belief, or a cruel or foolish superstition, because it was once held or

acquiesced in by men whose nobility of character we heartily recognize.

The New England clergy can look back to a noble record, but the pulpit

has sometimes required a homily from the pew, and may sometimes find it

worth its while to listen to one even in our own days.

From the settlement of the country to the present time, the ministers

have furnished the highest type of character to the people among whom

they have lived. They have lost to a considerable extent the position of

leaders, but if they are in our times rather to be looked upon as

representatives of their congregations, they represent what is best among

those of whom they are the speaking organs. We have a right to expect

them to be models as well as teachers of all that makes the best citizens

for this world and the next, and they have not been, and are not in these

later days unworthy of their high calling. They have worked hard for

small earthly compensation. They have been the most learned men the

country had to show, when learning was a scarce commodity. Called by

their consciences to self-denying labors, living simply, often

half-supported by the toil of their own hands, they have let the light,

such light as shone for them, into the minds of our communities as the

settler's axe let the sunshine into their log-huts and farm-houses.

Their work has not been confined to their professional duties, as a few

instances will illustrate. Often, as was just said, they toiled like

day-laborers, teasing lean harvests out of their small inclosures of

land, for the New England soil is not one that "laughs when tickled with

a hoe," but rather one that sulks when appealed to with that persuasive

implement. The father of the eminent Boston physician whose recent loss

is so deeply regretted, the Reverend Pitt Clarke, forty-two years pastor

of the small fold in the town of Norton, Massachusetts, was a typical

example of this union of the two callings, and it would be hard to find a

story of a more wholesome and useful life, within a limited and isolated

circle, than that which the pious care of one of his children

commemorated. Sometimes the New England minister, like worthy Mr. Ward

of Stratford-on-Avon, in old England, joined the practice of medicine to

the offices of his holy profession. Michael Wigglesworth, the poet of

"The Day of Doom," and Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard

College, were instances of this twofold service. In politics their

influence has always been felt, and in many cases their drums

ecclesiastic have beaten the reveille as vigorously, and to as good

purpose, as it ever sounded in the slumbering camp. Samuel Cooper sat in

council with the leaders of the Revolution in Boston. The three

Northampton-born brothers Allen, Thomas, Moses, and Solomon, lifted their

voices, and, when needed, their armed hands, in the cause of liberty. In

later days, Elijah Parish and David Osgood carried politics into their

pulpits as boldly as their antislavery successors have done in times

still more recent.

The learning, the personal character, the sacredness of their office,

tended, to give the New England clergy of past generations a kind of

aristocratic dignity, a personal grandeur, much more felt in the days

when class distinctions were recognized less unwillingly than at present.

Their costume added to the effect of their bodily presence, as the old

portraits illustrate for us, as those of us who remember the last of the

"fair, white, curly" wigs, as it graced the imposing figure of the

Reverend Dr. Marsh of Wethersfield, Connecticut, can testify. They were

not only learned in the history of the past, but they were the

interpreters of the prophecy, and announced coming events with a

confidence equal to that with which the weather-bureau warns us of a

coming storm. The numbers of the book of Daniel and the visions of the

Revelation were not too hard for them. In the commonplace book of the

Reverend Joel Benedict is to be found the following record, made, as it

appears, about the year 1773: "Conversing with Dr. Bellamy upon the

downfall of Antichrist, after many things had been said upon the subject,

the Doctor began to warm, and uttered himself after this manner: 'Tell

your children to tell their children that in the year 1866 something

notable will happen in the church; tell them the old man says so.'"

The "old man" came pretty near hitting the mark, as we shall see if we

consider what took place in the decade from 1860 to 1870. In 1864 the

Pope issued the "Syllabus of Errors," which "must be considered by

Romanists--as an infallible official document, and which arrays the

papacy in open war against modern civilization and civil and religious

freedom." The Vatican Council in 1870 declared the Pope to be the bishop

of bishops, and immediately after this began the decisive movement of the

party known as the "Old Catholics." In the exact year looked forward to

by the New England prophet, 1866, the evacuation of Rome by the French

and the publication of "Ecce Homo" appear to be the most remarkable

events having Special relation to the religious world. Perhaps the

National Council of the Congregationalists, held at Boston in 1865, may

be reckoned as one of the occurrences which the oracle just missed.

The confidence, if not the spirit of prophecy, lasted down to a later

period. "In half a century," said the venerable Dr. Porter of Conway,

New Hampshire, in 1822, "there will be no Pagans, Jews, Mohammedans,

Unitarians, or Methodists." The half-century has more than elapsed, and

the prediction seems to stand in need of an extension, like many other

prophetic utterances.

The story is told of David Osgood, the shaggy-browed old minister of

Medford, that he had expressed his belief that not more than one soul in

two thousand would be saved. Seeing a knot of his parishioners in

debate, he asked them what they were discussing, and was told that they

were questioning which of the Medford people was the elected one, the

population being just two thousand, and that opinion was divided whether

it would be the minister or one of his deacons. The story may or may not

be literally true, but it illustrates the popular belief of those days,

that the clergyman saw a good deal farther into the councils of the

Almighty than his successors could claim the power of doing.

The objects about me, as I am writing, call to mind the varied

accomplishments of some of the New England clergy. The face of the

Revolutionary preacher, Samuel Cooper, as Copley painted it, looks upon

me with the pleasantest of smiles and a liveliness of expression which

makes him seem a contemporary after a hundred years' experience of

eternity. The Plato on this lower shelf bears the inscription: "Ezroe

Stiles, 1766. Olim e libris Rev. Jaredis Eliot de Killingworth." Both

were noted scholars and philosophers. The hand-lens before me was

imported, with other philosophical instruments, by the Reverend John

Prince of Salem, an earlier student of science in the town since

distinguished by the labors of the Essex Institute. Jeremy Belknap holds

an honored place in that unpretending row of local historians. And in

the pages of his "History of New Hampshire" may be found a chapter

contributed in part by the most remarkable man, in many respects, among

all the older clergymen preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer,

botanist, entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in state and

national governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme

Court of a Territory because he declined the office when Washington

offered it to him. This manifold individual was the minister of

Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Essex County, Massachusetts,--the

Reverend Manasseh Cutler. These reminiscences from surrounding objects

came up unexpectedly, of themselves: and have a right here, as showing

how wide is the range of intelligence in the clerical body thus

accidentally represented in a single library making no special

pretensions.

It is not so exalted a claim to make for them, but it may be added that

they were often the wits and humorists of their localities. Mather

Byles's facetie are among the colonial classic reminiscences. But these

were, for the most part, verbal quips and quibbles. True humor is an

outgrowth of character. It is never found in greater perfection than in

old clergymen and old college professors. Dr. Sprague's "Annals of the

American Pulpit" tells many stories of our old ministers as good as Dean

Ramsay's "Scottish Reminiscences." He has not recorded the following,

which is to be found in Miss Larned's excellent and most interesting

History of Windham County, Connecticut. The Reverend Josiah Dwight was

the minister of Woodstock, Connecticut, about the year 1700. He was not

old, it is true, but he must have caught the ways of the old ministers.

The "sensational" pulpit of our own time could hardly surpass him in the

drollery of its expressions. A specimen or two may dispose the reader to

turn over the pages which follow in a good-natured frame of mind. "If

unconverted men ever got to heaven," he said, "they would feel as uneasy

as a shad up the crotch of a white-oak." Some of his ministerial

associates took offence at his eccentricities, and called on a visit of

admonition to the offending clergyman. "Mr. Dwight received their

reproofs with great meekness, frankly acknowledged his faults, and

promised amendment, but, in prayer at parting, after returning thanks for

the brotherly visit and admonition, 'hoped that they might so hitch their

horses on earth that they should never kick in the stables of everlasting

salvation.'"

It is a good thing to have some of the blood of one of these old

ministers in one's veins. An English bishop proclaimed the fact before

an assembly of physicians the other day that he was not ashamed to say

that he had a son who was a doctor. Very kind that was in the bishop,

and very proud his medical audience must have felt. Perhaps he was not

ashamed of the Gospel of Luke, "the beloved physician," or even of the

teachings which came from the lips of one who was a carpenter, and the

son of a carpenter. So a New-Englander, even if he were a bishop, need

not be ashamed to say that he consented to have an ancestor who was a

minister. On the contrary, he has a right to be grateful for a probable

inheritance of good instincts, a good name, and a bringing up in a

library where he bumped about among books from the time when he was

hardly taller than one of his father's or grandfather's folios. What are

the names of ministers' sons which most readily occur to our memory as

illustrating these advantages? Edward Everett, Joseph Stevens

Buckminster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bancroft, Richard Hildreth,

James Russell Lowell, Francis Parkman, Charles Eliot Norton, were all

ministers' boys. John Lothrop Motley was the grandson of the clergyman

after whom he was named. George Ticknor was next door to such a descent,

for his father was a deacon. This is a group which it did not take a

long or a wide search to bring together.

Men such as the ministers who have been described could not fail to

exercise a good deal of authority in the communities to which they

belonged. The effect of the Revolution must have been to create a

tendency to rebel against spiritual dictation. Republicanism levels in

religion as in everything. It might have been expected, therefore, that

soon after civil liberty had been established there would be conflicts

between the traditional, authority of the minister and the claims of the

now free and independent congregation. So it was, in fact, as for

instance in the case which follows, for which the reader is indebted to

Miss Lamed's book, before cited.

The ministerial veto allowed by the Saybrook Platform gave rise, in the

year 1792, to a fierce conflict in the town of Pomfret, Connecticut.

Zephaniah Swift, a lawyer of Windham, came out in the Windham "Herald,"

in all the vehemence of partisan phraseology, with all the emphasis of

italics and small capitals. Was it not time, he said, for people to look

about them and see whether "such despotism was founded in Scripture, in

reason, in policy, or on the rights of man! A minister, by his vote, by

his single voice, may negative the unanimous vote of the church! Are

ministers composed of finer clay than the rest of mankind, that entitles

them to this preeminence? Does a license to preach transform a man into a

higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern?

Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to

be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such

degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the

Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born

free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation

must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that the

CONSTITUTION, which delegates to one the power to negative the vote of

all the rest, is SUBVERSIVE OF THE NATURAL RIGHT OF MANKIND AND REPUGNANT

TO THE WORD OF GOD."

The Reverend Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him

to be "destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment,

honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous

tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, and a ragamuffin."

No Fourth-of-July orator would in our day rant like the lawyer, and no

clergyman would use such language as that of the Reverend Moses Welch.

The clergy have been pretty well republicanized within that last two or

three generations, and are not likely to provoke quarrels by assertion of

their special dignities or privileges. The public is better bred than to

carry on an ecclesiastical controversy in terms which political brawlers

would hardly think admissible. The minister of religion is generally

treated with something more than respect; he is allowed to say undisputed

what would be sharply controverted in anybody else. Bishop Gilbert

Haven, of happy memory, had been discussing a religious subject with a

friend who was not convinced by his arguments. "Wait till you hear me

from the pulpit," he said; "there you cannot answer me." The

preacher--if I may use an image which would hardly have suggested itself

to him--has his hearer's head in chancery, and can administer punishment

ad libitum. False facts, false reasoning, bad rhetoric, bad grammar,

stale images, borrowed passages, if not borrowed sermons, are listened to

without a word of comment or a look of disapprobation.

One of the ablest and most conscientiously laborious of our clergymen has

lately ventured to question whether all his professional brethren

invariably give utterance to their sincerest beliefs, and has been

sharply criticised for so doing. The layman, who sits silent in his pew,

has his rights when out of it, and among them is the right of questioning

that which has been addressed to him from the privileged eminence of the

pulpit, or in any way sanctioned by his religious teacher. It is nearly

two hundred years since a Boston layman wrote these words: "I am not

ignorant that the pious frauds of the ancient, and the inbred fire (I do

not call it pride) of many of our modern divines, have precipitated them

to propagate and maintain truth as well as falsehoods, in such an unfair

manner as has given advantage to the enemy to suspect the whole doctrine

these men have profest to be nothing but a mere trick."

So wrote Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, whose book the Reverend

Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, burned publicly in the

college yard. But the pity of it is that the layman had not cried out

earlier and louder, and saved the community from the horror of those

judicial murders for witchcraft, the blame of which was so largely

attributable to the clergy.

Perhaps no, laymen have given the clergy more trouble than the doctors.

The old reproach against physicians, that where there were three of them

together there were two atheists, had a real significance, but not that

which was intended by the sharp-tongued ecclesiastic who first uttered

it. Undoubtedly there is a strong tendency in the pursuits of the

medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and

diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of

divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible,

or at least very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual

efforts of Nature--whose diary is the book he reads oftenest--to heal

wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be done under the given

conditions,--it is very difficult for him to believe in a world where

wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a respite from pain, where

sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of suffering, where the art of

torture is the only science cultivated, and the capacity for being

tormented is the only faculty which remains to the children of that same

Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The Deity has often been

pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no doubt, frequently

repudiated him as a monstrosity.

On the other hand, the physician has often been renowned for piety as

well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity,--led upward by

what he sees to the source of all the daily marvels wrought before his

own eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that psalm of praise

which the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; and if

this "heathen" could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need

not be surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among the

crowd of medical "atheists."

No two professions should come into such intimate and cordial relations

as those to which belong the healers of the body and the headers of the

mind. There can be no more fatal mistake than that which brings them

into hostile attitudes with reference to each other, both having in view

the welfare of their fellow-creatures. But there is a territory always

liable to be differed about between them. There are patients who never

tell their physician the grief which lies at the bottom of their

ailments. He goes through his accustomed routine with them, and thinks

he has all the elements needed for his diagnosis. But he has seen no

deeper into the breast than the tongue, and got no nearer the heart than

the wrist. A wise and experienced clergyman, coming to the patient's

bedside,--not with the professional look on his face which suggests the

undertaker and the sexton, but with a serene countenance and a

sympathetic voice, with tact, with patience, waiting for the right

moment,--will surprise the shy spirit into a confession of the doubt, the

sorrow, the shame, the remorse, the terror which underlies all the bodily

symptoms, and the unburdening of which into a loving and pitying soul is

a more potent anodyne than all the drowsy sirups of the world. And, on

the other hand, there are many nervous and over-sensitive natures which

have been wrought up by self-torturing spiritual exercises until their

best confessor would be a sagacious and wholesome-minded physician.

Suppose a person to have become so excited by religious stimulants that

he is subject to what are known to the records of insanity as

hallucinations: that he hears voices whispering blasphemy in his ears,

and sees devils coming to meet him, and thinks he is going to be torn in

pieces, or trodden into the mire. Suppose that his mental conflicts,

after plunging him into the depths of despondency, at last reduce him to

a state of despair, so that he now contemplates taking his own life, and

debates with himself whether it shall be by knife, halter, or poison, and

after much questioning is apparently making up his mind to commit

suicide. Is not this a manifest case of insanity, in the form known as

melancholia? Would not any prudent physician keep such a person under

the eye of constant watchers, as in a dangerous state of, at least,

partial mental alienation? Yet this is an exact transcript of the mental

condition of Christian in "Pilgrim's Progress," and its counterpart has

been found in thousands of wretched lives terminated by the act of

self-destruction, which came so near taking place in the hero of the

allegory. Now the wonderful book from which this example is taken is,

next to the Bible and the Treatise of "De Imitatione Christi," the

best-known religious work of Christendom. If Bunyan and his

contemporary, Sydenham, had met in consultation over the case of

Christian at the time when he was meditating self-murder, it is very

possible that there might have been a difference of judgment. The

physician would have one advantage in such a consultation. He would

pretty certainly have received a Christian education, while the clergyman

would probably know next to nothing of the laws or manifestations of

mental or bodily disease. It does not seem as if any theological student

was really prepared for his practical duties until he had learned

something of the effects of bodily derangements, and, above all, had

become familiar with the gamut of mental discord in the wards of an

insane asylum.

It is a very thoughtless thing to say that the physician stands to the

divine in the same light as the divine stands to the physician, so far as

each may attempt to handle subjects belonging especially to the other's

profession. Many physicians know a great deal more about religious

matters than they do about medicine. They have read the Bible ten times

as much as they ever read any medical author. They have heard scores of

sermons for one medical lecture to which they have listened. They often

hear much better preaching than the average minister, for he hears

himself chiefly, and they hear abler men and a variety of them. They

have now and then been distinguished in theology as well as in their own

profession. The name of Servetus might call up unpleasant recollections,

but that of another medical practitioner may be safely mentioned. "It

was not till the middle of the last century that the question as to the

authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with anything like a discerning

criticism. The first attempt was made by a layman, whose studies we might

have supposed would scarcely have led him to such an investigation."

This layman was "Astruc, doctor and professor of medicine in the Royal

College at Paris, and court physician to Louis XIV." The quotation is

from the article "Pentateuch" in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible,"

which, of course, lies on the table of the least instructed clergyman.

The sacred profession has, it is true, returned the favor by giving the

practitioner of medicine Bishop Berkeley's "Treatise on Tar-water," and

the invaluable prescription of that "aged clergyman whose sands of

life"----but let us be fair, if not generous, and remember that Cotton

Mather shares with Zabdiel Boylston the credit of introducing the

practice of inoculation into America. The professions should be cordial

allies, but the church-going, Bible-reading physician ought to know a

great deal more of the subjects included under the general name of

theology than the clergyman can be expected to know of medicine. To say,

as has been said not long since, that a young divinity student is as

competent to deal with the latter as an old physician is to meddle with

the former, suggests the idea that wisdom is not an heirloom in the

family of the one who says it. What a set of idiots our clerical

teachers must have been and be, if, after a quarter or half a century of

their instruction, a person of fair intelligence is utterly incompetent

to form any opinion about the subjects which they have been teaching, or

trying to teach him, so long!

A minister must find it very hard work to preach to hearers who do not

believe, or only half believe, what he preaches. But pews without heads

in them are a still more depressing spectacle. He may convince the

doubter and reform the profligate. But he cannot produce any change on

pine and mahogany by his discourses, and the more wood he sees as he

looks along his floor and galleries, the less his chance of being useful.

It is natural that in times like the present changes of faith and of

place of worship should be far from infrequent. It is not less natural

that there should be regrets on one side and gratification on the other,

when such changes occur. It even happens occasionally that the regrets

become aggravated into reproaches, rarely from the side which receives

the new accessions, less rarely from the one which is left. It is quite

conceivable that the Roman Church, which considers itself the only true

one, should look on those who leave its communion as guilty of a great

offence. It is equally natural that a church which considers Pope and

Pagan a pair of murderous giants, sitting at the mouths of their caves,

alike in their hatred to true Christians, should regard any of its

members who go over to Romanism as lost in fatal error. But within the

Protestant fold there are many compartments, and it would seem that it is

not a deadly defection to pass from one to another.

So far from such exchanges between sects being wrong, they ought to

happen a great deal oftener than they do. All the larger bodies of

Christians should be constantly exchanging members. All men are born

with conservative or aggressive tendencies: they belong naturally with

the idol-worshippers or the idol-breakers. Some wear their fathers' old

clothes, and some will have a new suit. One class of men must have their

faith hammered in like a nail, by authority; another class must have it

worked in like a screw, by argument. Members of one of these classes

often find themselves fixed by circumstances in the other. The late

Orestes A. Brownson used to preach at one time to a little handful of

persons, in a small upper room, where some of them got from him their

first lesson about the substitution of reverence for idolatry, in dealing

with the books they hold sacred. But after a time Mr. Brownson found he

had mistaken his church, and went over to the Roman Catholic

establishment, of which he became and remained to his dying day one of

the most stalwart champions. Nature is prolific and ambidextrous. While

this strong convert was trying to carry us back to the ancient faith,

another of her sturdy children, Theodore Parker, was trying just as hard

to provide a new church for the future. One was driving the sheep into

the ancient fold, while the other was taking down the bars that kept them

out of the new pasture. Neither of these powerful men could do the

other's work, and each had to find the task for which he was destined.

The "old gospel ship," as the Methodist song calls it, carries many who

would steer by the wake of their vessel. But there are many others who

do not trouble themselves to look over the stern, having their eyes fixed

on the light-house in the distance before them. In less figurative

language, there are multitudes of persons who are perfectly contented

with the old formulae of the church with which they and their fathers

before them have been and are connected, for the simple reason that they

fit, like old shoes, because they have been worn so long, and mingled

with these, in the most conservative religious body, are here and there

those who are restless in the fetters of a confession of faith to which

they have pledged themselves without believing in it. This has been true

of the Athanasian creed, in the Anglican Church, for two centuries more

or less, unless the Archbishop of Canterbury, Tillotson, stood alone in

wishing the church were well rid of it. In fact, it has happened to the

present writer to hear the Thirty-nine Articles summarily disposed of by

one of the most zealous members of the American branch of that communion,

in a verb of one syllable, more familiar to the ears of the forecastle

than to those of the vestry.

But on the other hand, it is far from uncommon to meet with persons among

the so-called "liberal" denominations who are uneasy for want of a more

definite ritual and a more formal organization than they find in their

own body. Now, the rector or the minister must be well aware that there

are such cases, and each of them must be aware that there are individuals

under his guidance whom he cannot satisfy by argument, and who really

belong by all their instincts to another communion. It seems as if a

thoroughly honest, straight-collared clergyman would say frankly to his

restless parishioner: "You do not believe the central doctrines of the

church which you are in the habit of attending. You belong properly to

Brother A.'s or Brother B.'s fold, and it will be more manly and probably

more profitable for you to go there than to stay with us." And, again,

the rolling-collared clergyman might be expected to say to this or that

uneasy listener: "You are longing for a church which will settle your

beliefs for you, and relieve you to a great extent from the task, to

which you seem to be unequal, of working out your own salvation with fear

and trembling. Go over the way to Brother C.'s or Brother D.'s; your

spine is weak, and they will furnish you a back-board which will keep you

straight and make you comfortable." Patients are not the property of

their physicians, nor parishioners of their ministers.

As for the children of clergymen, the presumption is that they will

adhere to the general belief professed by their fathers. But they do not

lose their birthright or their individuality, and have the world all

before them to choose their creed from, like other persons. They are

sometimes called to account for attacking the dogmas they are supposed to

have heard preached from their childhood. They cannot defend themselves,

for various good reasons. If they did, one would have to say he got more

preaching than was good for him, and came at last to feel about sermons

and their doctrines as confectioners' children do about candy. Another

would have to own that he got his religious belief, not from his father,

but from his mother. That would account for a great deal, for the milk

in a woman's veins sweetens, or at least, dilutes an acrid doctrine, as

the blood of the motherly cow softens the virulence of small-pox, so that

its mark survives only as the seal of immunity. Another would plead

atavism, and say he got his religious instincts from his

great-grandfather, as some do their complexion or their temper. Others

would be compelled to confess that the belief of a wife or a sister had

displaced that which they naturally inherited. No man can be expected to

go thus into the details of his family history, and, therefore, it is an

ill-bred and indecent thing to fling a man's father's creed in his face,

as if he had broken the fifth commandment in thinking for himself in the

light of a new generation. Common delicacy would prevent him from saying

that he did not get his faith from his father, but from somebody else,

perhaps from his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, like the young

man whom the Apostle cautioned against total abstinence.

It is always the right, and may sometimes be the duty, of the layman to

call the attention of the clergy to the short-comings and errors, not

only of their own time, but also of the preceding generations, of which

they are the intellectual and moral product. This is especially true

when the authority of great names is fallen back upon as a defence of

opinions not in themselves deserving to be upheld. It may be very

important to show that the champions of this or that set of dogmas, some

of which are extinct or obsolete as beliefs, while others retain their

vitality, held certain general notions which vitiated their conclusions.

And in proportion to the eminence of such champions, and the frequency

with which their names are appealed to as a bulwark of any particular

creed or set of doctrines, is it urgent to show into what obliquities or

extravagances or contradictions of thought they have been betrayed.

In summing up the religious history of New England, it would be just and

proper to show the agency of the Mathers, father and son, in the

witchcraft delusion. It would be quite fair to plead in their behalf the

common beliefs of their time. It would be an extenuation of their acts

that, not many years before, the great and good magistrate, Sir Matthew

Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft.

To fall back on the errors of the time is very proper when we are trying

our predecessors in foro conscientace: The houses they dwelt in may have

had some weak or decayed beams and rafters, but they served for their

shelter, at any rate. It is quite another matter when those rotten

timbers are used in holding up the roofs over our own heads. Still more,

if one of our ancestors built on an unsafe or an unwholesome foundation,

the best thing we can do is to leave it and persuade others to leave it

if we can. And if we refer to him as a precedent, it must be as a

warning and not as a guide.

Such was the reason of the present writer's taking up the writings of

Jonathan Edwards for examination in a recent essay. The "Edwardsian"

theology is still recognized as a power in and beyond the denomination to

which he belonged. One or more churches bear his name, and it is thrown

into the scale of theological belief as if it added great strength to the

party which claims him. That he was a man of extraordinary endowments

and deep spiritual nature was not questioned, nor that he was a most

acute reasoner, who could unfold a proposition into its consequences as

patiently, as convincingly, as a palaeontologist extorts its confession

from a fossil fragment. But it was maintained that so many dehumanizing

ideas were mixed up with his conceptions of man, and so many diabolizing

attributes embodied in his imagination of the Deity, that his system of

beliefs was tainted throughout by them, and that the fact of his being so

remarkable a logician recoiled on the premises which pointed his

inexorable syllogisms to such revolting conclusions. When he presents us

a God, in whose sight children, with certain not too frequent exceptions,

"are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers;" when he

gives the most frightful detailed description of infinite and endless

tortures which it drives men and women mad to think of prepared for "the

bulk of mankind;" when he cruelly pictures a future in which parents are

to sing hallelujahs of praise as they see their children driven into the

furnace, where they are to lie "roasting" forever,--we have a right to

say that the man who held such beliefs and indulged in such imaginations

and expressions is a burden and not a support in reference to the creed

with which his name is associated. What heathenism has ever approached

the horrors of this conception of human destiny? It is not an abuse of

language to apply to such a system of beliefs the name of Christian

pessimism.

If these and similar doctrines are so generally discredited as some

appear to think, we might expect to see the change showing itself in

catechisms and confessions of faith, to hear the joyful news of relief

from its horrors in all our churches, and no longer to read in the

newspapers of ministers rejected or put on trial for heresy because they

could not accept the most dreadful of these doctrines. Whether this be so

or not, it must be owned that the name of Jonathan Edwards does at this

day carry a certain authority with it for many persons, so that anything

he believed gains for them some degree of probability from that

circumstance. It would, therefore, be of much interest to know whether

he was trustworthy in his theological speculations, and whether he ever

changed his belief with reference to any of the great questions above

alluded to.

Some of our readers may remember a story which got abroad many years ago

that a certain M. Babinet, a scientific Frenchman of note, had predicted

a serious accident soon to occur to the planet on which we live by the

collision with it of a great comet then approaching us, or some such

occurrence. There is no doubt that this prediction produced anxiety and

alarm in many timid persons. It became a very interesting question with

them who this M. Babinet might be. Was he a sound observer, who had made

other observations and predictions which had proved accurate? Or was he

one of those men who are always making blunders for other people to

correct? Is he known to have changed his opinion as to the approaching

disastrous event?

So long as there were any persons made anxious by this prediction, so

long as there was even one who believed that he, and his family, and his

nation, and his race, and the home of mankind, with all its monuments,

were very soon to be smitten in mid-heaven and instantly shivered into

fragments, it was very desirable to find any evidence that this prophet

of evil was a man who held many extravagant and even monstrous opinions.

Still more satisfactory would it be if it could be shown that he had

reconsidered his predictions, and declared that he could not abide by his

former alarming conclusions. And we should think very ill of any

astronomer who would not rejoice for the sake of his fellow-creatures, if

not for his own, to find the threatening presage invalidated in either or

both of the ways just mentioned, even though he had committed himself to

M. Babinet's dire belief.

But what is the trivial, temporal accident of the wiping out of a planet

and its inhabitants to the infinite catastrophe which shall establish a

mighty world of eternal despair? And which is it most desirable for

mankind to have disproved or weakened, the grounds of the threat of M.

Babinet, or those of the other infinitely more terrible comminations, so

far as they rest on the authority of Jonathan Edwards?

The writer of this paper had been long engaged in the study of the

writings of Edwards, with reference to the essay he had in contemplation,

when, on speaking of the subject to a very distinguished orthodox divine,

this gentleman mentioned the existence of a manuscript of Edwards which

had been held back from the public on account of some opinions or

tendencies it contained, or was suspected of containing "High Arianism"

was the exact expression he used with reference to it. On relating this

fact to an illustrious man of science, whose name is best known to

botanists, but is justly held in great honor by the orthodox body to

which he belongs, it appeared that he, too, had heard of such a

manuscript, and the questionable doctrine associated with it in his

memory was Sabellianism. It was of course proper in the writer of an

essay on Jonathan Edwards to mention the alleged existence of such a

manuscript, with reference to which the same caution seemed to have been

exercised as that which led, the editor of his collected works to

suppress the language Edwards had used about children.

This mention led to a friendly correspondence between the writer and one

of the professors in the theological school at Andover, and finally to

the publication of a brief essay, which, for some reason, had been

withheld from publication for more than a century. Its title is

"Observations concerning the Scripture OEconomy of the Trinity and

Covenant of Redemption. By Jonathan Edwards." It contains thirty-six

pages and a half, each small page having about two hundred words. The

pages before the reader will be found to average about three hundred and

twenty-five words. An introduction and an appendix by the editor,

Professor Egbert C. Smyth, swell the contents to nearly a hundred pages,

but these additions, and the circumstance that it is bound in boards,

must not lead us to overlook the fact that the little volume is nothing

more than a pamphlet in book's clothing.

A most extraordinary performance it certainly is, dealing with the

arrangements entered into by the three persons of the Trinity, in as bald

and matter-of-fact language and as commercial a spirit as if the author

had been handling the adjustment of a limited partnership between three

retail tradesmen. But, lest a layman's judgment might be considered

insufficient, the treatise was submitted by the writer to one of the most

learned of our theological experts,--the same who once informed a church

dignitary, who had been attempting to define his theological position,

that he was a Eutychian,--a fact which he seems to have been no more

aware of than M. Jourdain was conscious that he had been speaking prose

all his life. The treatise appeared to this professor anti-trinitarian,

not in the direction of Unitarianism, however, but of Tritheism. Its

anthropomorphism affected him like blasphemy, and the paper produced in

him the sense of "great disgust," which its whole character might well

excite in the unlearned reader.

All this is, however, of little importance, for this is not the work of

Edwards referred to by the present writer in his previous essay. The

tract recently printed as a volume may be the one referred to by Dr.

Bushnell, in 1851, but of this reference by him the writer never heard

until after his own essay was already printed. The manuscript of the

"Observations" was received by Professor Smyth, as he tells us in his

introduction, about fifteen years ago, from the late Reverend William T.

Dwight, D. D., to whom it was bequeathed by his brother, the Reverend Dr.

Sereno E. Dwight.

But the reference of the present writer was to another production of the

great logician, thus spoken of in a quotation from "the accomplished

editor of the Hartford 'Courant,'" to be found in Professor Smyth's

introduction:

"It has long been a matter of private information that Professor Edwards

A. Park, of Andover, had in his possession an published manuscript of

Edwards of considerable extent, perhaps two thirds as long as his

treatise on the will. As few have ever seen the manuscript, its contents

are only known by vague reports.... It is said that it contains a

departure from his published views on the Trinity and a modification of

the view of original sin. One account of it says that the manuscript

leans toward Sabellianism, and that it even approaches Pelagianism."

It was to this "suppressed" manuscript the present writer referred, and

not to the slender brochure recently given to the public. He is bound,

therefore, to say plainly that to satisfy inquirers who may be still in

doubt with reference to Edwards's theological views, it would be

necessary to submit this manuscript, and all manuscripts of his which

have been kept private, to their inspection, in print, if possible, so

that all could form their own opinion about it or them.

The whole matter may be briefly stated thus: Edwards believed in an

eternity of unimaginable horrors for "the bulk of mankind." His

authority counts with many in favor of that belief, which affects great

numbers as the idea of ghosts affected Madame de Stall: "Je n'y crois

pas, mais je les crains." This belief is one which it is infinitely

desirable to the human race should be shown to be possibly, probably, or

certainly erroneous. It is, therefore, desirable in the interest of

humanity that any force the argument in its favor may derive from

Edwards's authority should be weakened by showing that he was capable of

writing most unwisely, and if it should be proved that he changed his

opinions, or ran into any "heretical" vagaries, by using these facts

against the validity of his judgment. That he was capable of writing

most unwisely has been sufficiently shown by the recent publication of

his "Observations." Whether he, anywhere contradicted what were generally

accepted as his theological opinions, or how far he may have lapsed into

heresies, the public will never rest satisfied until it sees and

interprets for itself everything that is open to question which may be

contained in his yet unpublished manuscripts. All this is not in the

least a personal affair with the writer, who, in the course of his

studies of Edwards's works, accidentally heard, from the unimpeachable

sources sufficiently indicated, the reports, which it seems must have

been familiar to many, that there was unpublished matter bearing on the

opinions of the author through whose voluminous works he had been

toiling. And if he rejoiced even to hope that so wise a man as Edwards

has been considered, so good a man as he is recognized to have been, had,

possibly in his changes of opinion, ceased to think of children as

vipers, and of parents as shouting hallelujahs while their lost darlings

were being driven into the flames, where is the theologian who would not

rejoice to hope so with him or who would be willing to tell his wife or

his daughter that he did not?

The real, vital division of the religious part of our Protestant

communities is into Christian optimists and Christian pessimists. The

Christian optimist in his fullest development is characterized by a

cheerful countenance, a voice in the major key, an undisguised enjoyment

of earthly comforts, and a short confession of faith. His theory of the

universe is progress; his idea of God is that he is a Father with all the

true paternal attributes, of man that he is destined to come into harmony

with the key-note of divine order, of this earth that it is a training

school for a better sphere of existence. The Christian pessimist in his

most typical manifestation is apt to wear a solemn aspect, to speak,

especially from the pulpit, in the minor key, to undervalue the lesser

enjoyments of life, to insist on a more extended list of articles of

belief. His theory of the universe recognizes this corner of it as a

moral ruin; his idea of the Creator is that of a ruler whose pardoning

power is subject to the veto of what is called "justice;" his notion of

man is that he is born a natural hater of God and goodness, and that his

natural destiny is eternal misery. The line dividing these two great

classes zigzags its way through the religious community, sometimes

following denominational layers and cleavages, sometimes going, like a

geological fracture, through many different strata. The natural

antagonists of the religious pessimists are the men of science,

especially the evolutionists, and the poets. It was but a conditioned

prophecy, yet we cannot doubt what was in Milton's mind when he sang, in

one of the divinest of his strains, that

"Hell itself will pass away,

And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day."

And Nature, always fair if we will allow her time enough, after giving

mankind the inspired tinker who painted the Christian's life as that of a

hunted animal, "never long at ease," desponding, despairing, on the verge

of self-murder,--painted it with an originality, a vividness, a power and

a sweetness, too, that rank him with the great authors of all time,--kind

Nature, after this gift, sent as his counterpoise the inspired ploughman,

whose songs have done more to humanize the hard theology of Scotland than

all the rationalistic sermons that were ever preached. Our own Whittier

has done and is doing the same thing, in a far holier spirit than Burns,

for the inherited beliefs of New England and the country to which New

England belongs. Let me sweeten these closing paragraphs of an essay not

meaning to hold a word of bitterness with a passage or two from the

lay-preacher who is listened to by a larger congregation than any man who

speaks from the pulpit. Who will not hear his words with comfort and

rejoicing when he speaks of "that larger hope which, secretly cherished

from the times of Origen and Duns Scotus to those of Foster and Maurice,

has found its fitting utterance in the noblest poem of the age?"

It is Tennyson's "In Memoriam" to which he refers, and from which he

quotes four verses, of which this is the last:

"Behold! we know not anything

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last,--far off,--at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring."

If some are disposed to think that the progress of civilization and the

rapidly growing change of opinion renders unnecessary any further effort

to humanize "the Gospel of dread tidings;" if any believe the doctrines

of the Longer and Shorter Catechism of the Westminster divines are so far

obsolete as to require no further handling; if there are any who thank

these subjects have lost their interest for living souls ever since they

themselves have learned to stay at home on Sundays, with their cakes and

ale instead of going to meeting,--not such is Mr. Whittier's opinion,

as we may infer from his recent beautiful poem, "The Minister's

Daughter." It is not science alone that the old Christian pessimism has

got to struggle with, but the instincts of childhood, the affections of

maternity, the intuitions of poets, the contagious humanity of the

philanthropist,--in short, human nature and the advance of civilization.

The pulpit has long helped the world, and is still one of the chief

defences against the dangers that threaten society, and it is worthy now,

as it always has been in its best representation, of all love and honor.

But many of its professed creeds imperatively demand revision, and the

pews which call for it must be listened to, or the preacher will by and

by find himself speaking to a congregation of bodiless echoes by and by

find himself speaking to a congregation of bodiless echoes.

MEDICAL ESSAYS

By Oliver Wendell Holmes

1842-1882

CONTENTS:

I. HOMEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS

II. THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER

III. CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS IN MEDICAL SCIENCE

IV. BORDER LINES OF KNOWLEDGE IN SOME PROVINCES OF MEDICAL SCIENCE

V. SCHOLASTIC AND BEDSIDE TEACHING

VI. THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN MASSACHUSETTS

VII. THE YOUNG PRACTITIONER

VIII. MEDICAL LIBRARIES

IX. SOME OF MY EARLY TEACHERS

PREFACE.

The character of the opposition which some of these papers have met with

suggests the inference that they contain really important, but unwelcome

truths. Negatives multiplied into each other change their sign and

become positives. Hostile criticisms meeting together are often

equivalent to praise, and the square of fault-finding turns out to be the

same thing as eulogy.

But a writer has rarely so many enemies as it pleases him to believe.

Self-love leads us to overrate the numbers of our negative constituency.

The larger portion of my limited circle of readers must be quite

indifferent to, if not ignorant of, the adverse opinions which have been

expressed or recorded concerning any of these Addresses or Essays now

submitted to their own judgment. It is proper, however, to inform them,

that some of the positions maintained in these pages have been

unsparingly attacked, with various degrees of ability, scholarship, and

good-breeding. The tone of criticism naturally changes with local

conditions in different parts of a country extended like our own, so that

it is one of the most convenient gauges of the partial movements in the

direction of civilization. It is satisfactory to add, that the views

assailed have also been unflinchingly defended by unsought champions,

among the ablest of whom it is pleasant to mention, at this moment of

political alienation, the Editor of the Charleston Medical Journal.

"Currents and Counter-Currents" was written and delivered as an Oration,

a florid rhetorical composition, expressly intended to secure the

attention of an audience not easy to hold as listeners. It succeeded in

doing this, and also in being as curiously misunderstood and

misrepresented as if it had been a political harangue. This gave it more

local notoriety than it might otherwise have attained, so that, as I

learn, one ingenious person made use of its title as an advertisement to

a production of his own.

The commonest mode of misrepresentation was this: qualified propositions,

the whole meaning of which depended on the qualifications, were stripped

of these and taken as absolute. Thus, the attempt to establish a

presumption against giving poisons to sick persons was considered as

equivalent to condemning the use of these substances. The only important

inference the writer has been able to draw from the greater number of the

refutations of his opinions which have been kindly sent him, is that the

preliminary education of the Medical Profession is not always what it

ought to be.

One concession he is willing to make, whatever sacrifice of pride it may

involve. The story of Massasoit, which has furnished a coral, as it

were, for some teething critics, when subjected to a powerful logical

analysis, though correct in its essentials, proves to have been told with

exceptionable breadth of statement, and therefore (to resume the

metaphor) has been slightly rounded off at its edges, so as to be

smoother for any who may wish to bite upon it hereafter. In other

respects the Discourse has hardly been touched. It is only an

individual's expression, in his own way, of opinions entertained by

hundreds of the Medical Profession in every civilized country, and has

nothing in it which on revision the writer sees cause to retract or

modify. The superstitions it attacks lie at the very foundation of

Homoeopathy, and of almost every form of medical charlatanism. Still the

mere routinists and unthinking artisans in most callings dislike whatever

shakes the dust out of their traditions, and it may be unreasonable to

expect that Medicine will always prove an exception to the rule. One

half the opposition which the numerical system of Louis has met with, as

applied to the results of treatment, has been owing to the fact that it

showed the movements of disease to be far more independent of the kind of

practice pursued than was agreeable to the pride of those whose

self-confidence it abated.

The statement, that medicines are more sparingly used in physicians'

families than in most others, admits of a very natural explanation,

without putting a harsh construction upon it, which it was not intended

to admit. Outside pressure is less felt in the physician's own

household; that is all. If this does not sometimes influence him to give

medicine, or what seems to be medicine, when among those who have more

confidence in drugging than his own family commonly has, the learned

Professor Dunglison is hereby requested to apologize for his definition

of the word Placebo, or to expunge it from his Medical Dictionary.

One thing is certain. A loud outcry on a slight touch reveals the weak

spot in a profession, as well as in a patient. It is a doubtful policy

to oppose the freest speech in those of our own number who are trying to

show us where they honestly believe our weakness lies. Vast as are the

advances of our Science and Art, may it not possibly prove on examination

that we retain other old barbarisms beside the use of the astrological

sign of Jupiter, with which we endeavor to insure good luck to our

prescriptions? Is it the act of a friend or a foe to try to point them

out to our brethren when asked to address them, and is the speaker to

subdue the constitutional habit of his style to a given standard, under

penalty of giving offence to a grave assembly?

"Homoeopathy and its Kindred Delusions" was published nearly twenty years

ago, and has been long out of print, so that the author tried in vain to

procure a copy until the kindness of a friend supplied him with the only

one he has had for years. A foolish story reached his ears that he was

attempting to buy up stray copies for the sake of suppressing it. This

edition was in the press at that very time.

Many of the arguments contained in the Lectures have lost whatever

novelty they may have possessed. All its predictions have been submitted

to the formidable test of time. They appear to have stood it, so far,

about as well as most uninspired prophecies; indeed, some of them require

much less accommodation than certain grave commentators employ in their

readings of the ancient Prophets.

If some statistics recently published are correct, Homoeopathy has made

very slow progress in Europe.

In all England, as it appears, there are hardly a fifth more Homoeopathic

practitioners than there are students attending Lectures at the

Massachusetts Medical College at the present time. In America it has

undoubtedly proved more popular and lucrative, yet how loose a hold it

has on the public confidence is shown by the fact that, when a specially

valued life, which has been played with by one of its agents, is

seriously threatened, the first thing we expect to hear is that a regular

practitioner is by the patient's bed, and the Homoeopathic counsellor

overruled or discarded. Again, how many of the ardent and capricious

persons who embraced Homoeopathy have run the whole round of pretentious

novelties;--have been boarded at water-cure establishments, closeted with

uterine and other specialists, and finally wandered over seas to put

themselves in charge of foreign celebrities, who dosed them as lustily as

they were ever dosed before they took to globules! It will surprise many

to learn to what a shadow of a shade Homoeopathy has dwindled in the

hands of many of its noted practitioners. The itch-doctrine is treated

with contempt. Infinitesimal doses are replaced by full ones whenever

the fancy-practitioner chooses. Good Homoeopathic reasons can be found

for employing anything that anybody wants to employ. Homoeopathy is now

merely a name, an unproved theory, and a box of pellets pretending to be

specifics, which, as all of us know, fail ignominiously in those cases

where we would thankfully sacrifice all our prejudices and give the world

to have them true to their promises.

Homoeopathy has not died out so rapidly as Tractoration. Perhaps it was

well that it should not, for it has taught us a lesson of the healing

faculty of Nature which was needed, and for which many of us have made

proper acknowledgments. But it probably does more harm than good to

medical science at the present time, by keeping up the delusion of

treating everything by specifics,--the old barbarous notion that sick

people should feed on poisons [Lachesis, arrow-poison, obtained from a

serpent (Pulte). Crotalus horridus, rattlesnake's venom (Neidhard). The

less dangerous Pediculus capitis is the favorite remedy of Dr. Mure, the

English "Apostle of Homoeopathy." These are examples of the retrograde

current setting towards barbarism] against which a part of the Discourse

at the beginning of this volume is directed.

The infinitesimal globules have not become a curiosity as yet, like

Perkins's Tractors. But time is a very elastic element in Geology and

Prophecy. If Daniel's seventy weeks mean four hundred and ninety years,

as the learned Prideaux and others have settled it that they do, the "not

many years" of my prediction may be stretched out a generation or two

beyond our time, if necessary, when the prophecy will no doubt prove

true.

It might be fitting to add a few words with regard to the Essay on the

Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever. But the whole question I consider to

be now transferred from the domain of medical inquiry to the

consideration of Life Insurance agencies and Grand Juries. For the

justification of this somewhat sharply accented language I must refer the

reader to the paper itself for details which I regret to have been forced

to place on permanent record.

BOSTON, January, 1861.

A SECOND PREFACE.

These Lectures and Essays are arranged in the order corresponding to the

date of their delivery or publication. They must, of course, be read

with a constant reference to these dates, by such as care to read them.

I have not attempted to modernize their aspect or character in presenting

them, in this somewhat altered connection, to the public. Several of

them were contained in a former volume which received its name from the

Address called "Currents and Counter-Currents." Some of those contained

in the former volume have been replaced by others. The Essay called

"Mechanism of Vital Actions" has been transferred to a distinct

collection of Miscellaneous essays, forming a separate volume.

I had some intention of including with these papers an Essay on

Intermittent Fever in New England, which received one of the Boylston

prizes in 1837, and was published in the following year. But as this was

upon a subject of local interest, chiefly, and would have taken up a good

deal of room, I thought it best to leave it out, trusting that the stray

copies to be met with in musty book-shops would sufficiently supply the

not very extensive or urgent demand for a paper almost half a century

old.

Some of these papers created a little stir when they first fell from the

press into the pool of public consciousness. They will slide in very

quietly now in this new edition, and find out for themselves whether the

waters are those of Lethe, or whether they are to live for a time as not

wholly unvalued reminiscences.

March 21, 1883.

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

These Essays are old enough now to go alone without staff or crutch in

the shape of Prefaces. A very few words may be a convenience to the

reader who takes up the book and wishes to know what he is likely to find

in it.

HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS.

Homoeopathy has proved lucrative, and so long as it continues to be so

will surely exist,--as surely as astrology, palmistry, and other methods

of getting a living out of the weakness and credulity of mankind and

womankind. Though it has no pretensions to be considered as belonging

among the sciences, it may be looked upon by a scientific man as a

curious object of study among the vagaries of the human mind. Its

influence for good or the contrary may be made a matter of calm

investigation. I have studied it in the Essay before the reader, under

the aspect of an extravagant and purely imaginative creation of its

founder. Since that first essay was written, nearly half a century ago,

we have all had a chance to witness its practical working. Two opposite

inferences may be drawn from its doctrines and practice. The first is

that which is accepted by its disciples. This is that all diseases are

"cured" by drugs. The opposite conclusion is drawn by a much larger

number of persons. As they see that patients are very commonly getting

well under treatment by infinitesimal drugging, which they consider

equivalent to no medication at all, they come to disbelieve in every form

of drugging and put their whole trust in "nature." Thus experience,

"From seeming evil still educing good,"

has shown that the dealers in this preposterous system of

pseudo-therapeutics have cooperated with the wiser class of practitioners

in breaking up the system of over-dosing and over-drugging which has been

one of the standing reproaches of medical practice. While. keeping up

the miserable delusion that diseases were all to be "cured" by drugging,

Homoeopathy has been unintentionally showing that they would very

generally get well without any drugging at all. In the mean time the

newer doctrines of the "mind cure," the "faith cure," and the rest are

encroaching on the territory so long monopolized by that most ingenious

of the pseudo-sciences. It would not be surprising if its whole ground

should be taken possession of by these new claimants with their

flattering appeals to the imaginative class of persons open to such

attacks. Similia similabus may prove fatally true for once, if

Homoeopathy is killed out by its new-born rivals.

It takes a very moderate amount of erudition to unearth a charlatan like

the supposed father of the infinitesimal dosing system. The real

inventor of that specious trickery was an Irishman by the name of Butler.

The whole story is to be found in the "Ortus Medicinm" of Van Helmont. I

have given some account of his chapter "Butler" in different articles,

but I would refer the students of our Homoeopathic educational

institutions to the original, which they will find very interesting and

curious.

CURRENTS AND COUNTER-CURRENTS

My attack on over-drugging brought out some hostile comments and

treatment. Thirty years ago I expressed myself with more vivacity than I

should show if I were writing on the same subjects today. Some of my more

lively remarks called out very sharp animadversion. Thus my illustration

of prevention as often better than treatment in the mother's words to her

child which had got a poisonous berry in its mouth,--"Spit it out!" gave

mortal offence to a well-known New York practitioner and writer, who

advised the Massachusetts Medical Society to spit out the offending

speaker. Worse than this was my statement of my belief that if a

ship-load of miscellaneous drugs, with certain very important

exceptions,--drugs, many of which were then often given needlessly and in

excess, as then used "could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be

all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." This was

too bad. The sentence was misquoted, quoted without its qualifying

conditions, and frightened some of my worthy professional brethren as

much as if I had told them to throw all physic to the dogs. But for the

epigrammatic sting the sentiment would have been unnoticed as a harmless

overstatement at the very worst.

Since this lecture was delivered a great and, as I think, beneficial

change has taken place in the practice of medicine. The habit of the

English "general practitioner" of making his profit out of the pills and

potions he administered was ruinous to professional advancement and the

dignity of the physician. When a half-starving medical man felt that he

must give his patient draught and boluses for which he could charge him,

he was in a pitiable position and too likely to persuade himself that his

drugs were useful to his patient because they were profitable to him.

This practice has prevailed a good deal in America, and was doubtless the

source in some measure of the errors I combated.

THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER.

This Essay was read before a small Association called "The Society for

Medical Improvement," and published in a Medical Journal which lasted but

a single year. It naturally attracted less attention than it would have

done if published in such a periodical as the "American Journal of

Medical Sciences." Still it had its effect, as I have every reason to

believe. I cannot doubt that it has saved the lives of many young

mothers by calling attention to the existence and propagation of

"Puerperal Fever as a Private Pestilence," and laying down rules for

taking the necessary precautions against it. The case has long been

decided in favor of the views I advocated, but, at the time when I wrote

two of the most celebrated professors of Obstetrics in this country

opposed my conclusions with all the weight of their experience and

position.

This paper was written in a great heat and with passionate indignation.

If I touched it at all I might trim its rhetorical exuberance, but I

prefer to leave it all its original strength of expression. I could not,

if I had tried, have disguised the feelings with which I regarded the

attempt to put out of sight the frightful facts which I brought forward

and the necessary conclusions to which they led. Of course the whole

matter has been looked at in a new point of view since the microbe as a

vehicle of contagion has been brought into light, and explained the

mechanism of that which was plain enough as a fact to all who were not

blind or who did not shut their eyes.

O. W. H.

BEVERLY Farms, Mass., August 3, 1891

HOMOEOPATHY AND ITS KINDRED DELUSIONS

[Two lectures delivered before the Boston Society for the Diffusion of

Useful Knowledge. 1842.]

[When a physician attempts to convince a person, who has fallen into the

Homoeopathic delusion, of the emptiness of its pretensions, he is often

answered by a statement of cases in which its practitioners are thought

to have effected wonderful cures. The main object of the first of these

Lectures is to show, by abundant facts, that such statements, made by

persons unacquainted with the fluctuations of disease and the fallacies

of observation, are to be considered in general as of little or no value

in establishing the truth of a medical doctrine or the utility of a

method of practice.

Those kind friends who suggest to a person suffering from a tedious

complaint, that he "Had better try Homoeopathy," are apt to enforce their

suggestion by adding, that "at any rate it can do no harm." This may or

may not be true as regards the individual. But it always does very great

harm to the community to encourage ignorance, error, or deception in a

profession which deals with the life and health of our fellow-creatures.

Whether or not those who countenance Homoeopathy are guilty of this

injustice towards others, the second of these Lectures may afford them

some means of determining.

To deny that good effects may happen from the observance of diet and

regimen when prescribed by Homoeopathists as well as by others, would be

very unfair to them. But to suppose that men with minds so constituted

as to accept such statements and embrace such doctrines as make up the

so-called science of Homoeopathy are more competent than others to

regulate the circumstances which influence the human body in health and

disease, would be judging very harshly the average capacity of ordinary

practitioners.

To deny that some patients may have been actually benefited through the

influence exerted upon their imaginations, would be to refuse to

Homoeopathy what all are willing to concede to every one of those

numerous modes of practice known to all intelligent persons by an

opprobrious title.

So long as the body is affected through the mind, no audacious device,

even of the most manifestly dishonest character, can fail of producing

occasional good to those who yield it an implicit or even a partial

faith. The argument founded on this occasional good would be as

applicable in justifying the counterfeiter and giving circulation to his

base coin, on the ground that a spurious dollar had often relieved a poor

man's necessities.

Homoeopathy has come before our public at a period when the growing

spirit of eclecticism has prepared many ingenious and honest minds to

listen to all new doctrines with a candor liable to degenerate into

weakness. It is not impossible that the pretended evolution of great and

mysterious virtues from infinitely attenuated atoms may have enticed a

few over-refining philosophers, who have slid into a vague belief that

matter subdivided grows less material, and approaches nearer to a

spiritual nature as it requires a more powerful microscope for its

detection.

However this may be, some persons seem disposed to take the ground of

Menzel that the Laity must pass formal judgment between the Physician and

the Homoeopathist, as it once did between Luther and the Romanists. The

practitioner and the scholar must not, therefore, smile at the amount of

time and labor expended in these Lectures upon this shadowy system;

which, in the calm and serious judgment of many of the wisest members of

the medical profession, is not entitled by anything it has ever said or

done to the notoriety of a public rebuke, still less to the honors of

critical martyrdom.]

I

I have selected four topics for this lecture, the first three of which I

shall touch but slightly, the last more fully. They are

1. The Royal cure of the King's Evil, or Scrofula.

2. The Weapon Ointment, and its twin absurdity, the Sympathetic Powder.

3. The Tar-water mania of Bishop Berkeley.

4. The History of the Metallic Tractors, or Perkinism.

The first two illustrate the ease with which numerous facts are

accumulated to prove the most fanciful and senseless extravagances.

The third exhibits the entire insufficiency of exalted wisdom, immaculate

honesty, and vast general acquirements to make a good physician of a

great bishop.

The fourth shows us the intimate machinery of an extinct delusion, which

flourished only forty years ago; drawn in all its details, as being a

rich and comparatively recent illustration of the pretensions, the

arguments, the patronage, by means of which windy errors have long been,

and will long continue to be, swollen into transient consequence. All

display in superfluous abundance the boundless credulity and excitability

of mankind upon subjects connected with medicine.

"From the time of Edward the Confessor to Queen Anne, the monarchs of

England were in the habit of touching those who were brought to them

suffering with the scrofula, for the cure of that distemper. William the

Third had good sense enough to discontinue the practice, but Anne resumed

it, and, among her other patients, performed the royal operation upon a

child, who, in spite of his, disease, grew up at last into Samuel

Johnson. After laying his hand upon the sufferers, it was customary for

the monarch to hang a gold piece around the neck of each patient. Very

strict precautions were adopted to prevent those who thought more of the

golden angel hung round the neck by a white ribbon, than of relief of

their bodily infirmities, from making too many calls, as they sometimes

attempted to do. According to the statement of the advocates and

contemporaries of this remedy, none ever failed of receiving benefit

unless their little faith and credulity starved their merits. Some are

said to have been cured immediately on the very touch, others did not so

easily get rid of their swellings, until they were touched a second time.

Several cases are related, of persons who had been blind for several

weeks, and months, and obliged even to be led to Whitehall, yet recovered

their sight immediately upon being touched, so as to walk away without

any guide." So widely, at one period, was the belief diffused, that, in

the course of twelve years, nearly a hundred thousand persons were

touched by Charles the Second. Catholic divines; in disputes upon the

orthodoxy of their church, did not deny that the power had descended to

protestant princes;--Dr. Harpsfield, in his "Ecclesiastical History of

England," admitted it, and in Wiseman's words, "when Bishop Tooker would

make use of this Argument to prove the Truth of our Church, Smitheus doth

not thereupon go about to deny the Matter of fact; nay, both he and Cope

acknowledge it." "I myself," says Wiseman, the best English surgical

writer of his day,[Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. iii. p.

103.]--"I my self have been a frequent Eye-witness of many hundred of

Cures performed by his Majesties Touch alone, without any assistance of

Chirurgery; and those, many of them such as had tired out the endeavours

of able Chirurgeons before they came hither. It were endless to recite

what I myself have seen, and what I have received acknowledgments of by

Letter, not only from the severall parts of this Nation, but also from

Ireland, Scotland, Jersey, Garnsey. It is needless also to remember what

Miracles of this nature were performed by the very Bloud of his late

Majesty of Blessed memory, after whose decollation by the inhuman

Barbarity of the Regicides, the reliques of that were gathered on Chips

and in Handkerchieffs by the pious Devotes, who could not but think so

great a suffering in so honourable and pious a Cause, would be attended

by an extraordinary assistance of God, and some more then ordinary a

miracle: nor did their Faith deceive them in this there point, being so

many hundred that found the benefit of it." [Severall Chirurgicall

Treatises. London.1676. p. 246.]

Obstinate and incredulous men, as he tells us, accounted for these cures

in three ways: by the journey and change of air the patients obtained in

coming to London; by the influence of imagination; and the wearing of

gold.

To these objections he answers, 1st. That many of those cured were

inhabitants of the city. 2d. That the subjects of treatment were

frequently infants. 3d. That sometimes silver was given, and sometimes

nothing, yet the patients were cured.

A superstition resembling this probably exists at the present time in

some ignorant districts of England and this country. A writer in a

Medical Journal in the year 1807, speaks of a farmer in Devonshire, who,

being a ninth son of a ninth son, is thought endowed with healing powers

like those of ancient royalty, and who is accustomed one day in every

week to strike for the evil.

I remember that one of my schoolmates told me, when a boy, of a seventh

son of a seventh son, somewhere in Essex County, who touched for the

scrofula, and who used to hang a silver fourpence halfpenny about the

neck of those who came to him, which fourpence halfpenny it was solemnly

affirmed became of a remarkably black color after having been some time

worn, and that his own brother had been subjected to this extraordinary

treatment; but I must add that my schoolmate drew a bow of remarkable

length, strength, and toughness for his tender years.

One of the most curious examples of the fallacy of popular belief and the

uncertainty of asserted facts in medical experience is to be found in the

history of the UNGUENTUM ARMARIUM, or WEAPON OINTMENT.

Fabricius Hildanus, whose name is familiar to every surgical scholar, and

Lord Bacon, who frequently dipped a little into medicine, are my

principal authorities for the few circumstances I shall mention regarding

it. The Weapon Ointment was a preparation used for the healing of

wounds, but instead of its being applied to them, the injured part was

washed and bandaged, and the weapon with which the wound was inflicted

was carefully anointed with the unguent. Empirics, ignorant barbers, and

men of that sort, are said to have especially employed it. Still there

were not wanting some among the more respectable members of the medical

profession who supported its claims. The composition of this ointment

was complicated, in the different formulae given by different

authorities; but some substances addressed to the imagination, rather

than the wound or weapon, entered into all. Such were portions of mummy,

of human blood, and of moss from the skull of a thief hung in chains.

Hildanus was a wise and learned man, one of the best surgeons of his

time. He was fully aware that a part of the real secret of the Unguentum

Armarium consisted in the washing and bandaging the wound and then

letting it alone. But he could not resist the solemn assertions

respecting its efficacy; he gave way before the outcry of facts, and

therefore, instead of denying all their pretensions, he admitted and

tried to account for them upon supernatural grounds. As the virtue of

those applications, he says, which are made to the weapon cannot reach

the wound, and as they can produce no effect without contact, it follows,

of necessity, that the Devil must have a hand in the business; and as he

is by far the most long headed and experienced of practitioners, he

cannot find this a matter of any great difficulty. Hildanus himself

reports, in detail, the case of a lady who had received a moderate wound,

for which the Unguentum Armarium was employed without the slightest use.

Yet instead of receiving this flat case of failure as any evidence

against the remedy, he accounts for its not succeeding by the devout

character of the lady, and her freedom from that superstitious and

over-imaginative tendency which the Devil requires in those who are to be

benefited by his devices.

Lord Bacon speaks of the Weapon Ointment, in his Natural History, as

having in its favor the testimony of men of credit, though, in his own

language, he himself "as yet is not fully inclined to believe it." His

remarks upon the asserted facts respecting it show a mixture of wise

suspicion and partial belief. He does not like the precise directions

given as to the circumstances under which the animals from which some of

the materials were obtained were to be killed; for he thought it looked

like a provision for an excuse in case of failure, by laying the fault to

the omission of some of these circumstances. But he likes well that

"they do not observe the confecting of the Ointment under any certain

constellation; which is commonly the excuse of magical medicines, when

they fail, that they were not made under a fit figure of heaven." [This

was a mistake, however, since the two recipes given by Hildanus are both

very explicit as to the aspect of the heavens required for different

stages of the process.] "It was pretended that if the offending weapon

could not be had, it would serve the purpose to anoint a wooden one made

like it." "This," says Bacon, "I should doubt to be a device to keep

this strange form of cure in request and use; because many times you

cannot come by the weapon itself." And in closing his remarks on the

statements of the advocates of the ointment, he says, "Lastly, it will

cure a beast as well as a man, which I like best of all the rest, because

it subjecteth the matter to an easy trial." It is worth remembering,

that more than two hundred years ago, when an absurd and fantastic remedy

was asserted to possess wonderful power, and when sensible persons

ascribed its pretended influence to imagination, it was boldly answered

that the cure took place when the wounded party did not know of the

application made to the weapon, and even when a brute animal was the

subject of the experiment, and that this assertion, as we all know it

was, came in such a shape as to shake the incredulity of the keenest

thinker of his time. The very same assertion has been since repeated in

favor of Perkinism, and, since that, of Homoeopathy.

The same essential idea as that of the Weapon Ointment reproduced itself

in the still more famous SYMPATHETIC POWDER. This Powder was said to

have the faculty, if applied to the blood-stained garments of a wounded

person, to cure his injuries, even though he were at a great distance at

the time. A friar, returning from the East, brought the recipe to Europe

somewhat before the middle of the seventeenth century. The Grand Duke of

Florence, in which city the friar was residing, heard of his cures, and

tried, but without success, to obtain his secret. Sir Kenehn Digby, an

Englishman well known to fame, was fortunate enough to do him a favor,

which wrought upon his feelings and induced him to impart to his

benefactor the composition of his extraordinary Powder. This English

knight was at different periods of his life an admiral, a theologian, a

critic, a metaphysician, a politician, and a disciple of Alchemy. As is

not unfrequent with versatile and inflammable people, he caught fire at

the first spark of a new medical discovery, and no sooner got home to

England than he began to spread the conflagration.

An opportunity soon offered itself to try the powers of the famous

powder. Mr. J. Howell, having been wounded in endeavoring to part two of

his friends who were fighting a duel, submitted himself to a trial of the

Sympathetic Powder. Four days after he received his wounds, Sir Kenehn

dipped one of Mr. Howell's gaiters in a solution of the Powder, and

immediately, it is said, the wounds, which were very painful, grew easy,

although the patient, who was conversing in a corner of the chamber, had

not, the least idea of what was doing with his garter. He then returned

home, leaving his garter in the hands of Sir Kenelm, who had hung it up

to dry, when Mr. Howell sent his servant in a great hurry to tell him

that his wounds were paining him horribly; the garter was therefore

replaced in the solution of the Powder, "and the patient got well after

five or six days of its continued immersion."

King James First, his son Charles the First, the Duke of Buckingham, then

prime minister, and all the principal personages of the time, were

cognizant of this fact; and James himself, being curious to know the

secret of this remedy, asked it of Sir Kenelm, who revealed it to him,

and his Majesty had the opportunity of making several trials of its

efficacy, "which all succeeded in a surprising manner." [Dict. des

Sciences Medieales.]

The king's physician, Dr. Mayerne, was made master of the secret, which

he carried to France and communicated to the Duke of Mayenne, who

performed many cures by means of it, and taught it to his surgeon, who,

after the Duke's death, sold it to many distinguished persons, by whose

agency it soon ceased to be a secret. What was this wonderful substance

which so astonished kings, princes, dukes, knights, and doctors? Nothing

but powdered blue vitriol. But it was made to undergo several processes

that conferred on it extraordinary virtues. Twice or thrice it was to be

dissolved, filtered, and crystallized. The crystals were to be laid in

the sun during the months of June, July, and August, taking care to turn

them carefully that all should be exposed. Then they were to be

powdered, triturated, and again exposed to the sun, again reduced to a

very fine powder, and secured in a vessel, while hot, from the sunshine.

If there seem anything remarkable in the fact of such astonishing

properties being developed by this process, it must be from our

short-sightedness, for common salt and charcoal develop powers quite as

marvellous after a certain number of thumps, stirs, and shakes, from the

hands of modern workers of miracles. In fact the Unguentum Armarium and

Sympathetic Powder resemble some more recent prescriptions; the latter

consisting in an infinite dilution of the common dose in which remedies

are given, and the two former in an infinite dilution of the common

distance at which they are applied.

Whether philosophers, and more especially metaphysicians, have any

peculiar tendency to dabble in drugs and dose themselves with physic, is

a question which might suggest itself to the reader of their biographies.

When Bishop Berkeley visited the illustrious Malebranche at Paris, he

found him in his cell, cooking in a small pipkin a medicine for an

inflammation of the lungs, from which he was suffering; and the disease,

being unfortunately aggravated by the vehemence of their discussion, or

the contents of the pipkin, carried him off in the course of a few days.

Berkeley himself afforded a remarkable illustration of a truth which has

long been known to the members of one of the learned professions, namely,

that no amount of talent, or of acquirements in other departments, can

rescue from lamentable folly those who, without something of the

requisite preparation, undertake to experiment with nostrums upon

themselves and their neighbors. The exalted character of Berkeley is

thus drawn by Sir James Mackintosh: Ancient learning, exact science,

polished society, modern literature, and the fine arts, contributed to

adorn and enrich the mind of this accomplished man. All his

contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing

"'To Berkeley every virtue under heaven.'

"Even the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent Atterbury said, after an

interview with him, 'So much understanding, so much knowledge, so much

innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any

but angels, till I saw this gentleman.'"

But among the writings of this great and good man is an Essay of the most

curious character, illustrating his weakness upon the point in question,

and entitled, "Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflections and Inquiries

concerning the Virtues of TAR WATER, and divers other Subjects,"--an

essay which begins with a recipe for his favorite fluid, and slides by

gentle gradations into an examination of the sublimest doctrines of

Plato. To show how far a man of honesty and benevolence, and with a mind

of singular acuteness and depth, may be run away with by a favorite

notion on a subject which his habits and education do not fit him to

investigate, I shall give a short account of this Essay, merely stating

that as all the supposed virtues of Tar Water, made public in successive

editions of his treatise by so illustrious an author, have not saved it

from neglect and disgrace, it may be fairly assumed that they were mainly

imaginary.

The bishop, as is usual in such cases, speaks of himself as indispensably

obliged, by the duty he owes to mankind, to make his experience public.

Now this was by no means evident, nor does it follow in general, that

because a man has formed a favorable opinion of a person or a thing he

has not the proper means of thoroughly understanding, he shall be bound

to print it, and thus give currency to his impressions, which may be

erroneous, and therefore injurious. He would have done much better to

have laid his impressions before some experienced physicians and

surgeons, such as Dr. Mead and Mr. Cheselden, to have asked them to try

his experiment over again, and have been guided by their answers. But

the good bishop got excited; he pleased himself with the thought that he

had discovered a great panacea; and having once tasted the bewitching cup

of self-quackery, like many before and since his time, he was so

infatuated with the draught that he would insist on pouring it down the

throats of his neighbors and all mankind.

The precious fluid was made by stirring a gallon of water with a quart of

tar, leaving it forty-eight hours, and pouring off the clear water. Such

was the specific which the great metaphysician recommended for averting

and curing all manner of diseases. It was, if he might be believed, a

preventive of the small-pox, and of great use in the course of the

disease. It was a cure for impurities of the blood, coughs, pleurisy,

peripneumony, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, carchexia, hysterics,

dropsy, mortification, scurvy, and hypochondria. It was of great use in

gout and fevers, and was an excellent preservative of the teeth and gums;

answered all the purpose of Elixir Proprietatis, Stoughton's drops, diet

drinks, and mineral waters; was particularly to be recommended to

sea-faring persons, ladies, and men of studious and sedentary lives;

could never be taken too long, but, on the contrary, produced advantages

which sometimes did not begin to show themselves for two or three months.

"From my representing Tar Water as good for so many things," says

Berkeley, "some perhaps may conclude it is good for nothing. But charity

obligeth me to say what I know, and what I think, however it may be

taken. Men may censure and object as they please, but I appeal to time

and experiment. Effects misimputed, cases wrong told, circumstances

overlooked, perhaps, too, prejudices and partialities against truth, may

for a time prevail and keep her at the bottom of her well, from whence

nevertheless she emergeth sooner or later, and strikes the eyes of all

who do not keep them shut." I cannot resist the temptation of

illustrating the bishop's belief in the wonderful powers of his remedy,

by a few sentences from different parts of his essay. "The hardness of

stubbed vulgar constitutions renders them insensible of a thousand things

that fret and gall those delicate people, who, as if their skin was

peeled off, feel to the quick everything that touches them. The tender

nerves and low spirits of such poor creatures would be much relieved by

the use of Tar Water, which might prolong and cheer their lives." "It

[the Tar Water] may be made stronger for brute beasts, as horses, in

whose disorders I have found it very useful." "This same water will also

give charitable relief to the ladies, who often want it more than the

parish poor; being many of them never able to make a good meal, and

sitting pale, puny, and forbidden, like ghosts, at their own table,

victims of vapors and indigestion." It does not appear among the virtues

of Tar Water that "children cried for it," as for some of our modern

remedies, but the bishop says, "I have known children take it for above

six months together with great benefit, and without any inconvenience;

and after long and repeated experience I do esteem it a most excellent

diet drink, fitted to all seasons and ages." After mentioning its

usefulness in febrile complaints, he says: "I have had all this confirmed

by my own experience in the late sickly season of the year one thousand

seven hundred and forty-one, having had twenty-five fevers in my own

family cured by this medicinal water, drunk copiously." And to finish

these extracts with a most important suggestion for the improvement of

the British nation: "It is much to be lamented that our Insulars who act

and think so much for themselves, should yet, from grossness of air and

diet, grow stupid or doat sooner than other people, who, by virtue of

elastic air, water-drinking, and light food, preserve their faculties to

extreme old age; an advantage which may perhaps be approached, if not

equaled, even in these regions, by Tar Water, temperance, and early

hours."

Berkeley died at the age of about seventy; he might have lived longer,

but his fatal illness was so sudden that there was not time enough to

stir up a quart of the panacea. He was an illustrious man, but he held

two very odd opinions; that tar water was everything, and that the whole

material universe was nothing.

--------------------------

Most of those present have at some time in their lives heard mention made

of the METALLIC TRACTORS, invented by one Dr. Perkins, an American, and

formerly enjoying great repute for the cure of various diseases. Many

have seen or heard of a satirical poem, written by one of our own

countrymen also, about forty years since, and called "Terrible

Tractoration." The Metallic Tractors are now so utterly abandoned that I

have only by good fortune fallen upon a single one of a pair, to show for

the sake of illustration. For more than thirty years this great

discovery, which was to banish at least half the evils which afflict

humanity, has been sleeping undisturbed in the grave of oblivion. Not a

voice has, for this long period, been raised in its favor; its noble and

learned patrons, its public institutions, its eloquent advocates, its

brilliant promises are all covered with the dust of silent neglect; and

of the generation which has sprung up since the period when it

flourished, very few know anything of its history, and hardly even the

title which in its palmy days it bore of PERKINISM. Taking it as

settled, then, as no one appears to answer for it, that Perkinism is

entirely dead and gone, that both in public and private, officially and

individually, its former adherents even allow it to be absolutely

defunct, I select it for anatomical examination. If this pretended

discovery was made public; if it was long kept before the public; if it

was addressed to the people of different countries; if it was formally

investigated by scientific men, and systematically adopted by benevolent

persons, who did everything in their power to diffuse the knowledge and

practice of it; if various collateral motives, such as interest and

vanity, were embarked in its cause; if, notwithstanding all these things,

it gradually sickened and died, then the conclusion seems a fair one,

that it did not deserve to live. Contrasting its failure with its high

pretensions, it is fair to call it an imposition; whether an expressly

fraudulent contrivance or not, some might be ready to question.

Everything historically shown to have happened concerning the mode of

promulgation, the wide diffusion, the apparent success of this delusion,

the respectability and enthusiasm of its advocates, is of great interest

in showing to what extent and by what means a considerable part of the

community may be led into the belief of that which is to be eventually

considered' as an idle folly. If there is any existing folly, fraudulent

or innocent in its origin, which appeals to certain arguments for its

support; provided that the very same arguments can be shown to have been

used for Perkinism with as good reason, they will at once fall to the

ground. Still more, if it shall appear that the general course of any

existing delusion bears a strong resemblance to that of Perkinism, that

the former is most frequently advocated by the same class of persons who

were conspicuous in behalf of the latter, and treated with contempt or

opposed by the same kind of persons who thus treated Perkinism; if the

facts in favor of both have a similar aspect; if the motives of their

originators and propagators may be presumed to have been similar; then

there is every reason to suppose that the existing folly will follow in

the footsteps of the past, and after displaying a given amount of cunning

and credulity in those deceiving and deceived, will drop from the public

view like a fruit which has ripened into spontaneous rottenness, and be

succeeded by the fresh bloom of some other delusion required by the same

excitable portion of the community.

Dr. Elisha Perkins was born at Norwich, Connecticut, in the year 1740.

He had practised his profession with a good local reputation for many

years, when he fell upon a course of experiments, as it is related, which

led to his great discovery. He conceived the idea that metallic

substances might have the effect of removing diseases, if applied in a

certain manner; a notion probably suggested by the then recent

experiments of Galvani, in which muscular contractions were found to be

produced by the contact of two metals with the living fibre. It was in

1796 that his discovery was promulgated in the shape of the Metallic

Tractors, two pieces of metal, one apparently iron and the other brass,

about three inches long, blunt at one end and pointed at the other.

These instruments were applied for the cure of different complaints, such

as rheumatism, local pains, inflammations, and even tumors, by drawing

them over the affected part very lightly for about twenty minutes. Dr.

Perkins took out a patent for his discovery, and travelled about the

country to diffuse the new practice. He soon found numerous advocates of

his discovery, many of them of high standing and influence. In the year

1798 the tractors had crossed the Atlantic, and were publicly employed in

the Royal Hospital at Copenhagen. About the same time the son of the

inventor, Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins, carried them to London, where

they soon attracted attention. The Danish physicians published an

account of their cases, containing numerous instances of alleged success,

in a respectable octavo volume. In the year 1804 an establishment,

honored with the name of the Perkinean Institution, was founded in

London. The transactions of this institution were published in

pamphlets, the Perkinean Society had public dinners at the Crown and

Anchor, and a poet celebrated their medical triumph in strains like

these:

"See, pointed metals, blest with power t' appease

The ruthless rage of merciless disease,

O'er the frail part a subtle fluid pour,

Drenched with invisible Galvanic shower,

Till the arthritic staff and crutch forego,

And leap exulting like the bounding roe!"

While all these things were going on, Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins was

calmly pocketing money, so that after some half a dozen years he left the

country with more than ten thousand pounds, which had been paid him by

the believers in Great Britain. But in spite of all this success, and

the number of those interested and committed in its behalf, Perkinism

soon began to decline, and in 1811 the Tractors are spoken of by an

intelligent writer as being almost forgotten. Such was the origin and

duration of this doctrine and practice, into the history of which we will

now look a little more narrowly.

Let us see, then, by whose agency this delusion was established and kept

up; whether it was principally by those who were accustomed to medical

pursuits, or those whose habits and modes of reasoning were different;

whether it was with the approbation of those learned bodies usually

supposed to take an interest in scientific discoveries, or only of

individuals whose claims to distinction were founded upon their position

in society, or political station, or literary eminence; whether the

judicious or excitable classes entered most deeply into it; whether, in

short, the scientific men of that time were deceived, or only intruded

upon, and shouted down for the moment by persons who had no particular

call to invade their precincts.

Not much, perhaps, was to be expected of the Medical Profession in the

way of encouragement. One Dr. Fuller, who wrote in England, himself a

Perkinist, thus expressed his opinion: "It must be an extraordinary

exertion of virtue and humanity for a medical man, whose livelihood

depends either on the sale of drugs, or on receiving a guinea for writing

a prescription, which must relate to those drugs, to say to his patient,

'You had better purchase a set of Tractors to keep in your family; they

will cure you without the expense of my attendance, or the danger of the

common medical practice.' For very obvious reasons medical men must

never be expected to recommend the use of Perkinism. The Tractors must

trust for their patronage to the enlightened and philanthropic out of the

profession, or to medical men retired from practice, and who know of no

other interest than the luxury of relieving the distressed. And I do not

despair of seeing the day when but very few of this description as well

as private families will be without them."

Whether the motives assigned by this medical man to his professional

brethren existed or not, it is true that Dr. Perkins did not gain a great

deal at their hands. The Connecticut Medical Society expelled him in

1797 for violating their law against the use of nostrums, or secret

remedies. The leading English physicians appear to have looked on with

singular apathy or contempt at the miracles which it was pretended were

enacting in the hands of the apostles of the new practice. In looking

over the reviews of the time, I have found little beyond brief occasional

notices of their pretensions; the columns of these journals being

occupied with subjects of more permanent interest. The state of things

in London is best learned, however, from the satirical poem to which I

have already alluded as having been written at the period referred to.

This was entitled, "Terrible Tractoration!! A Poetical Petition against

Galvanizing Trumpery and the Perkinistic Institution. Most respectfully

addressed to the Royal College of Physicians, by Christopher Caustic, M.

D., LL. D., A. S. S., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians,

Aberdeen, and Honorary Member of no less than nineteen very learned

Societies." Two editions of this work were published in London in the

years 1803 and 1804, and one or two have been published in this country.

"Terrible Tractoration" is supposed, by those who never read it, to be a

satire upon the follies of Perkins and his followers. It is, on the

contrary, a most zealous defence of Perkinism, and a fierce attack upon

its opponents, most especially upon such of the medical profession as

treated the subject with neglect or ridicule. The Royal College of

Physicians was the more peculiar object of the attack, but with this

body, the editors of some of the leading periodicals, and several

physicians distinguished at that time, and even now remembered for their

services to science and humanity, were involved in unsparing

denunciations. The work is by no means of the simply humorous character

it might be supposed, but is overloaded with notes of the most seriously

polemical nature. Much of the history of the subject, indeed, is to be

looked for in this volume.

It appears from this work that the principal members of the medical

profession, so far from hailing Mr. Benjamin Douglass Perkins as another

Harvey or Jenner, looked very coldly upon him and his Tractors; and it is

now evident that, though they were much abused for so doing, they knew

very well what they had to deal with, and were altogether in the right.

The delusion at last attracted such an amount of attention as to induce

Dr. Haygarth and some others of respectable standing to institute some

experiments which I shall mention in their proper place, the result of

which might have seemed sufficient to show the emptiness of the whole

contrivance.

The Royal Society, that learned body which for ages has constituted the

best tribunal to which Britain can appeal in questions of science,

accepted Mr. Perkins's Tractors and the book written about them, passed

the customary vote of thanks, and never thought of troubling itself

further in the investigation of pretensions of such an aspect. It is not

to be denied that a considerable number of physicians did avow themselves

advocates of the new practice; but out of the whole catalogue of those

who were publicly proclaimed as such, no one has ever been known, so far

as I am aware, to the scientific world, except in connection with the

short-lived notoriety of Perkinism. Who were the people, then, to whose

activity, influence, or standing with the community was owing all the

temporary excitement produced by the Metallic Tractors?

First, those persons who had been induced to purchase a pair of Tractors.

These little bits of brass and iron, the intrinsic value of which might,

perhaps, amount to ninepence, were sold at five guineas a pair! A man

who has paid twenty-five dollars for his whistle is apt to blow it louder

and longer than other people. So it appeared that when the "Perkinean

Society" applied to the possessors of Tractors in the metropolis to

concur in the establishment of a public institution for the use of these

instruments upon the poor, "it was found that only five out of above a

hundred objected to subscribe, on account of their want of confidence in

the efficacy of the practice; and these," the committee observes, "there

is reason to believe, never gave them a fair trial, probably never used

them in more than one case, and that perhaps a case in which the Tractors

had never been recommended as serviceable." "Purchasers of the

Tractors," said one of their ardent advocates, "would be among the last

to approve of them if they had reason to suppose themselves defrauded of

five guineas." He forgot poor Moses, with his "gross of green

spectacles, with silver rims and shagreen cases." "Dear mother," cried

the boy, "why won't you listen to reason? I had them a dead bargain, or

I should not have bought them. The silver rims alone will sell for

double the money."

But it is an undeniable fact, that many persons of considerable standing,

and in some instances holding the most elevated positions in society,

openly patronized the new practice. In a translation of a work entitled

"Experiments with the Metallic Tractors," originally published in Danish,

thence rendered successively into German and English, Mr. Benjamin

Perkins, who edited the English edition, has given a copious enumeration

of the distinguished individuals, both in America and Europe, whose

patronage he enjoyed. He goes so far as to signify that ROYALTY itself

was to be included among the number. When the Perkinean Institution was

founded, no less a person than Lord Rivers was elected President, and

eleven other individuals of distinction, among them Governor Franklin,

son of Dr. Franklin, figured as Vice-Presidents. Lord Henniker, a member

of the Royal Society, who is spoken of as a man of judgment and talents,

condescended to patronize the astonishing discovery, and at different

times bought three pairs of Tractors. When the Tractors were introduced

into Europe, a large number of testimonials accompanied them from various

distinguished characters in America, the list of whom is given in the

translation of the Danish work referred to as follows:

"Those who have individually stated cases, or who have presented their

names to the public as men who approved of this remedy, and acknowledged

themselves instrumental in circulating the Tractors, are fifty-six in

number; thirty-four of whom are physicians and surgeons, and many of them

of the first eminence, thirteen clergymen, most of whom are doctors of

divinity, and connected with the literary institutions of America; among

the remainder are two members of Congress, one professor of natural

philosophy in a college, etc., etc." It seemed to be taken rather hardly

by Mr. Perkins that the translators of the work which he edited, in

citing the names of the advocates of the Metallic Practice, frequently

omitted the honorary titles which should have been annexed. The

testimonials were obtained by the Danish writer, from a pamphlet

published in America, in which these titles were given in full. Thus one

of these testimonials is from "John Tyler, Esq., a magistrate in the

county of New London, and late Brigadier-General of the militia in that

State." The "omission of the General's title" is the subject of

complaint, as if this title were sufficient evidence of the commanding

powers of one of the patrons of tractoration. A similar complaint is

made when "Calvin Goddard, Esq., of Plainfield, Attorney at Law, and a

member of the Legislature of the State of Connecticut," is mentioned

without his titular honors, and even on account of the omission of the

proper official titles belonging to "Nathan Pierce, Esq., Governor and

Manager of the Almshouse of Newburyport." These instances show the great

importance to be attached to civil and military dignities, in qualifying

their holders to judge of scientific subjects, a truth which has not been

overlooked by the legitimate successors of the Perkinists. In Great

Britain, the Tractors were not less honored than in America, by the

learned and the illustrious. The "Perkinistic Committee" made this

statement in their report: "Mr. Perkins has annually laid before the

public a large collection of new cases communicated to him for that

purpose by disinterested and intelligent characters, from almost every

quarter of Great Britain. In regard to the competency of these vouchers,

it will be sufficient simply to state that, amongst others whose names

have been attached to their communications, are eight professors, in four

different universities, twenty-one regular Physicians, nineteen Surgeons,

thirty Clergymen, twelve of whom are Doctors of Divinity, and numerous

other characters of equal respectability."

It cannot but excite our notice and surprise that the number of clergymen

both in America and Great Britain who thrust forward their evidence on

this medical topic was singularly large in proportion to that of the

members of the medical profession. Whole pages are contributed by such

worthies as the Rev. Dr. Trotter of Hans Place, the Rear. Waring

Willett, Chaplain to the Earl of Dunmore, the Rev. Dr. Clarke, Chaplain

to the Prince of Wales. The style of these theologico-medical

communications may be seen in the following from a divine who was also

professor in one of the colleges of New England. "I have used the

Tractors with success in several other cases in my own family, and

although, like Naaman the Syrian, I cannot tell why the waters of Jordan

should be better than Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus; yet since

experience has proved them so, no reasoning can change the opinion.

Indeed, the causes of all common facts are, we think, perfectly well

known to us; and it is very probable, fifty or a hundred years hence, we

shall as well know why the Metallic Tractors should in a few minutes

remove violent pains, as we now know why cantharides and opium will

produce opposite effects, namely, we shall know very little about either

excepting facts." Fifty or a hundred years hence! if he could have

looked forward forty years, he would have seen the descendants of the

"Perkinistic" philosophers swallowing infinitesimal globules, and knowing

and caring as much about the Tractors as the people at Saratoga Springs

do about the waters of Abana and Pharpar.

I trust it will not be thought in any degree disrespectful to a

profession which we all honor, that I have mentioned the great zeal of

many clergymen in the cause of Perkinism. I hope, too, that I may

without offence suggest the causes which have often led them out of their

own province into one to which their education has no special reference.

The members of that profession ought to be, and commonly are, persons of

benevolent character. Their duties carry them into the midst of

families, and particularly at times when the members of them are

suffering from bodily illness. It is natural enough that a strong desire

should be excited to alleviate sufferings which may have defied the

efforts of professional skill; as natural that any remedy which

recommends itself to the belief or the fancy of the spiritual physician

should be applied with the hope of benefit; and perfectly certain that

the weakness of human nature, from which no profession is exempt, will

lead him to take the most flattering view of its effects upon the

patient; his own sagacity and judgment being staked upon the success of

the trial. The inventor of the Tractors was aware of these truths. He

therefore sent the Tractors gratuitously to many clergymen, accompanied

with a formal certificate that the holder had become entitled to their

possession by the payment of five guineas. This was practised in our own

neighborhood, and I remember finding one of these certificates, so

presented, which proved that amongst the risks of infancy I had to

encounter Perkins's Tractors. Two clergymen of Boston and the vicinity,

both well known to local fame, gave in their testimony to the value of

the instruments thus presented to them; an unusually moderate proportion,

when it is remembered that to the common motives of which I have spoken

was added the seduction of a gift for which the profane public was

expected to pay so largely.

It was remarkable, also, that Perkinism, which had so little success with

the medical and scientific part of the community, found great favor in

the eyes of its more lovely and less obstinate portion. "The lady of

Major Oxholin,"--I quote from Mr. Perkins's volume,--"having been lately

in America, had seen and heard much of the great effects of Perkinism.

Influenced by a most benevolent disposition, she brought these Tractors

and the pamphlet with her to Europe, with a laudable desire of extending

their utility to her suffering countrymen." Such was the channel by

which the Tractors were conveyed to Denmark, where they soon became the

ruling passion. The workmen, says a French writer, could not manufacture

them fast enough. Women carried them about their persons, and delighted

in bringing them into general use. To what extent the Tractors were

favored with the patronage of English and American ladies, it is of

course not easy to say, except on general principles, as their names were

not brought before the public. But one of Dr. Haygarth's stories may

lead us to conjecture that there was a class of female practitioners who

went about doing good with the Tractors in England as well as in Denmark.

A certain lady had the misfortune to have a spot as big as a silver penny

at the corner of her eye, caused by a bruise, or some such injury.

Another lady, who was a friend of hers, and a strong believer in

Perkinism, was very anxious to try the effects of tractoration upon this

unfortunate blemish. The patient consented; the lady "produced the

instruments, and, after drawing them four or five times over the spot,

declared that it changed to a paler color, and on repeating the use of

them a few minutes longer, that it had almost vanished, and was scarcely

visible, and departed in high triumph at her success." The lady who

underwent the operation assured the narrator "that she looked in the

glass immediately after, and that not the least visible alteration had

taken place."

It would be a very interesting question, what was the intellectual

character of those persons most conspicuous in behalf of the Perkinistic

delusion? Such an inquiry might bring to light some principles which we

could hereafter apply to the study of other popular errors. But the

obscurity into which nearly all these enthusiasts have subsided renders

the question easier to ask than to answer. I believe it would have been

found that most of these persons were of ardent temperament and of

considerable imagination, and that their history would show that

Perkinism was not the first nor the last hobby-horse they rode furiously.

Many of them may very probably have been persons of more than common

talent, of active and ingenious minds, of versatile powers and various

acquirements. Such, for instance, was the estimable man to whom I have

repeatedly referred as a warm defender of tractoration, and a bitter

assailant of its enemies. The story tells itself in the biographical

preface to his poem. He went to London with the view of introducing a

hydraulic machine, which he and his Vermont friends regarded as a very

important invention. He found, however, that the machine was already in

common use in that metropolis. A brother Yankee, then in London, had

started the project of a mill, which was to be carried by the water of

the Thames. He was sanguine enough to purchase one fifth of this

concern, which also proved a failure. At about the same period he wrote

the work which proved the great excitement of his mind upon the subject

of the transient folly then before the public. Originally a lawyer, he

was in succession a mechanician, a poet, and an editor, meeting with far

less success in each of these departments than usually attends men of

less varied gifts, but of more tranquil and phlegmatic composition. But

who is ignorant that there is a class of minds characterized by qualities

like those I have mentioned; minds with many bright and even beautiful

traits; but aimless and fickle as the butterfly; that settle upon every

gayly-colored illusion as it opens into flower, and flutter away to

another when the first has dropped its leaves, and stands naked in the

icy air of truth!

Let us now look at the general tenor of the arguments addressed by

believers to sceptics and opponents. Foremost of all, emblazoned at the

head of every column, loudest shouted by every triumphant disputant, held

up as paramount to all other considerations, stretched like an

impenetrable shield to protect the weakest advocate of the great cause

against the weapons of the adversary, was that omnipotent monosyllable

which has been the patrimony of cheats and the currency of dupes from

time immemorial,--Facts! Facts! Facts! First came the published cases

of the American clergymen, brigadier-generals, almshouse governors,

representatives, attorneys, and esquires. Then came the published cases

of the surgeons of Copenhagen. Then followed reports of about one

hundred and fifty cases published in England, "demonstrating the efficacy

of the metallic practice in a variety of complaints both upon the human

body and on horses, etc." But the progress of facts in Great Britain did

not stop here. Let those who rely upon the numbers of their

testimonials, as being alone sufficient to prove the soundness and

stability of a medical novelty, digest the following from the report of

the Perkinistic Committee. "The cases published [in Great Britain]

amounted, in March last, the date of Mr. Perkins's last publication, to

about five thousand. Supposing that not more than one cure in three

hundred which the Tractors have performed has been published, and the

proportion is probably much greater, it will be seen that the number, to

March last, will have exceeded one million five hundred thousand!"

Next in order after the appeal to what were called facts, came a series

of arguments, which have been so long bruised and battered round in the

cause of every doctrine or pretension, new, monstrous, or deliriously

impossible, that each of them is as odiously familiar to the scientific

scholar as the faces of so many old acquaintances, among the less

reputable classes, to the officers of police.

No doubt many of my hearers will recognize, in the following passages,

arguments they may have heard brought forward with triumphant confidence

in behalf of some doctrine not yet extinct. No doubt some may have

honestly thought they proved something; may have used them with the

purpose of convincing their friends, or of silencing the opponents of

their favorite doctrine, whatever that might be. But any train of

arguments which was contrived for Perkinism, which was just as applicable

to it as to any other new doctrine in the same branch of science, and

which was fully employed against its adversaries forty years since,

might, in common charity, be suffered to slumber in the grave of

Perkinism. Whether or not the following sentences, taken literally from

the work of Mr. Perkins, were the originals of some of the idle

propositions we hear bandied about from time to time, let those who

listen judge.

The following is the test assumed for the new practice: "If diseases are

really removed, as those persons who have practised extensively with the

Tractors declare, it should seem there would be but little doubt of their

being generally adopted; but if the numerous reports of their efficacy

which have been published are forgeries, or are unfounded, the practice

ought to be crushed." To this I merely add, it has been crushed.

The following sentence applies to that a priori judging and uncandid

class of individuals who buy their dinners without tasting all the food

there is in the market. "On all discoveries there are persons who,

without descending to any inquiry into the truth, pretend to know, as it

were by intuition, that newly asserted facts are founded in the grossest

errors. These were those who knew that Harvey's report of the

circulation of the blood was a preposterous and ridiculous suggestion,

and in latter later days there were others who knew that Franklin

deserved reproach for declaring that points were preferable to balls for

protecting buildings from lightning."

Again: "This unwarrantable mode of offering assertion for proof, so

unauthorized and even unprecedented except in the condemnation of a

Galileo, the persecution of a Copernicus, and a few other acts of

inquisitorial authority, in the times of ignorance and superstition,

affords but a lamentable instance of one of his remarks, that this is far

from being the Age of Reason."