صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

tion, is open to the utterances of any seeking the improvement of mankind, on what many consider an objectionable feature in the Christian Brothers' method: we mean the prominence given to the religious instruction of their students. The experience of every day shows that instruction without religious training or education is a danger, rather than a blessing, to the members of a state or country. We have elsewhere quoted the words of Jules Simon on the subject. He will not be accused of partiality to religious views.

[ocr errors]

Shall we then say that our children, our boys and girls, our young men and young women, shall not be instructed? Far from us be such a conclusion. But we will say: Let us have secular instruction, but not secular instruction alone. Let the tree of knowledge have for its roots the principles of religious truth. Thus we shall see on all sides the leaves of good example, and the still more acceptable fruit of good works. Let religion and science go hand in hand. What God has united let no man put asunder. Science is an emanation from the divinity. Let it then be subservient to, but accompanied by, its mistress-religion. Thus shall the world go on progressing, and thus shall we see carried into practical effect the result of the perfected system of the Christian Brothers, the disciples and followers of the ABBE DE LA SALLE.

66

1873.] SUPPLEMENT TO THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA," ETC. 305

ART. V.-1. Commentaries, Critical, Philological and Geographical, in Sundry Newspapers. By the learned PROVOST and FACULTY of the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: December, January and February, 1873.

2. A "So-Called Latin Letter," stamped with the Cabalistic or Hieroglyphic initials N. Q. R., and long supposed to be the production of an ancient Brahmin, but discovered recently by a learned Graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, after much profound research, to be the work of a spiteful and libellous Savage of the Bog species. New York: 1871.

3. An Essay on the Art of Growing Rich by DEGREES, as practised in the middle of the Nineteenth Century among the people called Quakers, with some Digressions on Natural History, Equipments, Gunnery, Materia Medica, etc., etc. Manhattan: MDCCCLXXIII.

WE trust it is superfluous for us to say that it is in no boastful spirit we ask our readers of the Keystone State, especially those of the good Quaker City, whether our peculiar mode of treatment has not proved remarkably efficacious in the case of their most venerable patient. That it has made the old lady feel sadly uncomfortable for a month or more, is very true. It is also true that this is a much longer period of suffering than we had calculated upon. We had hoped that the effects of the cantharides, lancet, ipecacuanha, aloes, etc., would have all passed off in one week at farthest.

But be it remembered, in justice to us, that our venerable patient neither allowed us to feel her pulse, nor see her tongue. Since she thus concealed from us some of her worst symptoms, we think we may be excused for having taken it for granted that her case was not so serious as unhappily it has proved to be. Nothing is better understood among pathologists than that patients who are much debilitated from

chronic disease cannot bear much of what some practitioners still call the antiphlogistic treatment. If from an imperfect diagnosis this treatment is carried to excess, there is danger that it will kill the patient; at best, in proportion as the constitution is weak, it is slow in recovering from the commotion produced in the system by such agencies as cathartics, scarifications, emetics, etc. This will account for the unusually protracted writhings of our illustrious Pennsylvania patientwrithings which, we trust we need hardly say, moved the bowels of compassion of none to a deeper pitch of tenderness than they did ours.

As for what the friends of the patients, or the patients themselves, say of the physician when alarming symptoms supervene as results of a certain mode of treatment, no sensible practitioner who understands his profession would be offended at it, or, indeed, take any notice of it. Hippocrates himself has been abused in such circumstances; especially in those in which the patient was rich, " venerable," and of the feminine gender! If, only to please a patient of this character, her friends and retainers are apt to wax indignant, and even call hard names; still more readily will those do so who claim to understand and practise the healing art themselves. Accordingly, who has not heard such comments as the following? "It was that last dose that did the mischief." "Why, he's no doctor-he's only a quack." "The fellow doesn't know how to write his own prescription-he has to employ somebody to write it for him!" "Oh, that's his own; but don't you see what horrible Latin?" "A blister, indeed, and to so delicate a part!" "But only think of scarifying the back of a lady np wards of a hundred years old!" "What a savage!" "Poor, dear grandmamma! what an outrage! If anything was the matter with the venerable lady, all she needed was a dose of salts and a dish of gruel, with perhaps some paregoric." "Grandmamma herself is not to blame for what she has suffered, for she has always had a laudable horror of those foreign ignoramuses." "That's so; she would call in none, if she were dying, but natives of our own county: at least they should belong to the State of Pennsylvannia." "Well, in New

York, too, there are some respectable physicians; but do you know this fellow has been exposed many a time for malpractice? Scarcely two years have elapsed since, in his ignorance and stupidity, he nearly caused the death of several eminent and worthy citizens. It is well known, for instance, that Messrs. Sweeny, Tweed, and Hall, have never been the same since he forced his cursed drugs down their throats. They were then, as so many of ourselves are to be, 'leaders and guides of their fellow-men;' but what are they now?" "Ay, and the fellow was brought up for his malpractice on them, and only that the law is so badly administered in New York, where would he have been to-day for his savage treatment of those once powerful but now sadly broken-down, consumptive citizens?"

Need we say that it is only the real quacks who ever take notice of comments like these, while the febrile condition which gives rise to them continues to exist? The physician,

properly so called, calmly awaits the issue. He gives his medicines full time to operate. Even then, if he makes any reply, it is in no anger; and if he has any emotion of sorrow, it is for those from whom he had expected better sense and more decency.

And this has been precisely our feeling during the storm brought on our devoted head by the few pages we devoted in our last number to the University of Pennsylvania. At least a score of articles-all cut from Philadelphia papers-have been enclosed to us, each bespattering us with more or less abuse. It seems that some papers, not content with assailing us once or twice, for our grievous turpitude in this matter, have done so several times, presenting to their readers, day after day, "more last words "-the last of all being evidently intended in each case to be the most severe on us. Happening to visit Philadelphia, in the midst of the storm, we enter one of the street cars. We hear a newsboy lustily crying out with other things, "Great attack on the National Quarterly." We purchase a copy and read, "The Savage Quarterly and our Venerable University," etc.; in another we read, "Dr. Sears no Latinist;" in another, "Our venerable University vindi

VOL. XXVI.-NO. LII.

7

cated from the malicious attack of savage Sears;"* in another, "Our learned and able Provost proved to be the right man inthe right place, in spite of foreign libellers," etc. A friend remarks, with a good-natured smile, while significantly running his eye over an "Ulster" which nearly enveloped our whole person from head to toe, completely fortifying us against even the lowest depth of the mercury: "It must be confessed you look

*It is some consolation that even in our condition of savagery we shall have tolerably respectable company. When Ovid was in exile among the Scythians, he exclaimed, just as we might have exclaimed when addressing the University of Pennsylvannia in Latin: "I am a barbarian here, because I am not understood by any."

"Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli.”—Trist. v. 8, 8.

Byron, in his "Lament of Tasso," makes the author of Gerusalemme Liberata mourn over

"The mind's canker in its savage mood."

and again, further on

"And I can banquet like a beast of prey,

Sullen and lonely, crouching in the cave

Which is my lair, and-it may be-my grave."

Pope was generally regarded as a tolerably clever writer and passable scholar until he wrote his “ Dunciad ;” but the subjects of that famous poem discovered then immediately, that, far from having either talent or learning, he was a stupid, ignorant fellow! Thus we read: "He hath undertaken to translate Homer from the Greek, of which he knows not one word, into English, of which he understands as little." (Dennis, Rem. on Homer, p. 91.) "Mr. Pope is an open and mortal enemy to his country and to the commonwealth of learning."(ib.)

Dryden, also, was admitted to possess some talent and intelligence until he commenced to expose the shams of the day. But all at once, then, he became a "savage." Accordingly, we read as follows: "In the poem called Absalom and Achitophel, are notoriously traduced the King, the Queen, the Lords, and Gentlemen, not only their honorab'e persons exposed, but the whole nation and its representatives, notoriously libelled. It is scandalum magnatum, yea, of Majesty itself." (Whip and Key, 4to, printed for R. Janeway, 1662, Pref.) As to his learning, we read thus: "Mr. Dryden was once, I have heard, at Westminster School. Dr. Busby would have whipped him for so childish a paraphrase. Nay, the meanest pedant in England would whip a lubber of twelve for construing so absurdly." (Milbourn on Dryden's Virgil, 8vo, 1691, p. 2, et seq.) "A camel will take upon him no more burden than is sufficient for his strength, but there is another beast that crouches under all." (Whip and Key, Pref.)

« السابقةمتابعة »