continued long after the close of the Middle Ages, and has not entirely ceased to-day." These cures have their prototypes in the Old and New Testament, and the priests argued convincingly, "If the Almighty saw fit to raise the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha, why should he not restore to life the patient who touches at Cologne the bones of the Wise Men of the East who followed the star of Nativity? If Naaman was cured by dipping himself in the waters of the Jordan, and so many others by going down into the Pool of Siloam, why should not men still be cured by bathing in pools which men equally holy with Elisha have consecrated? If one sick man was restored by touching the garments of St. Paul, why should not another sick man be restored by touching the seamless coat of Christ at Treves, or the winding sheet of Christ at Besançon ? And out of all these inquiries came inevitably that question whose logical answer was especially injurious to the development of medical science: Why should men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery, when relics, pilgrimages and sacred observances, according to one overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and are curing hosts of sick folk in all parts of Europe?'' 2

Another factor which told against the development of medical science was the strong Judophobia prevalent in the Middle Ages and even later. The Jews were beyond a doubt the best physicians; they studied medicine together with the Arabians in the Dark Ages, brought it into Europe, and were, at this time, the recognized leaders in the profession, but to allow men "who openly rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost'' to heal them would be to insult Providence. "Preaching friars denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in State and Church, while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed them.3 "Gregory of Tours tells us of an arch-deacon who, having been partially cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin sought further aid from a Jewish physician, with the result that neither the saint nor the Jew could help him afterward. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus III, especially forbade Christians to employ them. The Trullanean Council in the eighth century, the Councils of Beziers and Alby in the thirteenth; the Councils of Avignon and Salamanca in the fourteenth; the Synod of Bramberg

1Ibid., p. 42.

2Ibid., p. 43.

3Ibid., p. 44.

and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth; the Council of Avignon in the sixteenth, with many others expressly forbade the faithful to call Jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as John Greiler and as John Herolt thundered from the pulpit against them and all who consulted them. As late as the middle of the seventeenth century, when the City Council of Hall, in Wurtenberg gave some privileges to a Jewish physician on account of his admirable experience and skill, "the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor aided by the devil.' Still in their extremity, bishops, cardinals, kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated race.

In this field, as in Symbolism and Bibliolatry, the Reformation, especially in its earlier days, effected no marked improvement. Luther himself ascribed his diseases to devils' spells," declared that "Satan produces maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death," that "he poisons the air,'' and that "no malady comes from God."2 Protestant ministers in general following Catholic priests cited numerous passages in the Gospels in support of this sacred theory. Chief among these passages is the fifth chapter of St. James: Is any among you sick? let him call for the elders of the Church; and let them pray over him, annointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.

66

113

The Waldeneses, Albigenses and Moravians of the Middle Ages strongly believed in the beneficent effects of prayer, and among the Huguenots we find miraculous gifts of healing and spiritual prophesy. Likewise among the Friends' or Quakers of England these gifts obtained, and their leader, Geo. Fox, is said to have wrought many cures. In his journal we read that he wrought many miracles by the power of God; that he made the lame whole and restored the diseased, that he spoke to a sick man in Maryland and raised him up by the Lord's power.

Wesley firmly believed in Divine intervention in human. affairs, and his journals teem with ghost-stories, second-sight phenomena, and miracles that had taken place among his disciples.1

1 Ibid., p. 44.

2 Ibid., p. 45.

See Feilding: Faith-Healing and Christian Science,' p. 29. 'See Feilding: loc. cit., p. 31.

Even in our own day many Catholics in France and Germany make pilgrimages to certain famous shrines such as the Pyrenean Lourdes, the Grottoes of Brive, Rocanadour, Le Puy, Treves, and Kevalaer in the hope of being cured.1

The most popular of all theological cures was the royal touch for diseases, particularly epilepsy and scrofula, the latter being known as the king's evil.

"This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and came down from reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint to Protestant debauchers upon the English throne, with ever increasing miraculous efficacy. "'2

There is an over-abundance of supposed evidence, both medical and theological, to prove that these cures were effective. Charles II, the most thoroughly cynical debauchee who ever sat on the English throne before the advent of George IV," touched nearly one hundred thousand persons in the twenty-five years of his kingship, and Louis XIV, on a certain Easter Sunday touched about sixteen hundred at Versailles. The touch of a seventh son and especially of a seventh son of a seventh son was also believed to have great curative power.

In modern times the science of medicine has had to withstand a bitter warfare waged against it by theology on account of its discovery and practice of inoculation, vaccination, and use of anesthetics.

“ а

When Boyer, a little more than a century and a half ago, presented inoculation as a preventive of smallpox, sermons were immediately preached and pamphlets published against The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation.3 The practice was denounced as 66 diabolical, 66 'flying in the face of Providence," and "endeavoring to baffle a Divine judgment." In our country it was held that smallpox is " judgment of God on the sins of the people," and that "to avert it is but to provoke Him more;" that inoculation is "an encroachment on the prerogatives of Jehovah, whose right it is to wound and smite." The words of Hosea : "He hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up, were used as an irrefutable argument

against the practice.

1 See Feilding: loc. cit., pp. 22-23.

2 Ibid., p. 46.

3 This was the title of a published sermon by Rev. Edward Massey,

1772.

The same arguments were used against vaccination. "In 1798 an Anti-vaccination Society was formed by physicians and clergymen, who called on the people of Boston to suppress vaccination, as bidding defiance to Heaven itself, even to the will of God; and declared that the law of God prohibits the practice.

1

As late as 1885, when small-pox broke out with great virulence in Montreal, the Catholic inhabitants of the city refused to be vaccinated, and as a consequence large numbers of them succumbed to the disease. When an effort was made by the authorities to enforce compulsory vaccination large numbers of the Catholic working population resisted and even threatened bloodshed. . . . The Abbé Filiatrault, priest of St. James's Church declared in a sermon that, "if we are afflicted with smallpox, it is because we had a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh which has offended the Lord; . . . it is to punish our pride that God has sent us smallpox. The clerical press went so far as to exhort its readers to resort to arms rather than to submit to vaccination. Finally, however, the laws were enforced and the plague stayed. Similar charges were brought against the use of cocaine, quinine, chloroform and anæsthetics in general. Each drug has its own sad story of severe struggle for survival, and in each case the bitterest foe was theology, Likewise the oft recurrent plagues and pestilences which swept away countless millions of human beings all over Europe, threatening at times the annihilation of whole nations, were regarded as expressions of Divine wrath or Satanic malice, instead of the results of unhygienic and extremely filthy modes of living, which of course, they really were, and upon which the Roman Church looked with a great deal of favor. They endeavored, therefore, to stay the plagues not by sanitary measures, but by prayers, fastings, flagellations, sacrifices, penitential processions, and the like. At times they went so far as to offer sacrifices to the ancient Roman gods, whom they considered devils, in the hope of propitiating them.

Because the Jews, on account of their strict observance of hygiene and sanitary laws suffered much less than the Christians, they were regarded by the latter as emissaries in the employ of Satan, hence their mysterious immunity. "As a result of this mode of thought, attempts were made in all

1 Feilding: loc. cit., p. 58.

parts of Europe to propitiate the Almighty, to thwart Satan, and to stop the plague by torturing and murdering the Jews. Through Europe during great pestilences we hear of extensive burnings of this devoted people. In Bavaria, at the time of the Black Death, it is computed that twelve thousand Jews thus perished; in the small town of Erfurt the number is said to have been three thousand; in Strassburg, the Rue Brulée remains a monument to the two thousand Jews burned there for poisoning the wells and causing the plague of 1348; at the royal castle of Chinon, near Tours, an immense trench was dug, filled with blazing wood, and in a single day one hundred and sixty Jews were burned." These persecutions were prosecuted throughout Europe with such religious zeal that there is scarcely a foot of its soil that is not saturated with Jewish blood. But the Jews were not the only victims of this terrible delusion. There were also the so-called witches, whom the pious were from the earliest times commanded not to suffer to live.

We need not here dwell on the history of witchcraft and the cruel and ingenious tortures to which the thousands upon thousands of innocent victims, especially aged women, were subjected. These records written in blood by the insane religionists of all nations and ages are well known.

Medicine was not the only branch of science that suffered from the bitter attacks of Theology. All the other branches, as Mr. White shows in his scholarly work, have had to pass through the theological baptism of fire and blood. The poet clearly understood the psychology of religious belief or faith when he wrote:

"The alchemist may doubt the shining gold

His crucible pours out,

But faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood,

Hugs it to the last."

But the last day of fanaticism must come sooner or later to every vigorous, progressive race, and when it comes "dear falsehood" gives place to its conqueror Divine Truth. To-day, if theological dogmas are at variance with the facts of science they must change and adapt themselves to the latter or else be eliminated, and not the reverse, as was formerly the case. In the intellectual realm as well as in the physical, the evolutionary law of survival of the fittest' holds sway.