I pass, now, to fields of more immediate importance to us--to anatomy
and medicine.
It might be supposed that the votaries of sciences like these would be
suffered to escape attack; unfortunately, they have had to stand in the
thickest of the battle.
The Church, even in its earliest centuries, seems to have developed
a distrust of them. Tertullian, in his "Treatise upon the Soul,"
stigmatizes the surgeon Herophilus as a "butcher," and evidently on
account of his skill in his profession rather than on account of his
want of it. St. Augustine, in his great treatise on the City of God,
which remains to this day one of the treasures of the Church, speaks
with some bitterness of "medical men who are called anatomists," and
says that "with a cruel zeal for science they have dissected the bodies
of the dead, and sometimes of sick persons, who have died under their
knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body
to learn the nature of disease and its exact seat, and how it might be
cured!"[107]
But it was not until the mixture of theology and science had begun
to ferment, in the thirteenth century, and the ecclesiastical power
had been aroused in behalf of this sacred mixture, that the feeling
against medical science broke into open war. About the beginning of
that century Pope Innocent III. forbade surgical operations by priests,
deacons, or subdeacons. Pope Honorius went still further, and forbade
medicine to be practised by archdeacons, priests, or deacons; in
1243 the Dominican authorities banished books on medicine from their
monasteries; somewhat later, Pope Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection
as sacrilege.[108]
Toward the close of that great religious century came a battle which
serves to show the spirit of the time.
The great physician and chemist of the day was Arnold de Villa Nova.
Although he has been overrated by some modern historians as a votary
of the experimental method, and under-rated by others as a votary of
alchemy, the sober judgment of the most thoughtful has acknowledged him
as one of the most useful forerunners of modern masters in medical and
chemical science.
The missile usual in such cases was hurled at him. He was charged with
sorcery and dealings with the devil. The Archbishop of Tarragona first
excommunicated him and drove him from Spain; next he was driven from
Paris, and took refuge at Montpellier; thence, too, he was driven,
finally, every place in France was closed against him, and he became an
outcast.[109]
Such seemed the fate of men in that field who gained even a glimmer of
new scientific truth. Even men like Cardan, and Paracelsus, and Porta,
who yielded much to popular superstitions, were at once set upon if
they ventured upon any other than the path which the Church thought
sound--the insufficient path of Aristotelian investigation.
We have seen that the weapons used against the astronomers were
mainly the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." We have also seen that
the missiles used against the chemists and physicians were the
epithets "sorcerer" and "leaguer with the devil," and we have picked
up on various battle-fields another effective weapon, the epithet
"Mohammedan."
On the heads of the anatomists and physicians were concentrated _all_
these missiles. The charge of atheism ripened into a proverb: "_Ubi
sunt tres medici, ibi sunt duo athei_." Magic seemed so common a
charge that many of the physicians seemed to believe it themselves.
Mohammedanism and Averroism became almost synonymous with medicine, and
Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at
Christ."[110]
Not to weary you with the details of earlier struggles, I will select
a great benefactor of mankind and champion of scientific truth at
the period of the revival of learning and the Reformation--Andreas
Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle
waged by this man is one of the glories of our race.
The old methods were soon exhausted by his early fervor, and he sought
to advance science by truly scientific means--by patient investigation
and by careful recording of results.
From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for
real knowledge he braved the most terrible dangers. Before his time
the dissection of the human subject was thought akin to sacrilege.
Occasionally an anatomist, like Mundinus, had given some little display
with such a subject; but, for the purposes of _investigation_, such
dissection was forbidden.[111] As we have already seen, even such men
in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in
abhorrence, and Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection as sacrilege.
Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear.
Braving ecclesiastical censure and popular fury, he studied his science
by the only method that could give useful results. No peril daunted
him. To secure the material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets
and charnel-houses; in this search he risked alike the fires of the
Inquisition and the virus of the plague. First of all men he began to
place the science of human anatomy on its solid, modern foundations--on
careful examination and observation of the human body. This was his
first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by one considered even
greater.
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for
Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and
gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent but
mistaken men devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to
Aristotle; just as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted
on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas: so, in the time of Vesalius,
such men made every effort to link Christianity to Galen.
The cry has been the same in all ages; it is the same which we hear in
this age for curbing scientific studies--the cry for what is called
"sound learning." Whether standing for Aristotle against Bacon,
or Aquinas against Erasmus, or Galen against Vesalius, or making
mechanical Greek verses at Eton instead of studying the handiwork of
the Almighty, or reading Euripides with translations instead of Lessing
and Goethe in the original, the cry always is for "sound learning." The
idea always is that these studies are _safe_.
At twenty-eight years of age Vesalius gave to the world his great
work on human anatomy. With it ended the old and began the new. Its
researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its
illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art.
To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw
must come, Vesalius prefaced the work by a dedication to the Emperor
Charles V. In this dedicatory preface he argues for his method, and
against the parrot repetitions of the mediæval text-books; he also
condemns the wretched anatomical preparations and specimens made by
physicians who utterly refused to advance beyond the ancient master.
The parrot-like repeaters of Galen gave battle at once. After the
manner of their time, their first missiles were epithets; and, the
almost infinite magazine of these having been exhausted, they began to
use sharper weapons--weapons theologic.
At first the theologic weapons failed. A conference of divines having
been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege,
gave a decision in the negative. The reason is simple: Charles V. had
made Vesalius his physician, and could not spare him. But, on the
accession of Philip II. of Spain, the whole scene changed. That most
bitter of bigots must of course detest the great innovator.
A new weapon was now forged. Vesalius was charged with dissecting
living men,[112] and, either from direct persecution, as the great
majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent
apologists for Philip II. allow, Vesalius became a wanderer. On a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked,
and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to this world.
And yet not lost. In this century he again stands on earth; the painter
Hamann has again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil, we
look once more into Vesalius's cell. Its windows and doors, bolted
and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without;
the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit
in which he labors; the corpse of the plague-stricken, over which he
bends, ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays
from the canvas which strengthen us for the good fight in this age.[113]
He was hunted to death by men who conscientiously supposed he was
injuring religion. His poor, blind foes destroyed one of religion's
greatest apostles. What was his influence on religion? He substituted
for repetition, by rote, of worn-out theories of dead men,
conscientious and reverent searching into the works of the living God;
he substituted for representations of the human structure--pitiful and
unreal--truthful representations, revealing the Creator's power and
goodness in every line.[114]
I hasten now to the most singular struggle and victory of medical
science between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Early in the last century, Boyer presented Inoculation as a preventive
of small-pox, in France; thoughtful physicians in England, led by Lady
Montagu and Maitland, followed his example.
Theology took fright at once on both sides of the Channel. The French
theologians of the Sorbonne solemnly condemned the practice. English
theologians were most loudly represented by the Rev. Edward Massy, who,
in 1722, preached a sermon in which he declared that Job's distemper
was probably confluent small-pox, and that he had been doubtless
inoculated by the devil; that diseases are sent by Providence for the
punishment of sin, and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is
"a diabolical operation." This sermon was entitled "The Dangerous and
Sinful Practice of Inoculation." Not less absurd was the sermon of the
Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled "Inoculation an Indefensible Practice."
Thirty years later the struggle was still going on. It is a pleasure to
note one great churchman, Maddox, Bishop of Worcester, giving battle
on the side of right reason; but as late as 1753 we have the Rector
of Canterbury denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the primatial
city, and many of his brethren following his example. Among the most
common weapons hurled by churchmen at the supporters of inoculation,
during all this long war, were charges of sorcery and atheism.[115]
Nor did Jenner's blessed discovery of vaccination escape opposition
on similar grounds. In 1798 an anti-vaccine society was formed by
clergymen and physicians, calling on the people of England to suppress
vaccination as "bidding defiance to Heaven itself--even to the will of
God," and declaring that "the law of God prohibits the practice." In
1803 the Rev. Dr. Ramsden thundered against it in a sermon before the
University of Cambridge, mingling texts of Scripture with calumnies
against Jenner; but Plumptre in England, Waterhouse in America, and a
host of other good men and true, press forward to Jenner's side, and at
last science, humanity, and right reason, gain the victory.[116]
But I pass to one typical conflict in our days. In 1847 James Young
Simpson, a Scotch physician of eminence, advocated the use of
anæsthetics in obstetrical cases.
Immediately a storm arose. From pulpit after pulpit such a use of
chloroform was denounced as impious. It was declared contrary to Holy
Writ, and texts were cited abundantly. The ordinary declaration was,
that to use chloroform was "to avoid one part of the primeval curse on
woman."[117]
Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing which
he brought into use; but the battle seemed about to be lost, when he
seized a new weapon. "My opponents forget," said he, "the twenty-first
verse of the second chapter of Genesis. That is the record of the
first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the
Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from Adam's side for the
creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam."
This was a stunning blow; but it did not entirely kill the opposition.
They had strength left to maintain that "the deep sleep of Adam took
place before the introduction of pain into the world--in the state of
innocence."[118] But now a new champion intervened--Thomas Chalmers.
With a few pungent arguments he scattered the enemy forever, and the
greatest battle of science against suffering was won.[119]
But was not the victory won also for religion? Go to yonder monument,
in Boston, to one of the discoverers of anæsthesia. Read this
inscription from our sacred volume: "This also cometh from the Lord of
hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working."