RELIGION AND MEDICINE
_Now, when physiologists study the living brain of an ape, they have
no grounds for supposing that they are dealing with a dual
structure. The brain is not a tenement inhabited by a spirit or
soul. The spirit or soul is but a name for the manifestations of the
living brain. The leading neurologists of the world are agreed that
the same is true of the human brain. It was only when they abandoned
the dual conception--an inheritance from the dark ages of
medicine--that they began to understand the disorders of man's mind
and how to treat them._
_Modern medicine thus strikes at the very root of Christian
doctrine. For, if man is truly mortal, if death ends all, if the
human soul is but the manifestation of the living brain, as light
and heat are the manifestations of a glowing bar of steel, then
there can be no resurrection of the dead. Man has the seeds of
immortality in him, but the gift is for the race, not for the
individual._
SIR ARTHUR KEITH.
Medicine and religion have been closely associated from the most
pristine time. Primitive medicine had its origin in conjunction with the
most primitive of religious conceptions, namely, animism; an illusion
that made primitive man recognize in all things, and everywhere, spirits
such as his supposed spirit; a belief that the world swarms with
invisible spirits which are the cause of disease and death. And thus
primitive medicine is inseparable from primitive modes of religious
belief. All these phenomena which we consider today natural--the
rustling of leaves in a forest, the crash of thunder, the flash of
lightning, winds, clouds, storms, and earthquakes--were to primitive
man the outward and visible signs of angry gods, demons, and spirits.
Similar spirits caused disease and death, and these evil spirits that
produced disease and death were to be placated and cajoled by man, just
as he did his other deities, by magic, by burnt offerings, and
sacrifice.
The first holy man, the first priest, was the "shaman," and it was his
duty not only to placate and cajole the spirits that were thought to
control the physical well-being of the individual members of the tribe;
but it was his duty also, by the exercise of his magic, to alleviate and
cure illness by exorcism. The "shaman" was therefore the first medicine
man, the first witch doctor, the first physician. He relied chiefly upon
psychotherapy as does the modern witch doctor of Christian Science.
Medicine could not begin to be medicine until it was disassociated from
magic, religion, and theology. This struggle has been going on from the
time of the "shaman" to the present moment. Primitive medicine stands
midway between magic and religion, as an attempt to safeguard health by
control of so-called supernatural processes, and the warding off of evil
influences by appeal to the gods.
In all primitive societies, priest, magician, and medicine man were one
and the same; and medicine remained stationary until it could divorce
itself completely from religion. Primitive medicine, then, springs from
folklore, legends, credulity, and superstitions; the same forces that
give rise to all forms of religious beliefs.
Huxley has stated, "Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed," and
from the earliest of times those men who had a scientific trend of mind
realized this, however vaguely, and have attempted to divorce science
from religion. The science of medicine has been divorced from
superstition, but its twin brother religion lies as firmly bogged in
the mire of superstition today as it did in the days of the incantations
of the first theologist, the "shaman." And it is due to this close
association of religion and medicine that ideas of the greatest
scientific moment have been throttled at birth or veered into a blind
alley through some current theological lunacy. Medicine has advanced
through its disassociation with supernaturalism, while religion still
remains the last refuge of human savagery.
And so it had been that throughout those long, sterile, and barbarous
ages primitive man ascribed all diseases either to the wrath of God, or
the malice of an Evil Being. With the rise of the Greek philosophers,
the human mind for the first time began to throw off the fogs of
superstition. In Greece, 500 years before Christ, Hippocrates developed
scientific thought and laid the foundations of medical science upon
observation, experience, and reason. Under his guidance, medicine for
the first time was separated from religion. He relieved the gods of the
responsibility for disease and placed it squarely upon the shoulders of
man. His findings were passed on to the School of Alexandria, and there
medical science was further developed. At this stage of history all
advances stopped, and for the following reason:
With the coming of Christianity this science, as well as all others, was
stultified. A retrogression took place to the ideation of the most
primitive of men, namely, the conception of physical disease as the
result of the wrath of God, or the malice of Satan, or by a combination
of both. The Old Testament attributes such diseases as the leprosy of
Miriam and Uzziah, the boils of Job, the dysentery of Jehoram, the
withered hand of Jeroboam, the fatal illness of Asa, and many other
ills, to the wrath of God, or the malice of Satan. The New Testament
furnishes such examples as the woman "bound by Satan," the rebuke of
the fever, the casting out of the devil which was dumb, the healing of
persons whom "the devil oftimes casteth into the fire," and various
other episodes. Christian theology then evolved theories of miraculous
methods of cure, based upon modes of appeasing the divine anger, or of
thwarting satanic malice. The curing of disease by the casting out of
devils, by prayers, were the means of relief from sickness recognized
and commanded by the Bible. Thus Christianity perverted the beginning of
a science of medicine to a system of attempted cure of disease by fraud.
The treatment of disease descended to the cures found in holy and
healing wells, pools, and streams; in miracles and the efficacy that was
to be found in the relics of saints. Instead of reliance upon
observation, experience, and thought, attention was directed toward
supernatural agencies. In contrast to the Greek physicians who were
attempting to lay a scientific foundation, we have the Christian idea
prevailing that the water in which a single hair of a saint had been
dipped was to be used as a purgative; water in which St. Remy's ring had
been dipped cured lunacy; oil of a lamp burning before the tomb of St.
Gall cured tumors; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped
cured fevers; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher cured throat
disease; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Vitus, St.
Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their
names.
"In the year 1585, in the town of Embrun, France, the male generative
organ of St. Foutin was greatly revered. A jar was placed beneath his
emblem to catch the wine with which it was generally anointed; the wine
was left to sour, and then it was known as the 'Holy Vinegar.' The women
drank it in order to be blessed with children." (_Joseph Lewis,
"Voltaire."_)
Enormous revenues flowed into various monasteries and churches in all
parts of Europe from relics noted for their healing powers. The
ecclesiastics perceived that the physician would interfere with these
revenues and gifts of the shrines, and deemed it the will of God to
persecute and condemn physicians. St. Ambrose declared, "The precepts of
medicine are contrary to celestial science, watching and prayer." St.
Augustine declared, "All diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to
these demons, chiefly do they torment fresh baptized Christians, yea,
even the guiltless, new-born babe." Gregory of Nazianzus declared that
bodily pains are provoked by demons, and that medicines are useless, but
that they are often cured by the laying on of consecrated hands. St.
Niles and St. Gregory of Tours gave examples to show the sinfulness of
resorting to medicine instead of trusting to the intercession of saints.
Even as late as 1517, Pope Leo X, for a consideration, issued tickets
bearing a cross and the following inscription, "This cross measured
forty times makes the height of Christ in His humanity. He who kisses it
is preserved for seven days from falling sickness, apoplexy, and sudden
death."
The Council of Le Mons, in 1248, forbade monks to engage in surgery. At
the beginning of the twelfth century, the Council of Rheims forbade
monks to study medicine; and shortly after the middle of the twelfth
century, Pope Alexander III forbade monks to study or practice medicine.
In the thirteenth century, the Dominican Order forbade all ecclesiastics
to have any connection with medicine; and when we remember that the
policy of the Church had made it impossible for any learned man to enter
any other profession, the only resource left for a scholar was the
Church; so effectively did the Church kill all scientific endeavors.
The Reformation made no sudden change in the sacred theory of medicine.
The Church of England accepted the doctrine of "royal touch," and in a
prayer book of that period is found a service provided for that occasion
which states that "They (the kings), shall lay their hands on the sick,
and they shall recover."
Pestilences were taught to be punishments inflicted by God on society
for its shortcomings. Modern man has no conception of the ravages of
infections and epidemics that swept over Europe in the Middle Ages, and
to a lesser extent, until less than fifty years ago. Tacitus described
the plague in Rome thus: "Houses were filled with dead bodies, and the
streets with funerals.... Alike, slaves and plebeians were suddenly
taken off amidst lamentations of their wives and children, who, while
they mourned the dead, were themselves seized with the disease, and,
perishing, were burned on the same funeral pyre."
In 80 A.D. an epidemic swept Rome causing 10,000 deaths daily. During
the ages until the present century, wave after wave of pestilence swept
over Europe. The plague in 1384 A.D. took no less than 60 million lives.
It was estimated that twenty-five per cent. of the population of the
then known world perished in that one epidemic. Between 1601 and 1603,
127,000 died of the plague in Moscow. The epidemic of 1630 took 500,000
lives in the Venetian republic; Milan alone lost 88,000. In 1605, London
lost 69,000; 70,000 died in Vienna in 1679; the following year Prague
lost 83,000, all from this disease. The horrors of such visitations are
beyond description, and can scarcely be imagined. For a time, attempts
were made to collect and bury the dead. Wagons would pass through the
streets at night collecting the victims. The drivers, benumbed with
drink, frequently failed to ascertain whether death had occurred. Living
patients, desperately ill, were piled into the wagons with corpses
beneath, about, and on them. These gruesome loads were dumped pell-mell
into huge pits hastily dug for the purpose. In some instances, living
victims crawled out of these pits and survived to tell the tale. As the
epidemics progressed, attempts to dispose of the dead were abandoned.
Putrefying bodies were everywhere. Whole cities were left desolate, the
few survivors having fled.
It is not to be wondered at that such epidemics swept over Europe when
it was taught that these were the vengeance of God. How could it be
discovered that the real causes were the crowded conditions and bad
sanitation of the cities, the squalor, the misrule, and gross immorality
occasioned by the Holy Wars, when hordes of soldier-bandits plagued the
countryside? The devout continued to live in their squalor, to trust in
the Lord, and to die by the millions.
In all pestilences down to the present time, the Church authorities,
instead of aiding and devising sanitary measures, have preached the
necessity of immediate atonement for offenses against the Almighty. The
chief cause of the immense sacrifice of lives in these plagues was of
course the lack of hygienic precautions. But how could this be
discovered when, for ages, living in filth was regarded by great numbers
of holy men as an evidence of sanctity!
St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness.
St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he had never washed his
feet. St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for
fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never
washed any part of her body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to
a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing; St. Mary
of Egypt was eminent for filthiness; St. Simeon Stylites was in this
respect unspeakable--the least that can be said is that he lived in
ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors. For century after century
the idea prevailed that filthiness was akin to holiness.
Another stumblingblock hindering the beginnings of modern medicine and
surgery, was the theory regarding the unlawfulness of meddling with the
bodies of the dead. The dissection of the human body was prohibited
since the injury to the body would prevent its resurrection on the Last
Day. Andreas Vesalius was the pioneer in the movement for increased
knowledge of anatomy, and in 1543, when his work appeared, he was
condemned to death by the Inquisition as a magician. He escaped this
fate by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem only to be shipwrecked on
the Island of Zante when he attempted to return, and there died in
misery and destitution.
In the year 1853, cholera, after having committed serious ravages in
many parts of Europe, visited Scotland. It was evident to most thinking
people that, due to the extreme poverty and squalor of most of the
Scottish towns at that time, a great number of people would necessarily
succumb to this disease unless stringent sanitary measures were
instituted immediately. Instead, the Scotch clergy proposed to combat
this scourge with prayer and fasting, which would have lowered the
resistance to this disease by producing physical exhaustion and mental
depression. They proposed the ordering of a national fast day in which
the people were to sit the whole day without nourishment in their
churches and retire to their beds at night weeping and starved. Then it
was hoped that the Deity would be propitiated, and the plague stayed. To
give greater effect to this fast day, they called upon England to help
them, and the Presbytery of Edinburgh dispatched a letter to the
English minister, requesting information as to whether the queen would
appoint a national fast day. The English minister, to his credit,
advised the Presbytery of Edinburgh that it was better to cleanse than
to fast, and cleanse they must swiftly or else, in spite of all prayers
and fastings of a united but inactive nation, the cholera would
devastate them.
There are today, in this twentieth century, two pestilences which could
be wiped from the face of the earth. "There are two pestilences which
thus unfortunately involve moral conceptions. They are the plagues of
Syphilis and Gonorrhea. Against them medicine has developed methods of
control. They could be eradicated, but as yet civilization has not
advanced entirely beyond the ancient idea that disease is imposed by God
as a measure of vengeance for our sins. It still rejects protection,
when without it these plagues will continue to exact death and suffering
on a scale which probably exceeds that of any one of the medieval
plagues. Those who today look upon Syphilis and Gonorrhea as punishment
for sin have not progressed beyond the ideas of medieval Europe.
"Ignorance and bigotry are the twin allies of the plagues of Syphilis
and Gonorrhea. Medicine and civilization advance and regress together.
The conditions essential to advance are intellectual courage and a true
love for humanity. It is as true today as always in the past that
further advances or even the holding of what has already been won,
depend upon the extent to which intellectual courage and humanity
prevail against bigotry and obscurantism." (_Haggard, "Devils, Doctors,
and Drugs."_)
As a result of the lack of control of these plagues there are in the
world at the present moment thousands of children suffering from
congenital syphilis who would never have been born but for the desire of
Christians to see sinners punished. With regard to the spread of sex
knowledge, the clergy's attitude is dangerous to human welfare. The
artificial ignorance of sex subjects which orthodox Christians attempt
to enforce upon the young is extremely dangerous to mental and physical
health. The young are much less likely to act wisely when they are
ignorant, than when they are instructed.
These two venereal diseases are no more controlled under the moral
standards of today than they were two centuries ago, and yet medical
science offers for these diseases what it can offer for few others; both
a prevention and a cure. And it is due to the ignorance and the bigotry
of the theists that the spread of sex knowledge is hampered so that a
sane conception of sex and the prevention of venereal disease does not
eradicate these diseases. The theists have, therefore, without sense or
justice, founded their morality on disease; neglecting the fact that all
disease is immoral in the widest sense, since it is detrimental to the
happiness of man, and that no one disease is more so than another. The
morality of the body is health--not disease. So much for the actual
facts and reality. In passing to the theoretical, we again see the truth
of the statement that religion is the last resort of human savagery.
To postulate that a supreme being is omnipotent, omniscient, and
all-loving, and then to assume that he inflicts disease on his children
as punishment for sin is a sadistic mental aberration. In his
omniscience he full well knows beforehand what each of his children will
do. He foreordains their sins and then punishes his children for sins
that he wills them to commit. It is just as if a syphilitic father
should punish his syphilitic child because the child has that congenital
disease for which the father is responsible. If the theist insists that
his deity is all that he claims him to be, then it is only logical that
instead of man asking his god for forgiveness, what actually should be
is that God should ask the forgiveness of man for his bungling and
error.
Christianity has attempted from its inception to eradicate the sexual
instinct and in so doing has antagonized an instinct that is as
fundamental as that of self-preservation. All it has accomplished is a
distortion. The church, by claiming that it alone was privileged to
regulate sexual desires, has done one of two things to each of its
adherents. It has either made him a hypocrite or driven him insane. Much
of the insanity in this country could be overcome were religion and sex
permanently divorced; and an immediate amount of inestimable good could
be accomplished when one considers that fifteen per cent of all mental
disease is caused by syphilis.
Physical disease having been considered as a malicious trick of Satan,
it was but natural that the disease of the mind was also attributed to
satanic intervention. The conception that insanity was a brain disease,
and that gentleness and kindness were necessary for its treatment, was
throttled by Christian theology for fifteen centuries. Instead the
ecclesiastic burdened humanity with a belief that madness was largely
possession by the Devil. Hundreds of thousands of men and women were
inflicted with tortures both physical and mental. It was not until 1792
that the great French physician Penel, and William Tuke in England,
placed the treatment of mental disease on a rational and scientific
basis. And this, in spite of such ecclesiastical attacks as were seen in
the _Edinburgh Review_ of that period. These two men, Penel and Tuke,
were the first acknowledged victors in a struggle of science for
humanity which lasted nearly two thousand years.
The clergy resisted Jenner when he introduced vaccination, and yet the
application of this measure of defense against disease has probably
saved more lives than the total of all the lives lost in all wars. The
clergy maintained that "Smallpox is a visitation from God, and
originates in man, but Cowpox is produced by presumptious, impious men.
The former, heaven ordained, the latter is perhaps a daring and profane
violation of our holy order."
In the seventeenth century, the Jesuit missionaries in South America
learned from the natives the value of the so-called Peruvian Bark in the
treatment of ague. In 1638, quinine, derived from this bark, was
introduced into Europe as a cure for malaria. It was stigmatized as "an
invention of the Devil." The ecclesiastical opposition to this drug was
so strong that it was not introduced into England until 1653.
The medieval Christians saw in childbirth the result of a carnal sin to
be expiated in pain as defined in Genesis. Accordingly the treatment
given the child-bearing woman was vastly worse than the mere neglect
among the primitive peoples. Her sufferings were augmented by the fact
that she was no longer a primitive woman and child-bearing had become
more difficult. In these "Ages of Faith" which could be better called
the "Ages of Filth," nothing was done to overcome the enormous mortality
of the mother and child at birth. Attempts, however, were made to form
intra-uterine baptismal tubes by which the child, when it was locked by
some ill chance in its mother's womb, could be baptized and its soul
saved before the mother and child were left to die together. But nothing
was done to save their lives. No greater crimes were ever committed in
the name of civilization, religious faith, and smug ignorance than the
sacrifice of the lives of countless mothers and children in the first
fifteen centuries after Christ among civilized mankind.
Approaching our own time, we have the example of Dr. James Y. Simpson,
professor of obstetrics at the University of Glasgow about 1850, first
administering an anesthetic to alleviate the pain of childbirth. He was
bitterly opposed by the clergy on the ground that it was impious to
attempt to escape from the curse pronounced against all women in
Genesis. It was Dr. Simpson who, in defending this humanitarian
practice, asserted that opposition, particularly on theological grounds,
had been presented against every humane innovation in the past.
When Paul Ehrlich, in 1910, announced his discovery of salvarsan for the
treatment of syphilis, the clergy again were horror-struck that man
should interfere with a visitation of the Lord.
The resistance to the spread of information concerning contraception,
commonly known as birth control, is an example of the Church's dominance
of government today; and yet this information is as vital to the welfare
of humanity as is the control of cancer.
In 1926, our newspapers carried conspicuous headlines, "Episcopal Church
Joins Catholic to Gag Birth Control"; four years later, 320 bishops of
the Episcopal Church met in London, and by a majority of 3 to 1 voted in
favor of contraception when "there is morally sound reason for avoiding
complete abstinence." The bishops had by this time become well aware of
the insistence of secular opinion towards this movement, and having done
their best to prevent this progressive movement for the past one hundred
years, they finally accepted defeat, proving once again that religion
has never accepted anything that science has shown to be a fact or of
benefit to humanity until it was compelled to do so to save its face.
The infallible Church, however, still persists in its opposition and in
the Encyclical of Pope Pius XI, published in January, 1931, it is said,
"The conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of
children. Those who, in exercising it, deliberately frustrate its
natural power, and purpose, are against nature and commit a deed which
is shameful and intrinsically vicious." So speaks the infallible Pope,
but the great majority of physicians hold that there are few things more
perilous to mental health, intellectual efficiency, moral equanimity,
and physical well-being than prolonged denial of the sex urge for the
average, normal human being. Every physician can furnish numerous case
histories to substantiate the statement that continual sexual abstinence
is prejudicial to the health and happiness of the man and woman, and is
the causation of hundreds of semiderelicts and psychoneurotics.
Furthermore, the rising tide of insanity in this country would be
stemmed were religion and sex permanently divorced.
Today the modern clergy still endeavor to explain natural phenomena by
supernatural theories, and while they do not assign preternatural powers
to witches and demons, they yet persist in attempting to pervert facts
of science, and delude themselves with faith in some supernatural force.
The clergy state that the physician cures disease through the mediation
of God, the physician merely playing the part of the agent of God,
through whom the real cure is effected. Is anything more ridiculous and
at the same time more contradictory, than to suppose that an
all-powerful god should have to appoint an intermediary to perform his
work? And if it is only by God's will and aid that a cure takes place,
then it follows that God must be willing for the individual to be cured;
why in the name of reason, did He not prevent the initial step, the
contracting of the disease? What a mass of suffering, of mental anguish
might thus have been spared us! Thus, this omnipotent being either did
not desire to spare us this misery and suffering, in which case he must
surely be a monster incarnate; or, on the other hand, he is powerless
to halt it, and thus cannot be omnipotent.
While the clergy maintain that a cure is only effected by God's will,
the physician knows otherwise. The physician accomplishes his cures
alone, and definitely cures and saves the lives of human beings by his
own skill, intelligence, and application of methods which have been
developed by the exercise of secular knowledge, not theological
nonsense. When man is so unfortunate as to contract an infection of the
appendix, and that inflammation succeeds to pus-formation so that this
diseased and non-essential part of the human anatomy is on the point of
rupturing and causing a fatal peritonitis, it is not by God's will and
intervention that a cure is effected, but by the intervention of the
surgeon who removes the diseased part. If man depended upon God's will
to save him, as he did in the past, the appendix would rupture,
peritonitis would set in, and despite prayers and sacrificial offerings,
the Deity would exact his life.
When an innocent infant, in the first few weeks of life, develops an
intussusception (an infolding of the bowel which causes an acute
obstruction), the prayers and supplication of the parents avail not a
particle; if the surgeon did not save the infant's life by operating and
removing the obstruction, the benevolent being would allow the child to
die.
The adult who develops a hernia, which is due to a defect in the
construction of the human body, which is assigned to an omniscient being
who still persists in forming bodies that are defective, and this hernia
becomes strangulated (twisted), the deity sits calmly by in omnipotent
inaction, while the prompt interference of the surgeon saves the
individual's life.
When the surgeon observes a superficial cancerous growth, or an internal
growth which can be removed in its entirety, does he trust to the Lord
to halt this pernicious development? No, the surgeon does not consult
God, but resorts to his own knowledge and skill to save a human life.
The diphtheritic child who is strangling to death with a diphtheritic
membrane in its throat is not permitted by the physician to be left to
the benevolent being's will, nor to the prayers of the parents. The
physician's prayer is the diphtheria antitoxin, which in his hands is
the life-saving device.
When the physician administers quinine for malaria, or salvarsan for
syphilis, he effects cures for these diseases by using agents to which
the clergy strenuously objected when they were first introduced. And
when the ecclesiastic attributes to the Deity whatever laws man has been
able to evolve out of his own experience and wisdom, he establishes,
fallaciously, the corollary that if God is responsible for the cures, He
is also responsible for the non-cures. Then what of the countless number
that died of disease before man evolved those cures, and what of the
wholesale murder of His children in the past ages?
Do certain diseases still baffle the physician? Surely it is less often
than the pestilences of old which baffled sacrifice and prayer. The
cruelest laws ever devised by man have more equity and benevolence in
them than the appalling and irrational jurisprudence of the Deity.
Do certain diseases as yet remain to plague man? Then it is only because
religion has for the past 2000 years been the greatest obstacle in the
development of cures for these diseases. Every single individual, in the
past 2000 years, who has succumbed to a disease for which medical
science has no cure, has died directly at the hands of religion. The
obstruction which religion has placed on the development of medical
science has laid at its feet the responsibility for the deaths of
countless millions throughout the ages.
The religionist replies that man's mind cannot fathom the will of God.
Which is an irrational statement for it is a well established fact, and
indeed, a criterion of insanity, that when the deranged are confronted
with facts which are conclusive and with creations of the imagination,
they cannot differentiate fact from fancy, and maintain, instead, that
fancy is the real fact. The religionists are guilty of the same breach
of reason. They suffer with what may be termed, "dementia religiosa."
The remarkable feature of the latter disease is its wide prevalence.
Dr. Haggard in his book, "Devils, Drugs, and Doctors," declares, "The
early and Medieval Christians accepted the doctrine of the power of
demons in the lives of men; they saw this power particularly in the
demoniac production of diseases. They believed in miracles and
especially in the miraculous healing of diseases. The demonological
belief of the Christians was inherited from the doctrine of the Jews,
who were believers in demons and the 'possession by the devil.' Jesus
himself cured by casting out of devils. Following his example,
Christians everywhere became exorcists. Jewish demonology was continued
among Christian converts, and the belief in supernatural interpositions
in human affairs was widely accepted. _Nothing has retarded the growth
of scientific medicine during the past 2000 years so much as the iron
grip of theology in maintaining practices based on belief in this
supernatural origin of disease._" The fabled curing of disease by
casting out devils, and the New Testament recordings of Jesus's
conviction that disease was caused by evil spirits, have had an
inestimable detrimental result on the development of medical science.
The fact that Jesus believed in the demoniacal production of diseases
and cured them by exorcism was deemed so important by the author of the
Gospel according to Mark that he has actually recorded the Aramaic words
Jesus was reported to have used in addressing his patients. In Mark
V:41, Jesus is reported to have given the command "Talitha cumi" to a
little Jewish girl whom her parents believed dead. In Mark VII:34, Jesus
is reported as uttering the magical word "Ephphatha," as he "put his
fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue" in behalf of
"one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech."
An excellent and timely illustration of what occurs when secular
knowledge has not yet replaced ecclesiastical ignorance and bigotry,
particularly in the field of medicine, is furnished by an article from
one of Philadelphia's leading newspapers, _The Evening Bulletin_, of
December 23, 1932. We quote it verbatim:
"Faith Healers Arrested; Two Charged with Choking to Death 5-Year-Old
Girl, Linden, Texas, Dec. 23, 1932. Despite a purported confession,
officers to-day continued an investigation of the death of a
five-year-old girl, allegedly at the hands of two itinerant preachers
who sought to 'drive out the devil' they believed responsible for her
partial paralysis. Murder charges were filed against Paul Oaks and his
brother, Coy Oaks, and precautions taken to prevent possible mob
vengeance. Sheriff Nat Curtright said the accused men admitted they had
choked the child to death in an attempt to cure her. Officers said the
preachers had been conducting meetings in rural communities and had
preached on the subject of faith healing. George Wilson, a neighbor,
officers said, found the two men kneeling over the prostrate form of the
child. They ordered him to leave, declaring he was a 'devil.' He said
the child's father was in the room."
Medieval exorcism still practised in one of the leading nations of the
world! In America, which prides itself on its scientific advances,
towards whom the rest of the world looks for guidance in scientific
discoveries and practices!
To have retarded the growth of medicine for the past 2000 years! Think
of the strides made in medicine in the past hundred years, and dwell on
the comfort humanity derives from it, in contrast to the filth, misery,
and pestilences of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
Would so much progress have been possible had man still persisted in the
belief that disease was due to demoniac intervention, and that the sum
total of all knowledge humanly possible was contained in the Bible?
It is no longer necessary for children to choke to death with
diphtheria. Yellow fever, and small pox in civilized countries are, or
could be, wiped from the face of the earth. Malaria is controlled;
tuberculosis will shortly be a rarity; typhoid fever and cholera have
been eradicated wherever there is sanitation; erysipelas can be
controlled; hydrophobia prevented; childbirth fever has lost its
tremendous mortality; tetanus can be checked; syphilis and gonorrhea can
be controlled; diabetes and pernicious anemia can be controlled; surgery
is reclaiming vast multitudes and restoring to useful and happy lives
thousands who would have hitherto died. So much has been done; but it is
especially true that there is as much, at least, yet to be done. But all
this has been achieved so recently. What might not have been won had not
the minds of men been polluted from infancy, warped by the first
professional holy men, the religionists, the priests? Had the idea of a
supernatural force been allowed to die in the Dark Ages, as it surely
would have, as man's mind expanded and developed, humanity would today
find itself more advanced on the road to progress. But as it was, the
myth of religion was foisted on the superstitious brain, and man
resigned himself to his fate, and lived in such a manner as to please
this hypothetical supernatural being. The inevitable result was the
abject misery, both material and spiritual, of Europe during the period
when the Church was in absolute control.
If this myth and mystification had died with the dead ages, as it should
have done, what a fitter place to live in this world would be today!
Consider the needless misery and the agony of those who died of the
various plagues; and think of the advanced stage of medicine of
Alexandria, three hundred years before the Christian era, where the
physicians were welcomed to the famous library by the emperors. The
state gave them their livelihood and their duties were to advance
medicine by study and research. Anatomy was studied and dissection was
allowed. With the coming of Christianity, the remnants of this library
were destroyed, and with them went all progress in that field. If such
had been the enlightened state in Egypt three hundred years before
Christianity appeared, then why had not science made the same progress
then as it does now? Because, to the knowledge stored in the library at
Alexandria had not been added a progression of learning, a continued
process of research; if this had not been halted by Christianity, how
much vaster would our achievements be today?
It was not necessary for all of those millions to have been the victims
of plagues, of inquisitions, of witchcraft burnings, of religious
persecutions and wars. The sorrow and pain brought to untold numbers
throughout the centuries could have been prevented; and would have been
if man had been interested in the welfare of his fellowmen instead of
the glorification of an almighty being. Future generations may well
declare religion to have been the curse of humanity. The Church had
cursed the human intellect by cursing the doubts which are the
necessary consequence of its exercise. She had cursed even the moral
faculty by asserting the guilt of honest error.
Medicine which has for its sole objects the alleviation of man's
sufferings, to cure them when possible, to relieve more often the pains
and ills which make this life a living hell, what might it not have
accomplished ages ago had religion not interfered with its progress?
Whatever cures are known, and preventions that are practiced now, could
have been common knowledge centuries ago. And what of the multitudes
that perished who might have been saved, and what of the misery which
might have been prevented, had not this curse fallen upon man?
Since 1906, there have been only five deaths from yellow fever in the
United States. Outbreaks of cholera and plague are unknown. In former
years, puerperal fever took the lives of from five to fifty of each one
hundred parturient mothers. At present, an average of one out of 1250
mothers dies of this infection following childbirth. Deaths from many
diseases are less than one-tenth of their former number. These include
wound infections, diphtheria, scarlet fever, malaria, dysentery,
typhoid, small pox, and many dietary and metabolic diseases. Since 1880,
the medical sciences have accomplished a total net saving of human life
from all diseases which, if equally distributed among the population,
would add sixteen years to the life span of each person. In 1880, the
average duration of human life, that is, the average age at which death
occurred, was 41.78 years. In 1925, the average duration of life was
58.29 years. In other words, those born at this time live on the average
16.5 years longer than those born at any time prior to 1880. In a
population of 120,000,000 this would mean a total of 1,920,000,000
additional years of life. Such a figure is as difficult to conceive of
as are the interstellar spaces. This is one contribution, numerically
expressed, which medical science and its offspring, preventive medicine,
have made to humanity in the short space of fifty years.
Indeed if, as the religionists believe, there is a god, he could not
have punished his subjects more than by instilling in them the "dementia
religiosa." If the Church had not taught that the sum total of all
knowledge was contained in the Bible, and prohibited, on pain of death
and confiscation of property, the promulgation of any discoveries, men
would have reasoned as they are accustomed to at the present day, and we
would not be 2000 years behind in all branches of learning.
But there has never been an advance in science of widespread importance,
which in some manner endangered some mouldy religious concept, that the
Church has not bitterly opposed; an advance which in time has proven of
inestimable good for all mankind. (A glance at the history of human
progress will reveal scores of such instances.) The opposition to
medicine, as previously noted, is only one of many examples which might
have been chosen. In proportion, as the grasp of theology upon education
tightened, medicine declined, and in proportion, as the grip relaxed,
medicine developed.