Title: Essays in medical sociology, Volume 2 (of 2)
Author: Blackwell, Elizabeth
Language: English
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                      ESSAYS IN MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY



                                ESSAYS
                                  IN
                           MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY

                                  BY

                       ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.


                             _VOLUME II._


                                LONDON
                       ERNEST BELL, YORK STREET
                             COVENT GARDEN
                                 1902



                         CONTENTS OF VOL. II.


  ESSAY                                                             PAGE

  I. THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE              1

  II. ERRONEOUS METHOD IN MEDICAL EDUCATION                           33

  III. WHY HYGIENIC CONGRESSES FAIL                                   47

  APPENDIX                                                            85

  IV. SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY                                    87

  V. CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM                                             151

  VI. ON THE DECAY OF MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT            173

  VII. ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE WOMEN’S MEDICAL
   COLLEGE, NEW YORK                                                 197

  VIII. THE RELIGION OF HEALTH                                       211



         THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE


   _Address given at the Opening of the Winter Session of the London
             School of Medicine for Women, October, 1889_



         THE INFLUENCE OF WOMEN IN THE PROFESSION OF MEDICINE


In the short time that we meet together to-day I will ask you to let
me dwell upon the way in which the most beneficial influence of women
in the medical profession may be exercised. I wish also to point out
certain dangers, as well as advantages, with which medical study is now
surrounded.

The avenues by which all may enter into the profession are now so much
more widely thrown open that there is little difficulty in the way of
any man or woman who may wish to acquire a legal right to practise
medicine. In Paris all the public medical institutions, both college
and hospital, are thrown open to students without distinction of sex.
Not only as ordinary students, but as internes and externes, sex is no
longer regarded there as a barrier to opportunity and position. The
democratic principle is everywhere steadily gaining ground, and the
individual allowed to try his strength in the great battle of life.
Large numbers of women are taking advantage of this wider individual
liberty to enter the medical profession. In Great Britain our
seventy-three registered lady-doctors are few compared with the 3,000
in the United States, yet the nine students who are now connected with
our London school, with, in addition, the Edinburgh classes, the Dublin
students, and the latest fact that the Glasgow Medical College has
just opened its doors to women, clearly indicate that the movement has
taken sturdy root in our country, and when our English work has been
carried on for forty years, there is every probability that our British
lady-doctors will equal numerically our kinsfolk across the ocean.

I think, therefore, that all will see the importance of considering
the future of this growing army of medical women, and I particularly
desire that our students of medicine should realize the far-reaching
character, the social effects, of this medical career which they are
entering on. It is quite certain that the wide adoption of the medical
profession by women cannot continue to be an insignificant matter; it
must exercise an appreciable effect on future society for good or evil.

If we were children entering upon a course of education, it would
be premature to take stock of the results of education, and cast a
far-seeing glance into the future.

But it is different with adult women--women of education, somewhat
impatient of restraint--entering upon a larger liberty, and
legitimately jealous of any interference with that liberty. It is
therefore imperative upon us to consider very seriously this matter of
self-guidance at the outset of medical education, to take in a large
view of future responsibility, and ask ourselves that most important
question respecting a medical training: What will be its effect?

The flippant or superficial person may at once reply: Our object is
to gain money and pursue a remunerative calling by looking after
sick people. Women find so much difficulty in honestly supporting
themselves, that it is reason enough that they can in this way do so,
and the labourer is worthy of his hire. But I say emphatically that
anyone who makes pecuniary gain the chief motive for entering upon
a medical career is an unworthy student; he is not fit to become a
doctor, and he will be a labourer not worthy of his hire. What should
be thought of a statesman who aspired to the direction of national
affairs on account of the salary of £10,000? The nobleness of motive
must enlarge with the nobleness of occupation, or the unworthy occupier
sinks to a degradation measured by the height to which his career
should have raised him.

Now, there is no career nobler than that of the physician. The
progress and welfare of society is more intimately bound up with the
prevailing tone and influence of the medical profession than with
the status of any other class of men. This exceptional influence is
not only due to the great importance of dealing with the issues of
life and death in health and disease, but it is still more owing
to the fact that the body and the mind are so inseparably blended
in the human constitution, that we cannot deal with one portion of
this compound nature without in more or less degree affecting the
other. Our ministrations to body and soul cannot be separated by a
sharply-defined line. The arbitrary distinction between the physician
of the body and the physician of the soul--doctor and priest--tends
to disappear as science advances. Every branch of medicine involves
moral considerations, both as regards the practitioner and the patient.
Even the amputation of a limb, the care of a case of fever, the birth
of a child, all contain a moral element which is evident to the clear
understanding, and which cannot be neglected without injury to the
doctor, to the individual, and to society. But probably it will be
generally agreed that the hope of gaining money must not be the primary
motive for choosing a medical career; but that interest in the line of
study and kind of life, with a perception of the wide and beneficent
influence which it can exert, should form the determining motive for
becoming a physician.

If, then, we recognise that, although just reward for honest labour is
fair, we must not enter upon medicine as a trade for getting money, but
from a higher motive, this motive, as it influences conduct, becomes on
that account a moral motive or an ideal which should guide our future
practical life as physicians. Now, this ideal necessitates a distinct
conception of what is right or wrong for us, in medicine, both as human
beings and as women. Simply sensuous life, without an ideal or without
higher principles of action than the limited needs of every day, tends
to degrade the individual and all who surround him.

What we need is a clear idea of what is really right or wrong, with the
reasons on which the judgment is based, instead of a confused notion or
a vague and ever-shifting standard.

No woman student of medicine can safely ignore this subject. It is a
vital one for us, and only a true answer to it will make our entrance
into the profession a marked advance in social progress.

I do not attempt to disguise the difficulty of laying down the law of
right and wrong in medicine; not only because medicine, as every other
part of social life, is subject to the growth of evolution, but because
in a state of society that has not yet succeeded in moulding itself on
the fundamental principles of Christianity, we are involved in faulty
social conditions which prevent us from embodying our moral perceptions
in every phase of practical life. But, remember, thought and endeavour
may live a righteous life, no matter what faulty conditions surround
us. When we have a clear view of right and wrong, we can mentally
repudiate whatever appears to violate the moral law. We can strenuously
resist the deadening force of habitual wrong-doing, and never cease the
effort to find some way of shaping our mental protest into practical
opposition to all forms of immorality.

You will see in the course of your medical studies--particularly if
you study abroad--much to shock your enlightened intellect and revolt
your moral sense. In practice also you will be subjected to strong
temptations of the most varied character. But just for the reason that
as women we ought to see more clearly the broken bridge or approaching
danger, in the onward rush of the male intellect, I now dwell on our
special responsibility, and shall endeavour to give the reasons for it.

My object is not to limit, but to enlarge our work in medicine, when
I seek to define our ideal. It is true that the great object of this
human life of ours is essentially one for every human being, man or
woman, barbarous or civilized. It is to become a nobler creature, and
to help all others to a higher human status during this brief span
of earthly life. But as variety in unity is a law of creation, so
there are infinite methods of progress, producing harmony instead of
monotony, when the individual or classes of individuals are true to the
guiding principles of their own nature.

For the ideal of every creature must be found in the relation of its
own nature to the universe around it. Right and wrong are based upon
the sound understanding of this positive foundation. It is this fact of
variety in unity, in the progress of the race, which justifies the hope
that the entrance of women into the medical profession will advance
that profession.

In order to carry out this noble aspiration, we must understand what
the special contribution is, that women may make to medicine, what the
aspect of morality which they are called upon to emphasize.

It is not blind imitation of men, nor thoughtless acceptance of
whatever may be taught by them that is required, for this would be to
endorse the widespread error that the race is men. Our duty is loyalty
to right and opposition to wrong, in accordance with the essential
principles of our own nature.

Now, the great essential fact of woman’s nature is the spiritual power
of maternity.

We should do miserable injustice to this great fact if, looking at it
with semiblind eyes, we only see the shallow material aspect of this
remarkable speciality. It is the great spiritual life underlying the
physical which gives us our true womanly ideal.

What are the spiritual principles necessarily involved in this special
creation of one-half the race--principles which lie within the material
facts of gestation and the care of infancy and childhood, which
constitute the distinctive material domain of women?

They are the subordination of self to the welfare of others; the
recognition of the claim which helplessness and ignorance make upon
the stronger and more intelligent; the joy of creation and bestowal of
life; the pity and sympathy which tend to make every woman the born
foe of cruelty and injustice; and hope--_i.e._, the realization of
the unseen--which foresees the adult in the infant, the future in the
present.

All these are great moral tendencies, and they are necessarily
involved in the mighty potentiality of maternity. They lay upon women
the weighty responsibility of becoming more and more the moral guides
in life’s journey. Women are called upon very specially to judge all
practical action as right or wrong, and to exercise influence for this
high morality in whatever direction it can be most powerfully exerted.

We see the indication of this providential inherited impulse to moral
action, in the great and increasing devotion of women to the relief of
social suffering and their sturdy opposition to wrong-doing, which form
a distinguishing characteristic of our age. These spiritual mothers of
the race are often more truly incarnations of the grand maternal life,
than those who are technically mothers in the lower physical sense.

With sound intellectual growth the range of moral influence increases.
But such sound growth can only take place under the guidance of moral
principle; for moral perception becomes reason as the intellectual
faculties grow, and reason is the true light for all. It is in this
high moral life, enlarged by intelligence, that the ideal of womanhood
lies. It is through the moral, guiding the intellectual, that the
beneficial influence of woman in any new sphere of activity will be
felt.

Thus, from their inherited tendencies, as well as from the existent
individuality of their nature, women must seek a high moral standard as
their ideal, and acknowledge the supremacy of right over every sphere
of intellectual activity. The highest type of moral excellence which we
can find in the age in which we live, the beneficence which it exerts,
the means by which it has been attained, form so many landmarks to
guide us in our search for the right.

This very important method of growth has been well stated by Huxley,
that brave fighter in the past for freedom of thought. He has laid
down this weighty principle, that ‘the past must be explained by the
present.’

This principle is of very wide application.

What produces the noblest human creature now in our nineteenth century?
What inspires hope? What sustains us most bravely to fight the battle
of life? What makes life most worth living?

When we have ascertained these facts in the present, they will explain
the past, and give the foundations of right for guidance in the future.

It is a noteworthy feature of the present day that some of our best
men, witnessing the failure of so many panaceas for the intolerable
evils that afflict society, are longing for that untried force--the
action and co-operation of good women. ‘Our only hope is in women!’ is
a cry that may sometimes be heard from the enlightened male conscience.
But still more significant is the awakening of an increasing number of
women themselves. They begin to realize that truth comes to us through
imperfect human media, and is thus rendered imperfect; that every human
teacher must be accepted for his suggestiveness only, not as absolute
authority. Women are thus rising above the errors of the past, above
blind acceptance of imperfect authority, and are earnestly striving to
learn the will of the Creator, and walk solely according to what they
themselves, diligently seeking, can learn of that Divine will.

There is no line of practical work outside domestic life, so eminently
suited to these noble aspirations as the legitimate study and practice
of medicine. The legitimate study requires the preservation in full
force of those beneficent moral qualities--tenderness, sympathy,
guardianship--which form an indispensable spiritual element of
maternity; whilst, at the same time, the progress of the race demands
that the intellectual horizon be enlarged, and the understanding
strengthened by the observation and reasoning which will give increased
efficiency to those moral qualities.

The true physician must possess the essential qualities of maternity.
The sick are as helpless in his hands as the infant. They depend
absolutely upon the insight and judgment, the honesty and hopefulness,
of the doctor.

The fact also that every human being we are called on to treat, is,
like the infant and the child, soul as well as body, must never be
forgotten. Successful treatment requires the insight which comes from
recognition of these facts and the sympathy that they demand. In the
infinite variety of human ailments the physician will find that she
must often be the confessor of her patient, and the consulting-room
should have the sacredness of the Confessional, and she must always be
the counsellor and guide.

In those two departments of medicine which seem to me peculiarly
valuable to women physicians, which I shall refer to later--viz.,
midwifery and preventive medicine--it would be hard to say whether
the moral or intellectual qualities of the physician were called most
largely into play, so inseparably are they blended. What patience
and hopefulness also are demanded in the lingering trial of chronic
illness! What discrimination and union of gentleness and firmness these
cases require! Then think of the children in our families! To the girls
and boys, the young women and men, who grow up under our ministrations,
what an inspirer of nobleness and purity, what a guardian from
temptation the true physician can be!

Again, in the treatment of the poor, an immense demand is made upon our
pity, patience, and courage. These poor victims of our social stupidity
are often extremely trying. The faulty arrangements which compel us to
see thirty, fifty even, in an hour exhaust the nervous system of the
doctor. It requires faith and courage to recognise the real human soul
under the terrible mask of squalor and disease in these crowded masses
of poverty, and to resist the temptation to regard them as ‘clinical
material.’ The attitude of the student and doctor to the sick poor is a
real test of the true physician.

Having thus realized the profound adaptation of the nature of woman
to the practice of the Art of Healing, let us consider in what way
the intellectual faculties may be strengthened, so as to give enlarged
efficiency to the maternal qualities. In other words, how shall we
become reliable doctors?

What I have hitherto dwelt on is the necessary attitude of mind or the
atmosphere and light in which women physicians must breathe and work if
they are to attain to their distinctive efficiency; let me now refer
more particularly to the method of training for our practical work.

The intellectual training required for the physician is admirably
adapted to supply deficiencies in the ordinary experience of women.

The intellectual characteristics which must be especially gained during
student life are: the faculty of patient observation, exact statement
of what is observed, and cautious deductions from these observations.

These qualities form the foundation of sound judgment and skilful
medical practice. It is not a brilliant theorizer that the sick person
requires, but the experience gained by careful observation and sound
common-sense, united to the kindly feeling and cheerfulness which make
the very sight of the doctor a cordial to the sick. If these necessary
results of intellectual training can be secured in harmony with the
moral structure of womanhood, then a step of real social progress is
made by our study of medicine.

This necessity for making the most painstaking observation of facts,
the foundation to be laid by the student in every branch of her
studies, is well illustrated in the life of Darwin, who writes thus to
a friend: ‘I have been hard at work for the last month in dissecting
a little animal about the size of a pin’s head, from the Chronos
Archipelago, and I could spend another month and daily see more
beautiful structure.’ Of the value of this method of persistent labour,
his friend gives this noteworthy testimony: ‘Your sagacious father
never did a wiser thing than devote himself to these years of patient
toil. It is a remarkable instance of his scientific insight and courage
that he saw the necessity of proper training and did not shrink from
the labour of acquiring it.’

In medicine, anatomy, physiology and chemistry are the primary studies
where that foundation of conscientious exactitude must be laid on which
the skill of the future physician so largely depends.

The first and indispensable basis of medicine is anatomy, with which
physiology is inseparably blended; for human physiology can only
be properly studied in connection with the human structure, whose
condition in health and disease forms the direct object of our
profession. No student should be satisfied until she has most carefully
followed out the structure of every region of that human body with
whose life we shall have to deal. Careful anatomical study is the sure
and indispensable preparation for that next advanced range of clinical
observation, where pathology and therapeutics bring us into the direct
study of the sick.

The more thoroughly the human organization is investigated, the more
wonderful will the unapproachable mechanism for the use of human life
be seen to be. We shall never regret any amount of time and care spent
in acquiring the most intimate knowledge of human anatomy. For even if
we never perform a surgical operation, the thorough knowledge of the
human framework with whose aberrations we have to deal, gives a firm
foundation for practice that nothing else can supply.

The thoughtless slashing of the delicate and complicated structure
of the body, of which untrained students are sometimes guilty,
is indicative of a careless, unconscientious future physician.
If carelessness similar to what is sometimes observed in the
dissecting-room were carried on in the chemical laboratory, life
or limb would soon be sacrificed. Yet a thorough grounding in the
structure of every vital organ is more indispensable to us than
chemistry, important as the study of chemistry is. Let me here note how
the moral element on which I have so strongly insisted comes into play
in this the first of our medical studies. Reverence for this physical
structure of ours should always be shown in the use and arrangements of
the anatomical rooms. Carelessness and irreverence in this department
of study exercise a really deteriorating influence on students of
medicine. Respect for the material used, care in its disposition, and a
decent covering for each work-table in the intervals of work, may seem
small observances, but they exercise a large influence over the moral
training of the student when persistently carried out.

It does not enter into my present purpose to enlarge upon the right
method of studying each branch of medicine, for that would require a
series of discourses. But I must give an emphatic warning against the
strange neglect of _human_ physiology which I observe. This seems to
proceed from the mistaken idea that necessary knowledge can be obtained
from other organisms which bear a misleading resemblance to the human.

What I would insist upon is, that we should endeavour to make ourselves
thoroughly acquainted with the nature and variations of healthy human
physiology before we are perplexed with the changes of pathology.

Auscultation and percussion; observations of the healthy variations
of the pulse, the tongue, the skin, and the various secretions, in as
many healthy individuals, both adult and infant, as can be examined,
compared, and recorded; the vital chemistry of the human tissues and
secretions in health and disease; the modifying effects of temperament,
heredity, idiosyncrasy, etc.--all this forms a department of human
physiology, strangely neglected as a practical study, yet certainly of
primary importance to the progress of medicine.

But I must pass on to what is my immediate purpose--viz., the relation
of women to medicine. Having dwelt on the moral and intellectual
advantages of medical study, I must refer to another aspect of the
subject--viz., the dangers which meet our earnest students.

Dr. Carpenter has recorded the wide-spread recognition of this
dangerous aspect of medical study when he says: ‘There seems to
be something in the process of training students for the medical
profession which encourages in them a laxity of thought and expression
that too frequently ends in a laxity of principle and of action’;
and he further condemns the tone of some works issued by the medical
press. Now, this judgment of a very cautious teacher so many years ago,
is worthy of the most serious consideration in the present day. The
freedom of entrance now accorded to women into the medical profession,
lays a very heavy responsibility upon us, to prove that this new and
increasing movement will be a future blessing to society.

We are happy in drawing into our schools a large number of capable
women--women who may not only be a gain as physicians, but who may
exert a most beneficial influence on the profession itself, if they
bring into it fresh and independent life.

It is much to be regretted that our students are now compelled to go
abroad for the completion of their medical education, for methods of
study injurious to morality are exaggerated abroad. The abuse of the
poor as subjects of experimental investigation, in whose treatment all
decent reserves of modesty are so often stripped away; the contempt
felt for the mass of women where chastity is not recognised as an
obligatory male virtue; the atrocious cruelty of their experiments
on animals--all these results of active intellect, unguided by large
morality, as seen in full force abroad, make me deplore the necessity
which drives so many of our best but inexperienced students away, in
search of more efficient training than they can obtain at home.

The two special dangers against which I would warn our students are:

_First_, the blind acceptance of what is called ‘authority’ in medicine.

_Second_, the narrow and superficial materialism which prevails so
widely amongst scientific men.

In relation to the first point--viz., distrust of authority--although I
fully recognise the respect which is always due to the position of the
teacher, and the consideration to be shown to all who are called ‘heads
of the profession,’--I would very strongly urge you to remember that
medicine is necessarily an uncertain science.

Life in its essence we cannot grasp. We understand it only through
its effects, and all human judgment is fallible. Careful and wise
observation bring us ever nearer to a knowledge of the conditions
which are necessary for human well-being; but experience compels us
to recognise the constant failure of theory or dogmatism in dealing
with any of the infinitely varied phases of life. In medicine, we
are forced to recognise the errors in diagnosis committed even by
distinguished men, and to suffer grievous disappointment from the
failure of remedies supposed to cure the sick. We cannot fail to note
the contradictory results of experiments, the same facts differing
according to the observer--one fact upsetting another, and one theory
driven out by a later one. This uncertainty resulting from experiment,
is strikingly exemplified by the battle of experts about the effects of
arsenic displayed in a late criminal trial. Or consider the frequent
errors of statistics (a branch of knowledge that enters largely into
medical science), owing to the imperfect data on which they are often
based, important deductions being drawn from them which are logically
indisputable, but entirely false, from the unsound premisses on which
they rest. Thus, the death-rate of London, though commonly stated at
23 or 24 per 1,000, is really an unknown quantity, on account of the
enormous influx of fresh life and the efflux of broken-down lives.

Our women students especially need caution as to the blind acceptance
of authority. Young women come into such a new and stimulating
intellectual atmosphere when entering upon medical study, that they
breathe it with keen delight; they are inclined to accept with
enthusiasm the brilliant theory or statement which the active intellect
of a clever teacher lays before them. They are accustomed to accept the
government and instruction of men as final, and it hardly occurs to
them to question it. It is not the custom to realize the positive fact,
that methods and conclusions formed by one-half of the race only, must
necessarily require revision as the other half of humanity rises into
conscious responsibility.

It is a difficult lesson also, fully to recognise the limitations
of the human intellect, which recognition, nevertheless, is
necessary before we can grasp this important and positive fact in
human experience--viz., that the Moral must guide the Intellectual,
or there is no halting-place in the rapid incline to error. The
brilliant professor will always exercise an undue influence over the
inexperienced student, and particularly over the woman student. I
therefore strongly urge the necessity of cherishing a mild scepticism
respecting the dicta of so-called medical science, during the period of
student life--scepticism not in relation to truth--that noble object
which we hope to approach even more nearly--but scepticism in relation
to the imperfect or erroneous statement of what is often presented as
truth.

Of this one guiding fact, as a basis of judgment, we may be quite
sure--viz., that whatever revolts our moral sense as earnest women,
is not in accordance with steady progress; it cannot be permanently
true, and no amount of clever or logical sophistry can make it true.
It will be a real service that we, as medical women, may render to the
profession if we search out--calmly, patiently, but resolutely--why
what revolts our enlightened sense of right and wrong is not true. We
shall thus bring to light the profound reason why the moral faculties
are antecedent or superior to the intellectual faculties, and why the
sense of right and wrong must govern medical research and practice, as
well as all other lines of human effort.

As experience enlarges, we observe the immense separation in lines of
conduct which gradually results from an initial divergence between
right and wrong--a divergence almost imperceptible at first. We are
thus compelled to come to the conclusion, in relation to our own
profession, that the worship of the intellect, or so-called knowledge,
as an end in itself, entirely regardless of the character of the means
by which we seek to gain it, is the most dangerous error that science
can make. This false principle, if adopted by the medical profession,
will degrade it, and inevitably produce distrust and contempt in the
popular mind.

The second danger against which the student of medicine must guard
is the materialism which seems to arise from undue absorption in the
physical aspect of nature, and which spreads like a blight in our
profession.

The basis of materialism is the assertion that only sense is real.

Our medical studies necessarily begin with minute and prolonged study
of what we term ‘dead matter.’ If this study be carried on without
reverence, it appears to blind the student to any reality except the
material under his scalpel or in his crucible--_i.e._, the facts that
the senses reveal. Proceeding logically from this false premiss, that
only sense is real, mind is looked upon as an outcome of the brain, and
life as the result of organization of matter, which is destroyed when
the organization of the material body is broken up.

Some persons, successors of the materialistic ecclesiastics who
condemned Galileo, cannot rise beyond the gross evidence of their
senses. To such persons reason, which transcends sense, is a vague
unreality, and the clear teaching of reason may to them seem doubtful,
or superstition. But the stout fight which the old Italian nobly began,
and which has been so bravely carried on for freedom of thought in
our own day, is beginning to tell and reap a rich reward. Our senses,
so far from being the boundary of real existence, are proved to be as
untrustworthy guides now, as when Galileo’s accusers insisted that the
sun moved round the earth in twenty-four hours. The relations of our
senses to our consciousness change with biological differences, as one
creature can see what is quite invisible to another. The boundary-line
which exists between our senses and our consciousness is constantly
changing, and realities are shown to exist, of which our ordinary
consciousness connected with the senses has no knowledge. Thus, life
beyond, and independent of the senses, is being proved as positive and
pregnant fact.

The great generalizations of modern science--the Conservation of
Energy, the process of Evolution--are the products of Reason. They
are metaphysical conceptions. Like the atomic theory or the law of
gravitation, they are practical formulæ necessary to the advancement
of science from the structure of our minds but they are the results of
reason, not of sense.

Love, Hope, Reverence, are realities of a different order from the
senses, but they are positive and constant facts, always active, always
working out mighty changes in human life.

A thoughtful writer has characterized Materialism as an attempt to
explain the Universe in terms of mass and motion rather than in terms
of Intelligence, Love, and Will, and it is a true criticism. Let me
recall here the serious warning which Huxley gives to the shallow
materialist who limits existence by the senses.

He says: ‘The great danger which besets the speculative faculty is the
temptation to deal with the accepted statement of facts in natural
science as if they were not only correct but exhaustive--as if they
might be dealt with exhaustively, in the same way as propositions of
Euclid may be dealt with. In reality, every such statement, however
true it may be, is true only relatively to the means of observation
and the point of view of those who have enunciated it. Whether it will
bear every speculative conclusion that may be logically deduced from
it is quite another question.’ ‘In the complexity of organic nature
there are multitudes of phenomena which are not deducible from any
generalizations that we have yet reached; this is true of every other
class of natural objects (as the moon’s motions, gravitation, etc.).
All that should be attempted is a working hypothesis, assuming only
such causes as can be proved to be actually at work.’

These are valuable warnings from our great naturalist.

The tendency of unprejudiced science in our day is to show the
unsatisfactory character of the terms ‘matter’ and ‘spirit.’ For the
exaltation of what we term ‘matter’ tends constantly to lose itself in
what we call ‘spirit.’

Reality always transcends sense. As the vibrations of ether are only
known as light and colour, and the vibrations of the atmosphere are
translated into sound, so in the careful observation of our own mental
states, in the experiences of dream-land, in the study of clairvoyants
and somnambulists and the revelations of hypnotism, we gain an insight
into states of consciousness independent of the senses--states where
the old distinctions between matter and spirit seem to become quite
inapplicable.

One third of human life is spent in sleep, a condition of which at
present we know little, except that it entirely changes the life of
conscious sense, and that it possesses a mysterious restorative power
of the most precious significance to us as physicians. A study of
all these mysterious conditions of human life itself, many of which,
although occurring abnormally, have been presented again and again
through all the ages, is surely the most important of all subjects for
scientific medical investigation. Let us always bear in mind, as has
been well said, ‘the fact of illusion is not an illusory fact.’ As an
exception to a rule is the most suggestive fact for the investigator
to grapple with, so those exceptional facts of human nature, which
are nevertheless occurring in every age and in every nation, are the
facts of all others the most worthy of investigation by the scientific
medical intellect. This new realm of research, when legitimately
pursued, promises results of the very highest importance.

I must not now dwell longer on this new and valuable department of
medical investigation--psycho-physiology. But it is an inspiring
thought that true science supports the noblest intuitions of humanity,
and its tendency is to furnish proof suited to our age of these
intuitions. I have specially dwelt on this subject now, because the
discouragement which results from the false reasoning of materialism,
injuring hope, aspiration, and our sense of justice, is especially
antagonistic to women, whose distinctive work is joyful creation.

In practical medicine the loss is immense when recognition of the
higher facts of consciousness is obscured, and the physician is unable
to perceive life more real than the narrow limits of sensation.

The physician is called to stand by the death-bed of the most
carefully-tended patient. At that solemn moment the clear glance that
sees beyond the boundary of sense, the reverential hand-clasp which
conveys hope to the mourner, is the seal of his noble art of healing
and the profoundest consolation he can offer to the bereaved. May the
time come when every physician can convey this highest gift of healing
with his ministrations!

I have now considered the fundamental reason why great advantage will
result to society through the intellectual cultivation of the woman
physician, unless the study of medicine be pursued in such a way as to
do violence to our nature by the destruction of sympathy, reverence,
and hope.

I have also dwelt on the method of training especially needful to our
students--viz., patient, persistent drill in the fundamental studies of
medical education, a training which will form the habit of close and
careful observation at the commencement of medical life.

I would now offer a few words of counsel in relation to the work
which lies before us when we enter upon the practical career of the
physician, for which our medical studies should carefully prepare us.

I believe that the department of medicine in which the great and
beneficent influence of women may be especially exerted, is that of
the family physician, and that not as specialists, but as the trusted
guides and wise counsellors in all that concerns the physical welfare
of the family, they will find their most congenial field of labour.

It is to fit ourselves for this most useful and influential
position--viz., as the medical advisers of families--that, not limiting
our education to any speciality, we have laboured, and must continue
to labour, to remove all obstacles in the way of obtaining the fullest
medical education. For this reason I have laid so much stress upon the
cultivation of habits of careful observation, and I now would give a
warning against sensationalism in medical study.

The unreflecting student (not unnaturally) rushes after novelties.
There is a certain excitement in witnessing a formidable surgical
operation, or seeing a rare case of disease that may never again be
presented to our observation. But these exceptional occurrences do
not fit us for our future medical life as does the careful study of
the commoner forms of disease, for those are the cases that most
nearly concern us. But because they are common they cease to interest
the unobservant student, who applies a routine treatment. But the
physician whose faculties of observation have been thoroughly drilled
has learned this lesson--viz., that no two cases of illness are
exactly alike, and that it is of the utmost importance to our future
success as practitioners to note these individual differences, their
results, and why some die whilst others recover. It is far more
important to our success as practical physicians to thoroughly master
measles and whooping-cough, scarlet fever and porrigo, than to study
an isolated case of hydrophobia or leprosy. Moreover, I hold it to be
a special duty of our profession to extirpate these common diseases,
not to accept them hopelessly as necessary evils. And it is only by
a profounder and more comprehensive clinical study of the ordinary
diseases of domestic life that we can hope to do this.

There are two great branches of medicine whose importance will, I hope,
more and more engage the attention of women physicians. These are
midwifery, which introduces us to the precious position of the family
physician; and sanitary or preventive medicine, which enables us to
educate a healthy generation.

These two departments of the healing art will never cease from amongst
us. I consider it a radical defect in our present system of medical
education, that these subjects are not brought more prominently
forward, and both of them raised into first-class professorial chairs.

Before closing, I must dwell for a few moments on the vital importance
of midwifery to the future success of women physicians. This is the
more necessary because I observe a singular and growing disposition on
the part of our students, whether in America, France, or England, to
despise or neglect midwifery. I do not know whether this proceeds from
indolence, as midwifery is the most fatiguing and enchaining branch of
the profession, or whether the neglect arises from failure to perceive
the reason of our refusal to be simply midwives, for our insistence
upon a complete education really means our determination to elevate,
not repudiate, midwifery.

But the curious fact remains that many women doctors appear to look
down upon this most important branch, and often state that they do not
intend to undertake it. Yet it is through the confidence felt by the
mother during our skilful attendance upon her, that we are called in to
attend other ailments of the family, and thus secure the care of the
family health. It is therefore of the utmost importance to our future
position in medicine to establish our ability as thoroughly trustworthy
obstetricians.

It is indispensable to the stability of our movement that very thorough
provision be made for the obstetrical education of all our medical
graduates. I do not think that any young woman physician is properly
equipped for her future difficult career unless she has been to a great
extent responsible for at least thirty midwifery patients, of whose
cases she has made careful and discriminating records, and has had the
opportunity of observing a great many more patients, in addition to
the drill in all operative manœuvres that can be given in college. We
need a great maternity department, thoroughly organized, which, whilst
arranged with kindest consideration for the poor, will put our students
through a severe drill, such as is considered necessary at La Maternité
in Paris. That institution, which receives annually an average of 2,500
patients, having over 10,000 applications in the year, is not only an
invaluable practical school, but it has reduced the mortality amongst
its patients to a minimum; and the searching method of instruction
there pursued could be studied by us to great advantage as we try to
secure a well-organized maternity charity for our students in London.
Such a charity, if humanely planned, would be a blessing to poor
mothers, and it would to a great extent remove the reproach of being
obliged to send our enterprising young doctors abroad because London
does not afford them sufficient necessary practical training.

But time warns me to close these remarks, although I would gladly have
enlarged upon the primary importance of preventive medicine--the
medicine of the future--for it is quite certain that the greater part
of disease, even including many surgical operations, is preventable
disease. It is now, unfortunately, the case that unavoidable absorption
in the treatment of disease makes the practical physician too often
ignore the yet larger duty of preventing it.

I have tried to show (1) That women, from their constitutional
adaptation to creation and guardianship, are thus fitted for a special
and noble part in the advancement of the healing art. (2) That the
cultivation of the intellectual faculties necessary to secure their
moral influence requires a long and patient training by methods that
do not injure morality. (3) That the noblest department of medicine to
which we can devote our energies, will be through that guardianship of
the rising generation which is the especial privilege of the family
physician.

In conclusion, my young friends and fellow-workers, I would ask you all
to join with me in the pledge which I gave more than forty years ago to
the Chancellor of the Western University, who handed to me our first
Diploma of Doctor of Medicine. I then promised ‘that it should be the
effort of my life to shed honour on that diploma.’

This is the pledge that we must all prepare for when entering the noble
profession of medicine; in receiving honour we must add lustre to it,
or we become unworthy of it.

It is a difficult life that we enter upon, in entering upon a medical
career; but if our Christianity is worth anything, it must be ‘a
battle, not a dream.’ We must be members of the church militant if we
wish to enter the church triumphant. Life is a grand preparation for
the exercise of ever larger powers, and I heartily welcome you to this
winter’s course of study, hoping that it may be a little step forward,
but a sure one, towards that grand ideal which must be ever before us.



                 ERRONEOUS METHOD IN MEDICAL EDUCATION

   _Addressed originally[1] to the Alumnæ Association of the Woman’s
              Medical College of the New York Infirmary_



                 ERRONEOUS METHOD IN MEDICAL EDUCATION


Although it is many years since I have been able to assist in the
management of the Infirmary and School which I helped to found in 1853,
yet I watch its growth with steady sympathy, and rejoice in its success.

The last Report of the School, which has just reached me, contains
a very important item--viz., the effort of the Alumnæ Association
to ‘Equip a Physiological Laboratory and place it under the
superintendence of Professor W. Gilman Thompson,’ a New York
Vivisector. In relation to this effort, I desire to bring before you
some grave considerations which are the result of my long experience in
Medicine.

These considerations refer, _first_, to the kind of work that should be
carried on in a Physiological Laboratory, and, _second_, to the special
influence which women are called on to exercise in medicine.

A Physiological or Pathological Laboratory arranged for the
legitimate investigation of the material composition of the tissues
and secretions of the human body, is an interesting and important
department of medical study. The laboratory, however, is now commonly
used as a place for experimenting upon living animals as if they were
dead matter, or simple machines. This method of research is proving in
several ways extremely injurious to the progress of the Healing Art.

The practice of Vivisection and unlimited experimentations upon our
humbler fellow-creatures must be considered by us both under its
intellectual and its moral aspects. From both these points of view very
careful observation has led me to the conviction that this method of
investigation is a grave error.

Let me here state distinctly that I willingly acknowledge the good
intentions of all and the ability of some of the clever physiologists
of the present day, although their method of experimentation is
erroneous and the effects of that method injurious, being founded
on a fallacy. What I now say, however, is directed chiefly to the
instruction of medical students and to the practice of our young women
doctors.

I ask you to consider, first, the intellectual fallacy which underlies
this method of research. It is a twofold fallacy, resulting from the
differences of organization in different classes of living creatures,
and from the fact that when any organ is injured, it is a process of
destruction or death--not life--that is exhibited.

There is an ineradicable difference of physical structure between
Man and every species of lower animal. Nowhere is there identity of
structure or of function. Resemblance or parallelism often exists, but
identity never. Take the dog, for instance, whose attachment to Man
furnishes us with the widest opportunities of observation. In no single
function of its body is the action of the function the same as in Man.
All the processes of digestion, including its large group of connected
organs, differ from those of the human being. Observe carefully the
processes of healthy living animals. You will find that their senses
act in a different way to ours--a way which is often quite unknown to
us, we possessing no power even comparable with many of their powers.
Their relations to nature differ in many ways from our relations. It is
true that they eat and sleep and dream; that they possess intellectual
and moral powers, and are susceptible of education. They exhibit a
rough rudimentary sketch of our higher spiritual powers, and are
related to us in many ways. But the differences are so great, their
whole attitude towards external life is so different, that they may
be truly said to live in a different world from ours. So that in no
possible instance can we draw a positive conclusion respecting the
lower animal nature, that can be transferred as reliable information to
guide us in relation to the action of the human organs and functions,
either in health or disease. This misleading difference is true not
only in relation to the spontaneous working of functions, but it is
also true in respect to the actions of poisons, of drugs, and the
artificial production of diseases. Animals can be rendered scrofulous,
diabetic, syphilitic, leprous, by forcing the poison of diseases into
their bodies. Morbid action, atrophy, slow death, can be produced by
removing portions of their organs; but no deductions drawn from these
artificial conditions can be transferred to man in order to cure human
disease or restore lost function. The scrofula, diabetes, syphilis,
or rabies, takes on a different form when the lower animal has been
artificially poisoned by these diseases. In not a single instance known
to science has the cure of any human disease resulted necessarily from
this fallacious method of research.

In 1849-50 I was a student in Paris, and, with the narrow range
of thought which marks youth, I was extremely interested in the
investigations respecting the liver and gall bladder which Claude
Bernard (Majendie’s successor) was then carrying on and lecturing upon
at the Collège de France and the Sorbonne. I called upon M. Bernard to
ask him where I could find some work on ‘Physiologie Appliquée’ which
would show me how the results of these investigations could be applied
to the benefit of man. M. Bernard received me with the utmost courtesy,
but told me there was no such book written; the time had not come
for the deductions I sought; experimenters were simply accumulating
facts. We are still, forty years later, vainly accumulating facts! This
present summer Dr. Semmola, ‘one of the most brilliant pupils of Claude
Bernard,’ lectured in Paris on Bright’s disease, which he has been
studying for forty years with unlimited experimentation on the lower
animals, for the purpose of producing in them artificial inflammation
and disease of the kidneys. What is the result to the human being
of all this prolonged and ingenious suffering inflicted on helpless
creatures? ‘Dr. Semmola insisted upon temperance in eating as well as
drinking, and said that the best way to preserve health was to eat only
what was needed for the nourishment of the body.’ No cure for the human
malady had resulted from this persistent experimentation.

Is it not intellectual imbecility to waste thought and ingenuity in
putting animals to lingering and painful deaths in order to reassert
the well-proved fact that intemperance in eating and drinking will
produce forms of digestive and excretory disease varying with the
idiosyncrasy of the individual?

In late discussions in the French Academy of Medicine relative
to chloroform, where Laborde and Franck exhibited experiments on
animals, Dr. Le Fort (the distinguished surgeon) says: ‘None of these
experiments give us any instruction whatever which is useful in
practical surgery. Whatever their scientific interest may be, their
deductions are in no way applicable to man. Experimenters relate causes
of death, but nothing of the sort is generally found in the deaths of
practical surgery. The man faints when operations are begun too soon,
or is frightened by preparations. He dies because, being a man, his
nervous system reacts in a different way from that of the dog or the
rabbit. Do not count in any way upon the teachings of physiologists in
practical matters. Don’t let your patient see any preparations, give
the chloroform slowly, wait till he is profoundly asleep. That is all
you can do.’

Again, at another discussion at the Academy, M. Verneuil says: ‘It
is incorrect to say that laboratory experiments give certainty to
medicine, and make it scientific instead of empirical. The fact is
that experimentation has put forth as many errors as truths. There is
not sufficient identity, either physiologic or pathologic, between
man and the mammifères such as the dog and the rabbit.’ The different
ways of dying under chloroform have been long ago stated by surgeons.
The experiments shown by M. Laborde on the rabbit must be absolutely
rejected, as contrary to experience (in man). Maurice Perrin showed to
Vulpian in 1882 that the nervous reactions in man differ from those in
animals, and the effects produced by chloroformization could not be
relied on as being the same as on man. Vulpian entirely accepted this.
The experiments of physiologists have taught us absolutely nothing
in the way of preventing chloroform accidents; surgeons have been
beforehand (as was natural) in practising artificial respiration and
every other method of recovery. However interesting these experiments
on animals may be considered, they do not explain satisfactorily the
cause of chloroform accidents in man, and in no way show the way of
avoiding them.

I could multiply these facts by indefinite quotations from experienced
physicians, of the intellectual uselessness of a method of research
which ignores the spiritual essence of Life and hopes to surprise
its secrets by ruthless prying into the physical structure of the
lower animals. We are learning that vivisection is examination of the
beginning of death, not of life. Loss of blood is a loss of nutriment;
the result is muscular debility and enfeeblement of the vital organs,
and the introduction of a disturbance in the vital processes which ends
in their destruction. This method of research is now being discredited
by many of the most enlightened members of our Profession.

But what I wish especially to call your attention to, is the
educational uselessness of vivisection in training students, and the
moral danger of hardening their nature and injuring their future
usefulness as good physicians.

It is not true that vivisection is necessary to the medical student in
order that she may attain the thorough knowledge of human physiology
which is needed for the intelligent exercise of the medical profession.
Class demonstrations in opening the bodies of the lower animals to
examine their organs and tissues are misleading in respect to the
action of human organs. The action of the human salivary glands, the
action of the cavities of the human heart, the secretion of the gastric
juice, etc., can be more correctly realized by careful anatomical
study in connection with clinical observation of the effects of
healthy and diseased action in the human being, than by any amount of
bloody experiment and mutilation of still living cats and dogs. Such
demonstration may gratify that instinct of curiosity which always
exists in youthful human nature, or it may pander to that craving
for excitement which makes the spectacle of a surgical operation so
much more attractive to the undeveloped mind than careful clinical
study--a tendency which is also seen in gambling, watching executions,
bull-fights, etc.--but these are tendencies to be repressed in serious
and responsible study, not encouraged. The precious mental activities
of the student need to be specially trained into observation of our
_human_ faculties in health and in disease. The establishment of a
Physiological Laboratory for experimenting on living animals, in a
medical school, is not only giving a wrong direction to intellectual
activity, but is wasting the valuable time of the student, and
diverting the attention of the young practitioner from that careful
and intelligent study of the human organism, which alone can lead
to practical beneficial results. This practice must therefore be
condemned, as giving a false direction to the intellectual faculties of
the young.

Of the moral danger involved in such methods of study there can be but
one opinion by thoughtful and observant persons within the ranks of our
Profession.

The exercise of our superior cunning in destroying an animal’s natural
means of self-defence, that we may (with convenience to ourselves)
watch changes that occur in its organs during the slow process of a
lingering death, is an exercise of curiosity which inevitably tends
to blunt the moral sense and injure that intelligent sympathy with
suffering, which is a fundamental quality in the good physician. The
practice of recklessly sacrificing animal life for the gratification,
either of curiosity, excitement, or cruelty, tends inevitably to create
a habit of mind which affects injuriously all our relations with
inferior or helpless classes of creatures. It tends to make us less
scrupulous in our treatment of the sick and helpless poor. It increases
that disposition to regard the poor as ‘clinical material,’ which
has become, alas! not without reason, a widespread reproach to many
of the young members of our most honourable and merciful profession.
The hardening effect of vivisection is distinctly recognised in the
Profession, although often excused under the abused term--‘scientific.’
Dr. Loye, who, with another physician, studied the process of
guillotining a malefactor at Troyes, thus writes: ‘Both of us believed
that our wide experience of bloody vivisection would have hardened us
sufficiently to go through the spectacle without very great emotion.’

It is our duty and privilege, as women entering into the medical
profession, to strengthen its humane aspirations--to discourage its
dangerous tendencies. We must not be misled by clever or brilliant
materialists who take the narrow view that physical life can be
profitably studied without reverencing the spiritual force on which
it depends. A physiological and pathological laboratory, legitimately
conducted for the investigation of healthy and diseased human
secretions, in connection with clinical observation, may be made a
valuable aid to medical advancement, and I would always encourage the
organization of such a laboratory. But to use it for cutting up animals
dying under anæsthetics is stupidity, and to convert it into a torture
chamber of the lower animals, is an intellectual error and a moral
crime.

The possible results of slow deterioration in the moral nature when
we violate in any degree our religious standard of justice and mercy
may be most strongly realized in living examples of diseased inherited
tendencies. Such a fearful example is before us in the life history of
the criminal, Jesse Pomeroy, now in the State Prison of Charlestown,
Mass., who has spent his life in penal servitude, expiating his
atrocious mutilations and murders of little children, committed when
he was a lad of fifteen. The deteriorating moral influence exercised
on offspring by vicious parental tendencies, is directly exhibited
in this living object lesson. The father of this lad was a butcher.
His mother, during the gestation of this child, took a persistent
and morbid delight in watching the death of the animals slaughtered
by her husband. We see in the atrocities committed by her young son,
a terrible example of the evil effect which the mind can exercise,
in deteriorating individual character and in extending its evil
influence to others. All experience proves the powerful influence
exercised by the parental, and especially the maternal, qualities upon
the offspring. Every woman is potentially a mother. The excuse or
toleration of cruelty by a woman upon any living creature is a deadly
sin against the grandest force in creation--maternal love.

I earnestly ask all women physicians to consider the special
responsibility which rests upon them, to take that large religious view
of life which alone can check any degrading tendencies in intellectual
human activity and elevate our noble Profession. Let us not be misled
by sophistical arguments, but look steadily at the actual facts of
animal torture, and work persistently for the total abolition of
vivisection from our medical schools. In this way we shall justify
our entrance into medicine, and prove ourselves strong supporters of
that noble humanity which is the especial characteristic and solid
foundation of the Medical Profession.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] In 1891.



                     WHY HYGIENIC CONGRESSES FAIL

        _LESSONS TAUGHT BY THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF 1891_


                             INTRODUCTION

The noblest aim of humanity is the application of Truth to the conduct
of life. By doing we develop our faculty of knowing.

The difficulty, however, of knowing how to apply Truth in daily life is
so great, and yet the need is so urgent, that the most pressing duty of
those who have faith in the Divine is to bring forward to the light of
sympathetic conference, the facts of life in which one’s most intimate
experience lies.

Thus the merchant and manufacturer, the business man and the
legislator, the farmer, householder, literary man, and those who,
living upon interest, should know how that interest is gained, must
ever hold it to be true religious duty to seek, in conference with
others, the way of elevating every department of life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Religious or Unitary truth possesses invaluable guidance for Medicine,
not only in its practical application as an art, but in the methods by
which it can alone become a science.

Truth recognises this great fundamental fact--viz., that spirit moulds
form, that the senses alone are not reliable guides in solving the
problems of even physical life.

Research and observation also show that essential elements of Truth
have always existed in Humanity; that we cripple our power of advancing
in Truth if we do not seek out these indications of the Divine in all
past experience and carefully consider the light they throw on present
life.

We recognise in these weighty facts a great Providential method of
human growth and an infinitely beneficent aid towards the attainment of
that moral Ideal wherein Goodness and Truth, Justice and Mercy, Love
and Wisdom, become one--inseparably united.

One of the great truths given in past ages, which it is necessary to
study and enforce in the present age, is the intimate connection which
exists both mentally and physically between human beings and lower
forms of animal life.

This is a truth of great moral significance. It was dimly, perhaps
grotesquely, seen in some religions of the past, but is so much lost
sight of in the present day that our responsibility for the care of
the inferior creation we were intended to train with justice and
gentleness, becomes too often a cruel and odious tyranny. Even in some
branches of knowledge (knowledge which can only justly claim the name
of science when it is the most comprehensive study of truth) injustice
and cruelty are misleading the intellect, and thus threatening danger
to the progress of the human race.

Being profoundly impressed by the fundamental character of these truths
as necessary guides in medicine as well as in every department of
human life, when I learned that extensive preparations were being made
in the greatest city of the world for consideration of perhaps the
most important subject that can engage our attention--viz., Health--I
arranged to be present as a delegate, and steadily attended the
Congress, comparing notes with other friends who were attending its
various sections.

In this way we gathered an accurate knowledge of the tone of the
discussions, the methods pursued, and the tendencies of modern
investigation.

These facts seemed to me of sufficiently serious import to make them
worth recording in the following pages.



                     WHY HYGIENIC CONGRESSES FAIL


The Seventh International Congress of Hygiene was held in London
from August 10 to 15 of 1891. It is noteworthy for the number and
representative character of its members, and also for the wide range
of subjects affecting the physical welfare of the race, which were
considered. Representatives from America and from Asia, as well as
from the various nations of Europe, assembled in the Great Metropolis
to consider the vital subject of Health. These learned men met
together daily during the week in nine different sections, from ten
to two o’clock. They were occupied with the subjects of Architecture,
Engineering, Chemistry, the health of soldiers and sailors, the care of
early childhood, the duty of the State in relation to the Health of the
Nation, Health Statistics, Bacteriology, and the relations of Animal
and Human Disease.

In the consideration of this wide range of subjects, valuable
experience and much useful information were presented in the papers
read and in the discussions that followed. But in a Congress not held
together by any great guiding principle, where persons of various
nationalities, moulded by different laws, methods of education, and
social customs were represented, a great variety of opinion, of
contradictory facts, of imperfect statistics and superficial theories,
would necessarily be brought forward. Nevertheless, a remarkable
concensus of opinion established one great result of experience--a
result which may be considered the striking practical lesson of the
Congress--viz., that it is to sanitation that we must look, not only
for the prevention of disease, but largely also for its cure.

_Supremacy of Hygiene._--Taking the results of sectional discussions
as a whole, it was very generally shown that, by our increasing
knowledge of hygienic law, its wide diffusion amongst the people, and
its intelligent application to daily life, we can counteract the evil
influence of heredity, get rid of epidemics, improve the stamina of the
race, advance in longevity and in the natural enjoyment of our earthly
span of life. Thus it is by the advance of sanitation that the Art of
Healing can alone become a science of Medicine.

A few illustrations will show how this growing result of modern
thought was both directly and indirectly supported by the papers and
discussions of the various sections.

Thus Sir Charles Cameron, of Dublin, showed the beneficial change
wrought by ten years’ sanitary effort in the Dublin slums through
rebuilding, draining, cleaning, and free disinfecting. Those wretched
quarters were a breeding-ground of human misery in 1871, where
small-pox, typhoid fever, and all contagious diseases seemed to be
endemic. The annual mortality was reduced in ten years by sanitary
measures from 34·11 to 28·80 in the most crowded portions of this
wretched quarter; in its less crowded part the mortality had fallen to
a much lower figure, notwithstanding the intemperance and destitution
which still continued to afflict the inhabitants. In this example
it should be especially noted that the goodwill of the people was
enlisted, for the municipality laid aside the idea of pecuniary gain on
the sum expended in rebuilding, etc., and offered a better lodging at
a rent that could be paid, and provided all sanitary appliances free,
thus losing, in the sense of money profit, to gain in the far higher
value--health.

Another remarkable illustration from very large experience was that
given by Professor Smith, of Aldershot, who is at the head of the
cavalry department of our army. He showed, by most interesting tables,
that diseases formally rife amongst horses--glanders, farcy, canker
of the foot, etc.--were now practically unknown in the army. This
triumphant result was entirely due to careful hygiene, the utmost
attention being paid to food, ventilation, drainage of stables, the
care of the feet and shoeing, of saddles and harness, and reduction of
the burden which the horses were required to carry, to fifteen stone as
a fair average. As was justly remarked, there is a limit to the weight
that a horse can carry or draw, beyond which is cruelty and injury.

Drs. Schrevens and Gibert, from France; Dr. Abbott, of Mass.; Dr.
Pagett, of Salford; in discussing diphtheria and typhoid diseases from
defective drainage, laid stress upon purity of air and cleanliness of
the soil as the chief points for consideration. The same indispensable
principle of sanitation was shown in respect to meat and milk used for
food. In France 5 per 1,000 of animals used as food are tuberculous,
such disease resulting from wrong methods of breeding, feeding, and
managing these useful animals.

Professor Ralli showed how parasites could be conveyed from animals to
men, and dwelt on clean bedding, coverings, suitable food, water, free
exercise, as the necessary prophylaxis.

Dr. Hime, of Bradford, and Chauveau, of France, dwelt upon terrible
diseases, such as the woolsorters’ disease, to which men are exposed
who handle the skin, horns, etc., of animals--diseases which are
entirely preventable if the manufacturers engaged in such trades
would place the health of men above the profit to be gained by trade;
thorough ventilation, disinfection, and other sanitary measures would
entirely prevent the present reckless destruction of health. The same
was true in the large industry of sorting rags imported from abroad, of
match-making, etc.

It is a noteworthy fact that in the section of the Congress devoted
to the relation of diseases of men and animals, which I especially
attended, sanitary prophylaxis alone was dwelt upon as the condition
of supreme importance. Inoculation was not advocated by any speaker,
except the official representative of the French Pasteur Institute.[2]

Compliments were duly paid to M. Pasteur, whose skill and zeal in a
false method of research may justly command intellectual recognition.
But no one in any case advocated the theory of diffusing mild forms of
disease for the purpose of preventing the severe type in the important
and practical discussions which took place daily in relation to
diseases common to man and the lower animals.

Thus a great principle of progress in the prevention of disease
and in the attainment of a higher standard of health was directly
or indirectly acknowledged by this varied body of men of trained
intelligence and large experience--viz., the paramount importance of
sanitary knowledge and practice.

Obedience to the conditions of healthy growth is the law of progress,
from which there is no escape. It is the only way by which disease can
be gradually eradicated. Every attempt at evasion inevitably brings its
own retribution in various ways, swiftly or slowly, but surely.

All medical by-paths leading in a different direction from the
conditions of healthy life, however tempting they may appear to
active intellectual curiosity, or however desirable it may seem to
find a short cut to health, necessarily lead to error if the supreme
importance of sanitation be ignored.

Now, notwithstanding the large amount of valuable experience brought
together in this International Congress, there was one serious omission
in the otherwise wide and interesting plan of the Congress--an omission
which had a direct practical bearing on the discussions carried on in
the various sections. This vitiating lack was the failure to recognise
the fundamental connection of mind and body in the phenomena of Life.
There was no appointment of any special section which should give
prominence to this subject, and thus strike the keynote capable of
bringing all the sections into harmony.

This omission was the more noteworthy because a section _was_ devoted
to the theories of bacteriology, which, as will be seen, are directly
opposed to the true science of Health.

Practical success in sanitation is impossible without the recognition
of mind, both in the actual working of the organs of the living body
and in the knowledge and acceptance by mankind of the conditions which
are essential to health.

If the human constitution be governed by laws in obedience to which
healthy growth is alone possible, then those laws must be carefully
sought for before we can build up a science of hygiene. To regard
living beings as simply material bodies, without the constant and
varying influences of mental action upon the working of those bodies,
is an intellectual error which disregards the essential condition of
mental harmony in relation to health.

It must also be recognised that whatever may be the discoveries of
physiological science, they will remain barren unless applied by
individuals. In all the concerns of life, whether in the application of
principles or in the unconscious formation of habits, we are compelled
to deal with the ceaseless power or effect of Will. To treat even
the most ignorant adults by arbitrary, unreasoning compulsion is a
scientific blunder.[3]

_The Two Problems of Hygiene._--The two fundamental questions for
hygiene to solve are therefore: 1st. What are the conditions of healthy
growth? 2nd. How can those conditions be secured?

In answering these two fundamental questions the problem of mental
action enters into every hygienic section of a Congress, and is the
keynote which must be struck if harmony of theory and practice is to be
attained.

But in consequence of too narrow a view of hygiene these questions
were not solved, and this remarkable assembly of learned men, brought
together with such careful preparation and hospitable welcome, produced
no practical results of the commanding value that the public had a
right to expect from it.

Sanitary legislation was shown to be largely evaded, but the reasons
for this unsatisfactory evasion were not examined; the results of
experimental research were proved to be strangely contradictory, but
the conditions which would harmonize them were not discovered; unproved
theories abounded, but the fallacies that vitiated them were not made
clear.

Disappointment as to the practical utility of the Congress was widely
felt both at home and abroad.

This disappointment with the results of the Congress has been publicly
expressed by our foreign guests. A clever abstract of the work done
at this Seventh International Hygienic Congress has been published in
Paris by the well-known editors of _The Review of Hygienic and Sanitary
Police_. Some noteworthy statements are made in the introduction to
this volume which should be seriously considered by all who reverence
righteous sanitary science as the foundation of human welfare, but who
also know that sanitary science must approve itself to the good sense
of a people, or it will be of little practical utility.

_Failure of English as well as Foreign Sanitation._--This high French
authority declares that notwithstanding the efforts for sanitary
improvement in which England has set an example for fifty years, the
relative mortality of England has not diminished. It is stated: ‘The
subject of the mortality of England, although not touched upon in
the Congress, was the subject of most private conversation. The real
figures of English mortality show a singular coincidence with the
mortality of other European countries. It is shown that in none of
these countries has the mortality diminished during the last fourteen
or fifteen years, except when the birth-rate has diminished, and only
in an exact proportion to this birth-rate.’ England has no better
record to show in this respect than her Continental neighbours,
notwithstanding the increasing demands of her specialists for extended
legislative powers. Our French critics remark that ‘English hygienists
of to-day are demanding great administrative centralization; their
sanitary laws are rigorous to a degree that other countries would
consider excessive; local self-government as well as individual
liberty is less and less respected, and, from the statements of
specialists interested in the subject, there is reason to believe that
at no distant date every branch of public hygiene will be entirely
administered by the Central Government.’

‘It is to be hoped’ (they remark) ‘that English good sense will
learn how to avoid the abuse of centralization, for it is just as
illogical to wait for the intervention of the Central Government in
the sanitation of a parish or the prevention of a local epidemic as to
refuse such intervention when public danger arises from negligence or
stupidity.’

These observations of hygienists, coming from France, a country which
we are accustomed to consider (and which in some respects really is)
much more over-ridden by officialism than England, are extremely
valuable. They serve to warn us of the grave danger of depending upon
centralized legislation or arbitrary authority withdrawn from popular
influence, and from that growth of individual enlightenment which
arises through the sense of responsibility.

Our friendly foreign critics justly ask: How is it that England, first
in the field of sanitary science, with a rigorous system of compulsory
legislation, with administration, laws, regulations, agents, and
also a gradual development of private hygiene, has still to deplore
the unhealthiness of such a large number of towns, quarters, and
habitations, and sees no diminution in her annual rate of mortality?

They advance towards the root of the matter when they observe in
this same report that laws are one thing, their application quite
another thing! ‘So true it is that public hygiene depends upon general
education as well as on the education of specialists, that no laws or
regulations will suffice when the habits of the people generally do not
promote their application.’

In other words, mind as well as matter must be considered in the
subject of sanitation.

       *       *       *       *       *

The student of science who has learned the great principle of
creative Unity knows that no manifestation of existence can be
absolutely separated from the rest of creation. As we investigate
phenomena it is seen that the laws governing separate phenomena
become more comprehensive as knowledge increases, because more widely
embracing separate facts; varieties are seen to be linked together by
relationships, and apparently different phenomena can be transmuted
into one greater force.

In the plan of an International Congress, designed to gather together
the advanced knowledge of many nations on the whole science of health,
the omission of any section which should bring into prominence this
powerful fact in life--the influence of mind on body--is a very grave
defect. It is an error which affects both the investigation of facts
and the application of results, the two indispensable factors to the
progress of sanitation. Their neglect in an International Congress on
Health was the more unfortunate because mental influence is a fact
which is forcing itself upon the attention of investigators with
increasing urgency.

_Increasing Importance of the Mental Problem._--Under the modern
title of hypnotism facts of the most remarkable character are now
acknowledged and studied. The cure of disease by suggestion, carefully
and humanely applied, has been proved beyond the possibility of
rational denial. The reality and practical effects of mental epidemics
is a positive fact. The effect of fear in predisposing to cholera,
hydrophobia, and other diseases cannot be denied.[4]

The contagion of religious enthusiasm or religious fanaticism
are facts; whether the effects are seen in the devotion of the
Salvation Army, or in pilgrimages to Lourdes or Trèves with their
so-called miracles of faith-healing, they are equally facts requiring
consideration. Wild business speculations in the craze for riches
become contagious, and lure multitudes to ruin.

The history of past and present medical delusions is also most
instructive. We need not go to the Sangrados of a past generation, who
treated every disease by blood-letting, or the search for the elixir
of life in illustration; the contagion of false hopes in relation to
consumption, which upset the judgment of two hemispheres, cannot yet be
forgotten. Thoughtful physicians possess abundant warning against being
carried away by new theories which violate the moral sense or the Law
of Unity, even when such theories are supported by distinguished names.

Experience proves the potent character of mental stimuli in moulding
practical action. Fear or hope, curiosity, vanity, cupidity, when
regardless of the Law of Unity, seize upon isolated phenomena removed
from their natural connection, and distort them by creating morbid
conditions, thus viewing facts out of proportion. Statistics thus
formed become fallacious, and serve as the bases of dangerous
theories--theories which, unless checked by popular common-sense from
being put into practice, would cause the moral and physical degradation
of the race. I need only refer to the folly of injustice embodied in
certain medical acts lately abolished and to the present theory of
inoculation, as noteworthy instances of dangerous mental delusion
desiring to shape itself into action.

Materialism, which is blind to other than sensuous life, which insists
upon reducing every phenomenon to the limits of the senses, which
refuses to be enlightened by any higher reality, or sneers at the
term ‘vitality,’ neglects a great range of positive facts, and has no
right to the noble name of science. Reflection, therefore, shows that
the moulding and guiding power of mental action in shaping physical
results being a fact of the most far-reaching character and of
permanent operation in sentient creation, its omission in a Congress of
Health was a serious injury to the results of the Congress. It was a
sufficient reason for that sterility of result which has been publicly
and privately expressed.

The error of not recognising mental as well as physical forces, or the
Law of Unity, in relation to health, and the tyranny that may result
from such imperfect method in the study and application of sanitation
and medicine, may be illustrated by an interesting incident of the
Congress.

An important joint meeting of two sections took place in order to
listen to the discourse of one of our ablest investigators--a man
in high position, and one who wields a powerful influence on the
rising generation of medical students. This gentleman early in his
discourse made the following noteworthy announcement: ‘I claim the
right of science to dictate’--and as if to strengthen this claim by
the authority of our French brethren he added ‘conformément à la
logique’--‘I claim the right of science to dictate in accordance with
logic.’

The bold demand for absolute obedience thus authoritatively made
by a professor at the head of biological research demands careful
consideration. It is the announcement of a new priesthood or esoteric
sect of physical science. In the mind of the speaker it means that his
science is identical with truth. If that be admitted, it is the highest
wisdom of the human being to obey gladly and unhesitatingly, and the
teacher thus inspired with truth rightfully commands our grateful
and profound reverence. But this claim may also mean the unconscious
arrogance of a mind taking too narrow a view of science--a mind which,
whilst earnest and laborious in investigating partial phenomena, is
intoxicated by the discovery of new facts with the theories which can
be built upon them, and at once announces himself as one of the priests
of a new religion demanding absolute obedience; for the temptation of
all priesthoods is to form an esoteric sect.

In this second case it is the bounden duty of every truthful mind to
refuse obedience. For until the claim is fully examined in all its
aspects, in both its physical and mental relations, and sustained by
the deliberate and hearty assent of all intelligent minds and the
instinctive accord of the people generally, this demand for absolute
obedience to the theories of so-called science must be resolutely
withstood as a reintroduction of mischievous and degrading superstition.

The special occasion which led to this unfortunate claim for dictation,
or the compulsory regulation of disease by specialists, was the subject
of tuberculosis and the exaggerated claim of the modern bacteriologist
that the tubercle bacillus is the sole primary cause of consumption,
with the logical claim that, as only the thoroughly-trained specialist
can detect this bacillus, consumption should be scheduled as a
contagious disease, and subjected to the rigorous regulations of the
specialist and his board of advisers.

As our largest item in annual mortality is death from
tuberculosis--about 14 per cent. with us--and as food and air _may_
introduce a bacillus into the system, we can dimly imagine the extent
to which the claim for dictation may grow in ‘accordance with logic.’

Many striking instances of crude official tyranny were revealed by our
Canadian and other foreign delegates. Thus, railway passengers from
Montreal to Ontario were compulsorily revaccinated on the train before
being allowed to enter Ontario.[5] The foolish and fallacious system
of attempting to _regulate_ special vice was seen to prevail largely in
the inexperienced civilizations of Canada and Western United States.

_Scientific Inquisitors._--I will here quote a late statement of
Professor Huxley’s, which might well be emblazoned in all our medical
schools. He says: ‘We are at the beginning of our knowledge instead
of at the end of it; the limitation of our faculties is such that we
never can set bounds to the possibilities of nature. The verdict may be
always more or less wrong, the best information being never complete,
and the best reasoning liable to fallacy.

‘The greatest mistake those who are interested in free thought can make
is to overlook these limitations and deck themselves with the dogmatic
feathers which are the traditional adornments of opponents.’

This vigorous protest of our English naturalist against the dictation
of so-called science is in striking accord with the observations of our
French visitors in relation to the futility of compulsory legislation
now urged by scientific specialists.

_What is Science?_--When the investigators in any limited branch
of knowledge glibly use the term ‘science’ to compel assent or to
enforce legislation, we are forced to ask, What _is_ true science or
certain knowledge grounded on demonstration, as distinguished from
false science, which is uncertain knowledge, based upon varying and
imperfectly observed phenomena or upon theory? Knowledge is of various
kinds: Mental, Physical, Mathematical. These separate departments of
knowledge rest equally on bases of fact. Love is as much a fact as
bread-and-butter; justice is as potent in its effects as microbes; and
from their wider range of action and more permanent duration these
mental facts are far more _real_ than the physical phenomena.

In determining the claim of science to obedience the great Law of
Unity gives the guiding principle, which, however humbling to human
arrogance, or however affirmative of the limitations of our intellect,
the truly scientific mind is bound to accept.

_The Law of Unity the Foundation of Science._--The Law of Unity
teaches us that no explanation of any fact is final or ‘true’ if it
contradicts other facts. It announces that no method of examining facts
is reliable that destroys other facts equally patent, and that any
results deducible from partial phenomena, however interesting or even
apparently useful, can only be regarded from the point of view of true
science as temporary expedients. They may possibly be recommendations
for useful trial, but they can never be justified as subjects for
dictation.

       *       *       *       *       *

The confusion of thought which has brought the unnatural practices of
inoculation into fashion may be usefully illustrated by dwelling on the
mingling of truth and error which exists in relation to vaccination.
Vaccination must not be confounded with inoculation, although the word
‘vaccination’ is now incorrectly used by bacteriologists to cover up
the alarming practice of injecting the diluted virus of any particular
disease, which is inoculation. Vaccination, on the other hand, is
solely the injection of matter derived from a disease in the vacca,
which disease is neither small-pox nor derived from small-pox, and
vaccinia in a healthy cow is a mild disease.

During a lifetime of medical practice I have vaccinated children
(sharing the widespread belief that it was preventive of small-pox).
The practice, however, has always seemed to be an unsatisfactory
method, which I hoped increased knowledge of sanitation would enable us
to improve.

I also recognised the powerful influence of fear in predisposing to
disease, and I regarded vaccination as a sedative for the family or
community. My faith in the innocence of this practice was, however,
rudely shaken by the lamentable death, in my own practice, of a
scrofulous infant--a death clearly caused by the phagedenic ulceration
produced by the vaccination. I also noted the accumulating evidence of
very serious diseases communicated by so-called vaccine lymph.

_Vaccination not Scientific._--But Professor Crookshank, in his
exhaustive work lately published on vaccination, has conclusively
proved the unscientific character of the evidence on which this
practice is based, our ignorance of the sources of the virus commonly
used and its mode of action, and also the uncertainty of its
prophylactic power.[6] That the generally mild disorder of vaccination,
although arbitrarily and even tyrannically enforced on every child born
in our country, does not prove the prevention of small-pox which it is
claimed to be, is shown by the recurrence of epidemics of small-pox
amongst us, by the occurrence of the disease in vaccinated persons, and
also by the demand now made by the French Academy of Medicine (which
recognises the failure of our system of vaccination) for legislative
powers to compel repeated revaccination. This demand for power of
indefinite revaccination is a logical demand. For, proceeding on the
assumed premiss that vaccination prevents small-pox, but being met by
the inexorable fact that epidemics of small-pox _do_ occur and spread
amongst vaccinated people, the cause of this contradiction is assumed
to be that the supposed preventive power of vaccination has been thrown
out of the system, and must therefore be again renewed. Logically,
therefore, not only the infant must be subjected, but the child, the
adolescent, and the adult. All must be compulsorily revaccinated, as
the human system undergoes a change at each of those periods of growth.

The history of the struggle against compulsion in vaccination is very
interesting, as a strong condemnation of that arrogance of false
science which presumes to trample on human rights whilst neglecting
hygienic conditions. As all intelligent persons should be able to form
a practical judgment on the important question at issue, I should
like to dwell a moment on the subject of immunity, a fact (though now
misapplied) on which compulsory vaccination is based.

_Immunity._--Observation has long shown us that when the human system
is gradually exposed to injurious influences, a certain tolerance of
those influences may be acquired, which often enables those exposed to
them to escape immediate death, although with impaired health, whilst
healthy persons suddenly exposed to the same injurious influences die.
This is a well-known fact, capable of abundant verification. Thus,
persons long resident in a badly-drained house, although frequently
ailing in various ways, may never be laid up with typhoid fever; a
certain immunity has been obtained by the slow adaptation of the system
to bad air, but at the sacrifice of vigorous health. But if a new and
healthy family move into the same house a deadly outbreak of typhoid or
diphtheria may at once result.

In the malarious districts of the United States a large scattered
population of what are called by the negroes ‘mean whites’ continue
to live, with clay-coloured faces, enlarged spleens, and impaired
vitality, yet for a stranger to sleep in those regions is deadly. The
strong tendency to live, which we call vitality, though it has enabled
those born and brought up under injurious influences to struggle on
through life, does not prove equal to resistance in many constitutions
suddenly exposed to the injurious influences. The medical statistics of
our army in India show that the newly-arrived is far more apt to suffer
from enteric fever than one who has been long in the country.

‘The percentage of deaths from this cause is nearly fivefold greater in
the first or second year of service than from the sixth to the tenth
year. Medical officers are unable to trace out in any given instance a
definite insanitary condition to which with certainty the outbreak can
be attributed.’

There is, therefore, fact for theory to be built on--viz., the possible
adaptation of the human constitution to injurious influences, an
adaptation which, whilst impairing general vigour, often produces
immunity from rapid death.

This fact, confirmed in the mind of the bacteriologist by the
fallacious system of diseasing animals as ‘témoins’ or ‘controls,’ has
given rise to the dangerous theory that all contagious diseases may
be forestalled in their most deadly form by the inoculation of human
beings with diluted virus produced by those diseases. This dangerous
belief has been widely fostered by the unfortunate educational
influence of the law of compulsory vaccination. But it must be observed
that vaccination, unlike inoculation, does not introduce any products
of the special disease--small-pox--into the system. The vaccine disease
in the cow is not small-pox, nor can it ever be made to produce
small-pox. The preservative power which is claimed for it, therefore,
has not the dangers which are attached to inoculation, but neither
can it claim the occasional immunity which may attend that dangerous
practice of introducing small-pox virus into the blood. Pure air,
cleanliness, and decent house-room secured to all our people, form the
true prophylaxis of small-pox.

_Exaggeration of Bacteriology._--We observe how neglect of the Law of
Unity is misleading the intellect in relation to bacteriology. This
subject, useful if pursued without cruelty and in subordination to
higher facts, has become a mischievous exaggeration[7] both as to what
it signifies and as to what it may lead to.

The majority of our active and intelligent medical investigators are
now intensely engaged in the search for a microbe as the primary
_cause_ of every disease known to humanity. Cancer, leprosy, fevers,
hydrophobia, diphtheria, tetanus, insanity, etc., are being largely
studied by this imperfect method, in hope of finding a characteristic
microbe which can be pronounced the essential cause of the disease.
The great mental energy of biological investigators is diverted from
sanitary investigation to the search for fresh bacilli. Admirable
perseverance, acute ingenuity, unwearied energy are devoted to this
search.

Advantage has been taken of the helplessness of the lower animals
to carry on a system of experimentation upon them, the extent and
ruthlessness of which has never before been attempted. Disease
is studiously propagated. Myriads of healthy living creatures
are filled with loathsome disease in order to furnish ‘material’
for experimentation. So many kilos of dog or rabbit (used for
injecting disease, or noted as more or less slowly resisting the
death thus gradually inflicted) is a common expression now used
in experimentation, and supposed to give ‘scientific accuracy’ to
experiments. It is a pitiful intellectual fallacy of short-sighted
materialism that supposes it possible to obtain ‘scientific accuracy’
by regarding so many kilos of living dog as if they could be
experimented on as so many kilos of dead matter, or as if they were
the materials of a steam-engine, which can be taken apart, examined,
cleaned, tested, and put together again in complete working order.

This diversion of intellectual ability from the true path of sanitation
by an exaggerated search for bacilli leads directly to the dangerous
practice of inoculation, which threatens the future deterioration of
the human race. As one of the most distinguished of our hygienists, the
late Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson, has pronounced, ‘inoculation is bad
sanitation.’[8]

Sanitary law teaches us that disease is produced by many causes, not
solely by a specific microbe.

These causes are insanitary conditions, which impair or destroy the
agents required by our human constitution for its healthy growth,
and which act with varying force according to individual tendency.
These insanitary conditions, in the course of their operation upon
varying individual constitutions, produce various forms of disease,
as chill may produce rheumatism, bronchitis, or diarrhœa, according
to idiosyncrasy. These varying idiosyncrasies of individuals, both in
their physical and mental aspects, as well as the varying action of
vital force in different classes of animals, will always vitiate the
theories of materialistic investigators. Thus the same poison will not
destroy all classes of living creatures. A healthy young dog has been
known to resist for months strenuous efforts made to disease him in a
particular way. The same disease germs produce quite different forms of
disturbance in men and in rabbits.

‘We possess no clue to the immunity of certain animals from poison.
Rabbits fed on belladonna show no signs of injury, although their flesh
becomes poisonous to those who eat it. Pigeons and other herbivora may
be safe from what will cause paralysis and asphyxia in other animals.
The meat of goats may similarly become poisonous.

‘Chickens, cats, birds, rodents, are variously affected by poisons,
some thriving on what will kill other animals. The whole cat tribe is
said to be always proof against morphia.’

Drs. Hahn and von Bergmann, in attempting to justify their
cancer-grafting experiments on hospital patients, affirm that ‘it was
necessary to select human beings for experiment, inasmuch as none of
the lower animals would have been suitable for their purpose.’

Sanitary law teaches us that unhealthy conditions vitiate the living
micro-organisms with which we are surrounded, and which, naturally
beneficial, may become, through violation of natural law, morbid germs,
capable of spreading their various forms of disease amongst persons
predisposed to such disease. Thus, according to sanitary law, the
violated health conditions (vitiating naturally innocuous particles)
are the primary cause of disease; the morbid germ or bacillus is only
the secondary cause.

The new bacteriological theory directly contradicts this important
law of sanitary experience, and in opposition to it authoritatively
announces that contagious or infectious disease can never be produced
without the antecedent microbe. It was in defence of this untenable
theory that the distinguished professor claimed the ‘right of science
to dictate.’

The great mistake, therefore, made by the Hygienic Congress was the
neglect of mind as an indispensable and prominent factor in Health, and
the exaltation of bacteriology, with the theories based upon it, into
the chief point of interest and importance.

The modern exaggeration of bacteriology, with its theory of
inoculation, must be steadily opposed by all who realize the power and
growing influence of spiritual life. The injurious results of this
exaggeration may be summarized as follows:

_The Practical Dangers arising from erroneous Scientific Method._--1.
It diverts invaluable intellectual activity into methods of
comparatively futile investigation. These investigations lead very
widely to the exercise of fraud and cruelty upon the lower animals,
and tend to reckless experiment on the poor. They waste much time and
spread the contagion of intellectual error amongst the students of all
our medical schools, where the false practices of experimentation are
increasingly carried on. They also pervert the moral sense of the great
army of assistants, caretakers, porters, nurses, and others connected
with our medical institutions, who become aware of the cruel practices
which so largely accompany this method of research.

2. This perversion of medical activity misleads our Parliamentary
representatives, who are bewildered by pseudo-science authoritatively
announcing itself as Truth, and permits a rapid increase of officialism
to crush opposition and force the dicta of superficial ‘science’ upon
the protesting conscience of intelligent people. It also misleads the
community by fallacious articles in popular magazines, in which facts,
theories, statistics, and assertions, often incorrect, are given with
an imposing air of science, in relation to which the ordinary reader is
quite unable to discriminate the true from the false.

3. The diversion of medical activity from the true path of Preventive
Medicine not only hinders the progress of sanitation, but is producing
an increasing revolt of common-sense and popular feeling against what
are erroneously supposed to be the necessary methods of medicine and
the practice of dispensary and hospital. This growing feeling in the
community increases the dread with which the poor generally regard
the hospital, and it also seriously diminishes the pecuniary support
which the well-to-do would otherwise gladly extend to their sick and
suffering fellow-creatures.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Conclusion._--In considering the foregoing record of facts it is seen
to be a fundamental error, not only in a Hygienic Congress, but in
_all_ medical thought and practice, to look only at the body, and not
consider those spiritual facts which precede, animate, and succeed
the flesh. It is also certain that in the application of hygiene to
daily life we may as well pour water into a sieve as hope to enforce
permanently practical hygienic measures without enlisting the goodwill
of the people in their observance.

As the solution of the two great problems of hygiene--viz., ‘What
are the laws and conditions of healthy growth?’ and ‘How can these
conditions be secured?’ rests upon principles of spiritual truth,
those principles are of fundamental importance in directing human
intelligence into right lines of investigation. Being compelled to use
the imperfect symbolism of language, we speak of mind and matter, of
spiritualism and materialism, as if they were separate or contradictory
entities. But this is a limitation in the expression of thought to be
recognised and carefully guarded against in thought itself. There can
be no real contradiction between Religion and Science; they are only
varying manifestations in human thought of Truth, which is essentially
one. Our effort must be to unite these manifestations in thought, and
thus gain the only safe guidance possible to us for practical action.

       *       *       *       *       *

The great fundamental principle of our human constitution is
incarnation--_i.e._, spirit shaping form--the Universal manifesting
itself in the phenomenal. This principle is the foundation of sanitary
science. It forms the basis of the Moral Law which must be the guide of
science.

When this principle is understood and applied, it enlarges the
intellect and enlightens the conscience. It transforms the narrow,
self-centred or arrogant individual into the humble inquirer and sharer
of the larger Diviner life.

This universalization of the individual resides essentially in the
Will of man, and is the foundation of conscience--conscience which,
gradually enlarged by the growing intellect, is the great guide of the
human race in its struggle upwards.

This universalization of the primitive self-centred life leads to the
realization of Sin. When we enter that Garden of Gethsemane where the
woes of the world, the murders and seductions, the cruelties and
hypocrisies, are revealed in all their hideousness, we realize that we
are partakers in this Sin; for it is the result of that self-centred
arrogance, that selfishness with which each one has to fight, and which
is the essence of Sin. It is through this tremendous conviction that
all must enter into that life of the Universal, where alone is true
freedom, and where alone the fulness of individual life is to be found.
Only by this saturation with the Universal does that hatred of Sin
arise which makes sins henceforth impossible.

Then the recognition of Right and Wrong in human action becomes clear,
and the supremacy of the Moral Law inevitable.

It is indispensable to refer to these deeper principles of existence
in considering their varied application. They give force to those
condensed maxims of practical wisdom which, transmitted to us from the
experience of our forefathers, are guides for our present daily life.

‘Never do evil that good may come’ is a proverb so familiar to us
in various forms that we fail to see the profound wisdom which it
expresses.

It is a confession of that intellectual limitation which cannot foresee
complicated results; it is an acceptance of that inflowing light of
conscience (however dim) by which everyone must honestly walk; it is
the subjection of the narrow, self-centred Will to the Universal Life
by which the individual becomes a free co-worker with the Divine.

Physiology rightly studied in the light of this fundamental
principle--incarnation--vindicates the supremacy of the Moral Law,
which is the Law of Unity, or transfiguration of the Self. It gives the
perception of Right and Wrong. The Law of the Universal, reverently
and intelligently studied, will guide all practical action; it will
show us how to build a hospital, plan a medical school, organize an
institute of preventive medicine, legislate for a community, or guide
the individual life.

The Law of Unity relegates bacteriology to its proper place as a branch
of pathology, and proves that truth cannot be gained by searching
into the quivering organs of tortured animals. It shows us also that
individual health cannot be secured by building a Chinese wall around
one’s self. We cannot stop the revolution of the earth in an atmosphere
which may bring bacilli from inundated China, from starved Russia, from
leprous India, or from the slums of the West.

We must work gradually towards the realization of our
ideal--Health--and work in many directions and on many lines. Advancing
sanitation will place our future hospitals in country neighbourhoods,
with only temporary receiving houses and dispensaries in large towns.

‘The oldest hospitals were the temples of Esculapius, where Divine
assistance was sought.’ To these Asclepeia, always erected on healthy
sites, hard-by fresh springs and surrounded by shady groves, the sick
and maimed resorted to seek the aid of the ‘god of Health.’ To this
wisdom of the ancients we must certainly return when the present
tendency to subordinate the welfare of the sick to the convenience of
students be checked.

The most urgent need which now exists in our profession is the
establishment of an Institute of Preventive Medicine guided by the
Moral Law. Such an Institute will recognise that mind and matter meet
in the fact called Life, will reverently study all the conditions
and laws of healthy life, and not be diverted from this great aim by
curious investigations into artificially propagated disease.

The study of the biological sciences, comparative and human physiology,
morphology, histology, electro-chemical action, etc., is most important
and necessary for the advancement of medical science; but these can
be studied without any violation of the moral Law of Unity. It is
necessary to study the forms and functions of life which are manifested
in organisms lower than man. The laws which govern animal and vegetable
growth form important steps towards our increasing knowledge of
human physiology and sanitary law; but these can only yield true and
available facts when studied through the natural and healthy working of
the objects of study. The artificial production of mental or physical
disease by fear and suffering vitiates the natural order of life, and
leads to error in observation and induction from such observation.
Torture is not only unsuited to laboratory work, but is an inevitable
source of error in results. A laboratory or workroom should never be
degraded into a torture-chamber. Experiment should never degenerate
into curiosity or inhumanity.[9]

In the future a wise Institute of Preventive Medicine may possibly
be placed in the healthy country. Around such an Institute for wise
research a well-planned health colony could grow up, which would be
of enormous utility to the overworked brains of our most valuable
people. It would be a health centre where the weary brain could be
refreshed and its vigour renewed by the restorative effects of manual
labour. Guided by true science, it would teach our teachers and our
legislators. Here they might learn to reverence those laws of health
which are equally violated by overworked brains and overworked muscles.
An Institute of Preventive Medicine genuinely ‘scientific’ would be the
soul of such a health centre.

But such a colony can only be created when narrow selfhood has been
transfigured by the universal life; for, as has been finely said: ‘True
social integration will follow upon spiritual integration, and upon
nothing else.’

Whilst working towards a fuller realization of our ideal we must
respect and aid, as far as we can, those isolated efforts to deal with
special transgressions of the Moral Law which are really steps onward
in the growth of humanity. Separate efforts to advance temperance and
purity, justice to women and children, to the poor and weak, to the
humbler animals, our fellow-creatures, are all efforts to be heartily
encouraged. Each effort forms a little step out of selfishness into
large religious life. Although those who realize the Law of Unity
cannot rest in any isolated work, yet it is by the honest fighting
of sins that we grow into that hatred of Sin which will lead to its
destruction; and by the slow perception of truths we gradually approach
that ineffable Light of Truth which will melt away the chains of
selfhood, and set us free in the larger liberty of the Universal Life.


FOOTNOTES:

[2] See Appendix, p. 85.

[3] Dr. Hambleton calculates the pecuniary loss from waste of life in
the army from preventable disease, chiefly of the lungs, as at least
half a million a year--a waste of life which adds materially to the
number of recruits required. Whilst stating the hygienic measures in
relation to clothing, special exercises, air, and bathing, which have
been shown to restore the inferior physique of recruits, he places as
the crowning necessity ‘explaining to the men the effects of good and
bad habits upon their health, so as to insure their co-operation.’

[4] Sir Walter Scott, a connoisseur in dogs, writing about popular
belief in 1832, remarks: ‘The powers of this talisman have of late been
chiefly restricted to the cure of persons bitten by mad dogs, and as
the disease in such cases frequently arises from imagination, there can
be no reason to doubt that water which has been poured on the Lee penny
furnishes a congenial cure.’

[5] An English gentleman, Captain Frank Fairbanks, was detained for a
fortnight in quarantine (says a Boston telegram) because he refused
to be vaccinated. A younger brother of his had lost his life through
vaccination.

[6] See Crookshank’s _History and Pathology of Vaccination_.

[7] Dr. Adametz states that ‘one gramme of Gruyère cheese contains
90,000 microbes; after seventy days they had increased to 800,000. A
gramme of another kind of cheese contained about two million microbes,
whilst a piece of the rind contained about five million!’

[8] This is virtually accepted by one of the foremost advocates of
inoculation, who, acknowledging that preventive inoculation ought to
be strictly limited, adds: ‘Inoculation is only a palliative measure,
for the first object to be aimed at is the stamping out of infectious
disease, and I cannot help thinking that the day will come when
preventive inoculation will be a thing of the past.’

[9] The greatest injury which is now being done to medicine and the
advancement of hygiene is the abuse of the word ‘research’ and the
degradation of this noble exercise of human intellect by methods of
application not suited to the subject of investigation.



                          APPENDIX (Page 56)

                 _On the Humane Prevention of Rabies_


In the course of a discussion on the subject of rabies, a suggestion
was made that a resolution should be passed by the Section and sent to
Government, recommending measures for the prevention of hydrophobia.

As two opposite methods of dealing with rabies had been ably supported
by Professors Roux and Fleming, I called attention to the fact that
nothing had been said in the discussion of the sufferings necessarily
inflicted upon animals where the Pasteur method advocated by Professor
Roux was adopted, and I stated that in a Pasteur Institute dogs were
kept in a state of madness. I therefore recommended that Municipal and
County Regulations, with their excellent results, as shown by Professor
Fleming of London, and Professor Ostertag of Berlin, should be adopted
rather than Pasteurian methods.

In illustration of the sufferings of dogs when made mad, I referred
to my visit to the Rue Dutôt on June 2, 1889, where, after inspecting
the Hall of rabbits, guinea-pigs, and pigeons used in experiments for
rabies, anthrax, etc., I went to the cages of three dogs also used for
experiments in rabies, who were in various stages of madness, one dying
after its ten days’ agony; a second in the full fury of madness; a
third in frantic terror clinging to the bars of his cage, imploring to
be let out.

Professor Roux’s statement in opposition to my recommendation of the
humaner methods of dealing with rabies seemed to infer that dogs were
not rendered mad in a Pasteur Institute or in dealing with rabies. But
when I stated to the Professor that I had myself seen this series of
three dogs being made mad, he replied: ‘Oh, you might have seen a great
many more, but they are not to inoculate people.’

Now, it is well known from experience that it is too dangerous to
inoculate direct from the dog to the human being. But the fact that
dogs are constantly made mad for experiment in the Pasteur Institute,
or in any institute that adopts Pasteurian methods, should be honestly
acknowledged, not evaded. The fact that this frightful disease of
rabies is kept up for purposes of experiment, although the virus be
transmitted in changed form through other animals for the inoculation
of human beings, is in itself a grave fact, and it bears directly on
the point which I dwelt on at the Congress--viz., that in choosing the
method of protecting humanity from a rare but frightful disease, the
method that does not involve sufferings to animals should be adopted by
a Christian nation.



                     SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIOLOGY


                               CONTENTS

                                                                    PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                                        89

  CHAPTER I

  THE GROWTH OF CONSCIENCE                                            91

  CHAPTER II

  CONSCIENCE IN MEDICINE                                              95

  CHAPTER III

  THE MORAL ELEMENT IN RESEARCH                                       98

  CHAPTER IV

  RIGHT AND WRONG METHOD                                             101

  CHAPTER V

  THE NECESSITY OF MEDICAL RESEARCH                                  104

  CHAPTER VI

  RESTRICTION OF EXPERIMENT                                          109

  CHAPTER VII

  PRURIGO SECANDI                                                    119

  CHAPTER VIII

  WHAT IS SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH?                                       124

  CHAPTER IX

  THE AXIOM OF SCIENCE                                               134

  CHAPTER X

  RATIONAL EXPERIMENT IN RESEARCH                                    137

  CHAPTER XI

  THE RANGE OF PAINLESS RESEARCH                                     144

  CHAPTER XII

  RECAPITULATION OF PRINCIPLES                                       148



                             INTRODUCTION

A controversy is persistently carried on between an increasing body
of the non-professional laity and an important section of the medical
profession, in relation to the methods pursued in investigating
biological phenomena.

The criticism of medical research by non-medical people is naturally
resented by some who are engaged in experimentation, and it is stated
seriously that non-scientific persons will impede progress if they
interfere with or succeed in restricting the efforts of those who
specially devote themselves to this branch of research.

This controversy is still going on in ever-widening circles, and it
is bound to do so until the present confusion of thought which exists
on this subject is removed, and the broad distinction between right
and wrong experimentation is more fully acknowledged and more clearly
defined. Our relation to the lower animals has never yet been brought
fully into the clear light of reason and conscience. Yet in the order
of Providential development it must so come forward.

As advancing humanity has gradually recognised natural rights as
existing in the various races of mankind, and is carrying on a
persistent warfare against human slavery, and slowly awakening to the
moral crime of introducing disease and vice amongst native races,
and the rights as well as duties of women and of children are being
gradually recognised, so the time has come when the natural rights of
inferior living creatures must be seriously studied.

This study has become obligatory, not only in regard to the welfare
of the brute creation, but for the sake of our own human growth as
rational and moral beings.

       *       *       *       *       *

The common-sense of mankind recognises our right to use the lower
animals for human benefit, whilst our superior intelligence gives us
the power to so use them. But ‘can’ and ‘ought’ are different aspects
of our mental constitution, which require to be harmonized. What we can
do is not the true measure of what we ought to do in any department of
life.

We can starve a child or lash a horse to death, but we have no right to
do so.

The laws of our human constitution compel us to recognise that
intellect and conscience, although essential parts, are not identical
parts of our nature. Long experience shows us that social progress can
only become permanent when conscience guides intelligence.

How far the guidance of conscience can extend, with the practical
results to medical research involved in the recognition of such
guidance, forms the subject of present consideration.



                               CHAPTER I

                      _The Growth of Conscience_

It is through the gradual and harmonious development of intelligence
with that element in our nature that we name conscience that the human
race passes from lower to higher states of civilization. In pursuing
our ideals, conscience is our instinctive monitor of right and wrong.

Our great naturalist, Darwin, laid down as a law of evolution that
‘the moral sense, or conscience, is by far the most important of the
differences between man and the lower animals. Duty--“ought”--is the
most noble of all the attributes of man.’

Victor Hugo, with the prophetic insight of genius, calls conscience
‘that modicum of innate science with which each one is born.’

The growth of human conscience in its perception of justice and in its
sympathetic relation to creation is the surest measure of individual
and national progress. Various intellectual theories may be formed as
to the origin and growth of conscience. It may be held to be intuitive,
springing up as inevitably as the instinctive feelings born with the
natural relations of life; or it may be looked upon as gradually
evolved, the ‘result of countless experiences of fear, love, utility,
transmitted through generations.’

But however originating, conscience is a positive and potent fact.
It is, indeed, the mightiest factor in social life. It is the great
controller of selfhood. It enlarges human character and guides human
conduct. The deepening of this principle through the growth of justice
and sympathy marks an advancement in the type of humanity. Increasing
respect for life is one of the clearest signs of growing conscience.
Our reverence for the principle of life grows with our enlarging
intellectual perception of its universality and its unlimited power of
development.

As life is marked by activity, and cannot remain stationary, so
conscience shares this law of life. It must inevitably advance or
retrograde.

The degradation as well as the development of conscience may be seen
amongst us in the midst of our present civilization. It is contrary to
the most rudimentary element of conscience to feed upon one’s kind, and
cannibal tribes who devour their captives represent the lowest type
of humanity; even the dogs of the Arctic voyager will endure the slow
agony of starvation for days before their human taskmasters can compel
them to eat the flesh of their companions. The well-known naturalist,
Mr. W. H. Hudson, states that wolves, when pressed with hunger, will
sometimes devour a fellow-wolf; as a rule, however, rapacious animals
will starve to death rather than prey upon one of their own kind.

Yet shipwrecked sailors, even of our own English race, have been
known to drink the blood and eat the flesh of their own comrades when
confronted by starvation.

We find that intelligence may exist without conscience, but the human
type changes to a destructive force when this separation takes place. A
lamentable example of the social danger created by the destruction or
absence of rudimentary conscience amongst us is shown by the betrayal
and murder of the little boy Eccles in Liverpool, for the sake of his
clothes, by his two companions of eight and nine years old. There was
the deliberate plot to entice him to a pond; the throwing him three
times into the water as he scrambled out; the final holding him under
water until all struggle had ceased. These facts make a striking, but
not unique, object-lesson, showing how intelligence may exist without
conscience amongst all our appliances of civilization, and the danger
of such separation.

Examples of the social devastation produced by official corruption and
business dishonesty are too numerous to be detailed; they are seen in
what are called civilized countries--in London, Paris, Rome, and across
the ocean. The lack of conscience in public and private transactions
creates social misery proportioned to its extent.

Recognising, therefore, that this distinctive principle of conscience
is a fact of gradual development, that it grows by the union of
the moral with the intellectual elements in our nature, and that
the far-reaching consequences for good or evil of vivid or dulled
conscience in the individual and the nation are far beyond our power
of foresight, a grave responsibility rests upon us in this matter.
We are bound to realize that any custom, or method of education, or
proposed course of action, that seems to violate the natural instincts
of humanity, or is contrary to the present enlightened conscience of
any section of our Anglo-American race, demands imperatively the most
careful consideration on our part.



                              CHAPTER II

                       _Conscience in Medicine_

Every intelligent member of the medical profession will certainly
recognise the special value of human conscience in the profession.

The problems which are involved in the practice of the beneficent art,
the absolute reliance which the anxious patient is compelled to place
in his physician, the helplessness of the poor, who form so large
a majority of those who need medical aid, and who are without the
defences of wealth and station, show the need of keen moral sense, as
well as intelligence, in those who practise the art of medicine.

The very discoveries of medical science enforce this necessity; for the
possibility of abuse in the employment of such beneficent agents as
anæsthetics and hypnotism, by incompetent or conscienceless operators,
is a very serious fact.

This special responsibility of the medical profession to society is
greatly increased by the fact that the training of a very large section
of our intelligent youth during the important years of early manhood
rests upon them. The moral as well as intellectual influence exerted
by those who guide the college, the hospital, the dispensary, and
post-graduate classes, will mould the future action of one of the most
influential portions of the community--those, viz., on whom the health
of the nation chiefly rests.

Now, whilst all recognise the need of the trained and skilful care
of a nation’s health, and perceive also that rightly organized
medical schools and hospitals are of great value in educating our
health-guardians, how is it that a profound distrust of these
institutions has grown up in our midst, that the support of hospitals
becomes increasingly difficult, whilst at the same time the sentiment
of benevolence and desire to help the poor is constantly extended?

How is it that the beneficent and necessary art of medicine no longer
commands that respect and confidence which its essential character as
part of our social institutions would seem to demand?

The answer to these serious questions involves both moral and
intellectual considerations. These problems have arisen from failure
to perceive that in education moral and intellectual activity cannot
be advantageously divorced, or that one portion of our complex nature
cannot be beneficially developed whilst other portions are entirely
ignored or injured.

Our medical schools, whilst sharpening the intellectual faculties of
their students, must be careful that their modes of teaching bring with
them no deterioration of that important faculty of their students--the
moral sense. As conscience or the moral sense is unequally developed
in human beings, but is indispensable to the physician in his relations
with patients, any apathy or negligence in this respect by the trainers
of youth may become a national danger.



                              CHAPTER III

                    _The Moral Element in Research_

Morality as a guide in biological science is based upon the practical
distinction between organic and inorganic Nature.

If medical progress simply involved the investigation of inorganic
Nature, the general public would be only learners, gladly receiving
such information in geology, chemistry, astronomy, or physics, as
specialists in those branches of physical science were good enough to
impart to the unlearned.

But directly scientific research passes beyond the distinctive realm of
matter, moulded and transformed by general energy, but not affected by
individual will, it has to deal with a very different principle--viz.,
life. This vital distinction has been well laid down by one of our
eminent medical authorities as follows: ‘During the slow growth of
medical knowledge it has become more and more plain that physics,
chemistry, and biology are distinct sciences, with methods of their own
and inductions of their own, each of the latter terms in the series
using the results of its predecessors, and adding new results of its
own. Although life is a structure built up of physical and chemical
facts, yet to the building, to the arrangement, to the ordering of
those facts, there goes something that neither physics nor chemistry
can explain, any more than algebra can explain the behaviour of a
magnet. To strive to interpret the series of events which make up the
life of an animal in terms of chemical change (metabolism), or of
conservation or expenditure of energy, is an endeavour which will fail.’

As the brute creation as well as human beings share in a physical
organization which expresses each variety of life, there is not the
same sharply-dividing line between the various categories of animal
life as there is between organic and inorganic Nature. Biogenesis, or
life generated by life, is the distinctive feature of organic Nature.
We are linked to living creatures of higher or lower nature by the
power of educating or subduing them, and by all those varying relations
involved in the mystery of life.

The distinctive position of man, as an animal placed at the head of the
animal world, necessarily creates serious responsibility on the part of
the higher towards the lower creature.

This basis of moral responsibility extends in kind, if not in degree,
to all life. It necessitates a directing conscience which shall guide
all our intellectual and practical relations with every category of
life.

This moral element enters unavoidably into our treatment of animal
life from its lowest to its highest form. Our treatment of a monkey or
a prince contains an element of moral attitude which does not exist in
our relation to inorganic Nature.

It is a difference of kind as well as of degree, which it is blindness
to ignore.

The divergence which now exists between some biological investigators
and their critics rests upon the failure to recognise that moral error
may engender intellectual error.

The special subject which has produced this controversy is the present
method of using the lower animals in biological research, which has so
enormously extended of late years. The essence of the controversy is
the ethical question--viz., Have we a right to torture?

It must be distinctly understood that there is here no question of our
right under certain circumstances to put to death. Neither is there a
doubt of the utility of rational experiment and of research. But the
right to put to death in the most humane manner known to us, and the
right to torture to death, are two widely different questions.

We have no right, for any purpose whatever, to torture a living
creature to death, either by the mutilation of the organs, the slow
deprivation of the necessary conditions of life, or the still slower
process of destroying by the inoculation of disease.



                              CHAPTER IV

                       _Right and Wrong Method_

It must be carefully noted that the wrong involved in inflicting
torture upon a living creature is the violation of a rational
principle. The employment of torture or of painful experiment in
biological research is not a question of the right to gain knowledge;
it is a question of how we seek to gain knowledge. It applies directly
to method.

Thus, the fact observed by Paget, that in a patient who vomited all
fat, the pancreas alone was found on post-mortem examination to be
diseased, is worth more than a series of experiments on lower animals
of different constitution from our own.

In the slow approach towards truth, which is the great object of
science, no single method is indispensable. The human mind is so full
of activities, Nature presents such an infinite variety of resources,
that progress in research can never be hindered by the choice of right
instead of wrong method.

This is well stated by one of our most experienced investigators when
he says: ‘Methods run with the manners and customs of the ages. In
science there is no one method that can be considered indispensable.
Attributes are indispensable; observation, industry, accuracy, are
indispensable; methods are not. They may be convenient, they may be
useful, they may be expedient, but nothing more.’[10]

This admirable statement throws a flood of light upon the confusion
and perplexity of the present controversy. It shows the error of both
the so-called unscientific and scientific parties. It shows the error
(not unnatural), in the former, of confounding together experiment,
research, laboratory, and scientific investigation, and classing them
under one indiscriminate ban of cruelty; it also shows the narrow
vision and false reasoning of those who claim that right and wrong have
no meaning when applied to the investigation of phenomena supposed to
be revealed by the senses, or state that the collecting of so-called
facts, named knowledge, is an end in itself, to be unrestrained and
justified in itself.

That interesting book, _The Naturalist in La Plata_, in narrating the
author’s observation of the natural fearlessness of all wild animals
towards man, the careful research into life-habits that can be carried
on where this fearlessness is not betrayed, and the susceptibility
to kindness which exists amongst all the lower animals to their
sovereign, man, furnishes a striking and delightful suggestion as to
the _method_ which future research should take.[11]

It is the distinctive moral relation existing in the plane of animal
life that makes our connection with the organic world a different and
more comprehensive relation than that which exists with inorganic
Nature. It places research in the biological sciences on a different
plane from study of the physical sciences.

Therefore, whilst it would be folly for ordinary people to criticise
the methods of experts in physical science, it would be dastardly
dereliction of duty not to consider the methods employed in biological
science.

The subject of experimentation upon the lower animals having two
aspects--an ethical and an intellectual one--the medical profession
will be wise to welcome all honest and kindly criticism and suggestion
in the most difficult of all studies--viz., the study of life. It must
be recognised that the people are absolutely in their right in refusing
to submit to dictation in what concerns their relation to animal life,
of which they are the responsible head.



                               CHAPTER V

                  _The Necessity of Medical Research_

Whilst fully recognising the right of the laity to criticise scientific
method when it deals with sentient animals, fashioned on the same
general plan as ourselves, and capable of fear, pain, affection and
gratitude, there is another aspect of the subject which we are bound to
consider.

The present condition of medicine is that of an art, not of a science.
It is erroneous to speak of the science of medicine. There exists
uncertainty in diagnosis, uncertainty in the action of remedies,
ignorance of individual idiosyncrasy, and terrible inability to meet
such devastating diseases as cancer, consumption, leprosy, etc.

No one outside the profession can fully realize the grave
responsibility, even desperate anxiety, felt by the conscientious
physician when life or death seems to depend upon his action and he
knows that medical resources are not equal to the occasion. It is a
noble desire for the advancement of the beneficent art of medicine
which makes the great body of busy doctors eagerly listen to those
who are supposed to speak with authority, and hail with hope every
announcement of supposed discovery which seems to promise improved
practical results.

This is really a sound humane attitude of mind in that vast body of
the profession who are unable, from the pressure of practical life, to
devote themselves to investigation--a profession which has always had
its heroes and martyrs, who have not shrunk from risking their lives in
the service and for the advancement of their noble art.

Those also who are in the profession can most fully estimate the
real and beneficial results, both in surgery and medicine, derived
from careful and persistent research, notwithstanding the severe
disappointment often caused by the theoretical error and unjustifiable
practice resulting from rivalry in erroneous methods of investigation.
The conquest of pain and diminution of nervous shock in necessary
surgical operations,[12] the disappearance of blood-poisoning, hospital
gangrene, and erysipelas, which were the scourges of our public
institutions in a former generation, are immense gains, due to the
discovery of anæsthetics, antiseptics, and to advancing sanitation.
These blessings are the direct outcome of persevering and skilful
clinical observation, of careful work in the laboratory, of humane
experiment, and of happy accident; they are not derived from cruel
experimentation.

The successful control of that terrible disease--puerperal fever--which
formerly destroyed such a multitude of women, is a striking conquest of
humane method in modern medicine. When I was a student in La Maternité
of Paris in 1849, this destructive malady of lying-in women produced
a mortality varying from 10 to 15 per cent. But when I visited La
Maternité in 1889 the mortality was reduced to a little over 1 per
cent. This was due to rigorous cleanliness, sanitation, and the use
of antiseptics, directed by the skilful _sage femme en chef_, Madame
Henri, in spite of the old and unsuitable buildings and the depressing
status of many of the patients.

A still more satisfactory result is shown in the Clapham Maternity
Hospital, in London, where not a single death occurred amongst the 760
cases first received into the institution.

This excellent result still continues under the same administration. Of
the 4,000 lying-in cases received in the hospital during the thirteen
years it has existed, there has been no death from puerperal fever.
This excellent record has been attained by scrupulous cleanliness,
absolute isolation on the occurrence of suspicious symptoms, by
excellent nursing, and constant oversight by the doctors in charge.
Even in the out-patient department, where the conditions of living are
not under such strict medical control, the deaths from this frightful
malady have only amounted to 5 in 12,500 cases under the same
enlightened direction.

This great and beneficent reform in the first and world-wide branch
of medicine, by means of which the lives of innumerable women in all
our large centres of civilization have been saved, is the result of
scientific research. It was initiated and successfully carried out
by Semmelweis, of Vienna, and is a striking instance of the value
of research carried on by the use of the comparative method, with
absolutely no resort to experiment. The history of this reform, the
methods by which it was accomplished, the opposition it encountered in
the profession itself, and its triumphant vindication, are well worth
serious study. An account of this valuable investigation and other
important discoveries by justifiable methods of inquiry are given to
English readers by the admirable translation published by the New
Sydenham Society.[13]

Medical research, therefore, is not only justifiable, but obligatory in
a profession that is specially charged with the care and advancement
of individual and national health, and, as will be seen later,
observation, induction, and rational experiment form the essential
methods of scientific inquiry.

These two facts--viz., the necessity of advance in medical knowledge
and the methods of investigation necessary for such advance--must
be distinctly recognised by sincere reformers, and should shield the
profession from that indiscriminate reproach which is often made
against it as a whole; for such hostility tends to strengthen that
undue _esprit de corps_ which often hinders sound medical progress in
the profession.



                              CHAPTER VI

                      _Restriction of Experiment_

When we investigate the popular or ethical aspect of so-called
scientific research made upon living animals, we are at once met by
facts which imperatively demand both serious thought and determined
action if we would not be participators in the degradation of human
conscience. We are confronted with the enormous increase in such
experiments which has taken place within the last thirty years, as well
as in the severity of the sufferings inflicted. This increase is going
on in England as well as in foreign countries.[14] It is growing in
many cases, not only without any benefit to the human race, but also
without reference to any supposed beneficial result as its attempted
justification.

The volume of facts and evidence collected by Mr. Colam (the able
Secretary of the Royal Society for the Protection of Animals), and
published by that society in 1876, is a permanent record of great
value. It enables us to measure the growth of experimentation in
England, not only from 1862 to 1876, when the present Cruelty to
Animals Bill was enacted, but it also forms a point of comparison for
testing the increase of vivisectional methods since 1876 to the present
day, when these easy but often fallacious methods of research have
become universal in medical investigation and medical instruction.

In 1869 there were very few places where the experimentation on animals
could be carried on, such investigations being made by men of rare
ability, and for a definite object. There were no class demonstrations
and no students encouraged to experiment. But in 1892 there were 180
persons licensed in this country, and over 3,960 experiments performed,
numbers which increase with each year.

_The Effect on Students and Subordinates._--A point for serious
consideration is the effect produced upon the unformed minds of
students of medicine by the introduction of experimentation upon living
animals into our medical schools and hospitals.

The employment of destructive experimentation on living creatures
is now introduced as a part of the ordinary instruction of medical
students in the fundamental study--physiology. This is a novelty of
the present generation. During the whole course of my medical studies,
fifty years ago, I never saw a living creature vivisected for the
instruction of students. The same is true of the experience of most of
the able physicians of an older generation.

Now, however, nearly every medical school has its store of imprisoned
living creatures awaiting their fate, from the large frogs imported
from Germany, the mice, rabbits, cats, and dogs of home production,
to the cargoes of monkeys brought to our foggy climate from tropical
Africa. They form an enormous mass of living creatures, kept for the
attempted demonstration of vital action in the lecture-room, or for the
study of diseased processes in the physiological laboratory.

It is a fallacy (although proclaimed in high places) that the ordinary
student of medicine must be prepared for his practical work as a
physician for men by watching the opening of chest, abdomen, brain,
or cutting into the delicate vital organs of lower animals. Such
demonstration is a thrilling spectacle to inexperienced students. It
appeals to that love of excitement which makes them rush to a surgical
operation, or to an extraordinary medical case, whilst the commonplace
but all-important bedside observation seems dull in comparison. Yet
patient work in the anatomical and microscopic rooms, and in the
chemical laboratory for general and animal chemistry and close clinical
study, all of which involve no form of suffering, are of primary
importance. The genius of a Professor as an instructor is shown by his
ability to make his pupils realize this.

Destructive experimentation on helpless animals, not for their own
benefit, is a demoralizing practice. The student becomes familiar
with the use of gags, straps, screws, and all the paraphernalia of
ingenious instruments invented for overpowering the resistance of the
living creature, or for guarding the operator from injury in case the
anæsthetic, when used, should give out too soon. He learns also how
easy it is to experiment in secret.

By advanced instruction and post-graduate classes the student is led
on to take active part under licensed authority in this fascinating,
but morally dangerous, method of study. Moreover, the large body of
subordinates who are necessary to take charge of and prepare the
animals, are trained in indifference to suffering, without any excuse
of intellectual gain, and the same injurious influence extends in
ever-widening circles--to the traders who invent and sell instruments
of torture, and to those who supply the living material.

Now, the natural instinct to be cherished in human beings is protection
and kindliness to infancy and all helpless creatures, not indifference
to suffering or wilful infliction of it. As human conscience is a thing
of growth or degradation, the natural shrinking from needless pain can
soon be hardened into callousness. Conversing with medical students in
relation to the effect made upon them by witnessing vivisections even
under chloroform, I have found that their experience is always the
same--viz., first, the shock of repulsion, then tolerance, and then, if
often repeated, indifference.

The moral deterioration necessarily induced in those to whom suffering
becomes a frequent spectacle is noted by the _Englishman in Paris_,
from personal experience. After speaking of the inhumanity produced
by the daily sight of blood in the originally honest bourgeois, who
became the ‘Conventionnels’ of the French Revolution in 1793, he writes
as follows: ‘I have witnessed three executions. After Pommeraye’s
execution I was ill for a week; after Troppmann’s the effect soon
wore off in three days; after Campa’s I ceased to think about it in
twenty-four hours. Then I made a vow that no power on earth should draw
me to the Place de la Roquette again. But men generally regard their
growing imperviousness as a sign of mental force, and pride themselves
upon it.’

In Marie Bashkertseff’s _Journal_ is a striking passage which describes
the effect of a Spanish bull-fight. She says: ‘I was able to maintain a
tranquil air in full view of the butchery, carried on with the utmost
refinement of cruelty. One leaves the scene slightly intoxicated with
blood, and feeling desirous to thrust a lance into the neck of every
person one meets. I stuck my knife into the melon I was cutting at
table as if it were a banderilla I were planting in the hide of a bull,
and the pulp seemed like the palpitating flesh of the wounded animal.
The sight is one that makes the knees tremble and the head throb. It is
a lesson in murder.’

The moral distinction between heroism shown when suffering is
witnessed for the purpose of aiding the sufferer and that evinced for
the selfish desire of individual gain or excitement, was strikingly
exhibited by a German nurse whom we sent on to the army during the
Civil War in America. This frail-looking woman drifted on to the front,
and, after the Battle of Gettysburg, donning a pair of man’s boots,
wading in pools of blood and mud, spent two days and nights on the
field of slaughter, drawing out still breathing bodies from the heaps
of slain, binding up wounds, giving a draught of water, placing a rough
pillow under the head, in an unselfish enthusiasm that knew neither
hunger nor fatigue. The ghastly wounds, the blood, the shrieks and
groans of that horrid scene served but as fuel to the fire of humanity
that consumed her.

_The Effect on Teachers or Practitioners of Medicine._--In considering
the subject of experimentation, reason requires that we realize the
necessary distinction between the methods employed in training students
for a practical profession and the exceptional position of the few
geniuses who possess the rare combination of qualities essential to
scientific investigation. In calling attention to this distinction we
do not condone torture, for this can be proved to be unscientific. But
it emphasizes a growing and mischievous evil of the present day when
numbers of ordinary teachers of physiology, whose gifts are limited and
whose especial business is to instruct students in the knowledge which
has been attained, consider themselves capable of original scientific
research, or attempt to repeat before either students or popular
audiences so-called demonstrations on living creatures.

The showy plan of experimenting on animals is undoubtedly a great
temptation to teachers. Such practice readily gains the gratifying
applause of inexperienced learners, who are misled by an appearance of
conclusiveness in the lectures, which they are quite incompetent to
gauge. But the influence thus exercised is a harmful one, diverting the
mind from right methods of study.

The temptation to make a display before imperfectly informed persons is
too great. If the profession is to advance in popular esteem, it will
recognise that the unfeeling destruction of living creatures, even the
pithing of a frog or the dissection of the salivary glands of a living
mouse, is a false method of forming the minds of students, which should
be entirely abandoned.

We must here note the demand lately made by some leading members of the
profession for increased facilities for experimentation on animals.
Now, anyone who studies the Cruelty to Animals Bill (30 and 40 Vict.),
which in 1876 licensed vivisection in Great Britain,[15] will see how
easy it now is to obtain a license, and how carefully the provisions
of the Bill are arranged to give freedom to experimentation--in fact,
to protect experimenters rather than their helpless victims. Thus,
whilst in Section 2 a penalty of £100 or three months’ imprisonment is
imposed for acts of cruelty, the Bill proceeds in Section 3 to give
absolute freedom to every licensed person to torture, to mutilate,
to disease to any extent if he considers it advisable to do so. In
Section 11 it gives exceedingly wide scope for procuring licenses. By
Sections 7 to 10 it makes the efficient oversight of licensed persons
almost impossible, and by the provisions of Sections 13 to 15 it
virtually excludes the influence of growing humanitary conscience in
the community from being exerted on the persons and places licensed.
In short, the Bill would rather seem to be skilfully devised to give
a free hand to persons who may call themselves ‘scientific’ than to
protect living creatures who cannot protect themselves.

The plea put forward by the gentlemen referred to--viz., that medical
progress is now hindered in England by restrictions--is practically a
justification by them of the inhuman practices which prevail in France,
Germany, Russia, and the United States, and in all countries where
the conscience of the people has not been aroused to the moral and
intellectual dangers involved in the torture of animals.[16]

Surely these English physicians who demand entire freedom for
vivisection do not realize what the result of foreign methods is. They
cannot have noted the innumerable examples of atrocious cruelty which
are occurring in the records of medical research as practised on the
Continent and in America.

They cannot have taken note of such typical examples as the utterly
useless barbarity of Senn of Philadelphia, setting fire to a dog
that he had pumped full of hydrogen gas, before the Medical Congress
of Berlin in 1890. Nor the experiments in massage on a series of
large disjointed dogs performed in Professor Charles Richet’s Paris
laboratory, not only with the permission, but with the consultative
advice of that gentleman. A set of more unjustifiable experiments were
never devised.

Certainly, no body of honourable English physicians who are in the
habit of reading _Les Archives Générales de Médecine_ would fail to
condemn such fallacious experiments, where the pretence of anæsthesia
served to diminish the resistance of the victims--not to annihilate
pain.

_Factors in Human Nature._--It must never be forgotten that gambling
excitement or the spirit of undue emulation exists in all classes
of men--in biological investigators as well as others--and it needs
guidance or restraint.

The German officer Reizenstein felt keen remorse for the murder of
his beautiful Irish mare Lippespringe, yet he and his companions
tortured thirty horses to death under the temporary insanity of intense
rivalry. But it was possible to bring public conscience to bear on
this barbarity, and thus check the recurrence of any similar future
aberration.

So in biological research we see the disastrous effects of individual
and national rivalry. They are shown in the contradictory results of
false methods of observation, in the endless repetition of similar
painful experiments, in the strife of conflicting theories, and in
the practical failure of results obtained from the lower animals when
applied to the human race.

The moral sense of a noble profession may well be appealed to to create
a conscience which shall check the present grave abuses of so-called
research.



                              CHAPTER VII

                           _Prurigo Secandi_

Another serious ethical danger connected with unrestrained experiment
on the lower animals is the enormous increase of audacious human
surgery, which tends to overpower the slower but more natural methods
of medical art and to divert attention from hygiene.

This modern increase of surgery, entailing permanent mutilation, has
received a special name, prurigo secandi, or cacoethes secandi. It
prevails in France and in every country where no restraint is placed on
animal experimentation,[17] or where the importance of not injuring
the moral sense of students has not been recognised.

The great increase in ovariotomy, and its extension to the insane is a
notable result of this prurigo secandi.

Dr. Chanu, in his carefully-prepared thesis of 1896, in exposing
the grave abuse of this branch of surgery, estimates that there
were 500,000 castrated women in France, and one in every 250 women
throughout Europe. He finds the decrease of the birth-rate to coincide
with the abuse of ovariotomy. ‘Dr. Chanu affirmed, before a jury unable
to refute his assertion, that the abuse of ovariotomy has done more
harm to France in ten years than the Prussian bullets did in 1870, and
that the causes of the depopulation of France are closely allied to the
practice of the castration of women.’

The prevention of disease in the organs of generation must be sought
for persistently in improved education of the young--the male as well
as the female--and in _just_ relations of the sexes.

Of the same nature as the prurigo secandi of medical practice is the
motive or source of much of the laboratory experimentation.

The various ethical dangers resulting from conscienceless or irrational
experiments on animals demand much more serious consideration by the
profession than has hitherto been given to them. In the opinion of an
increasing number of intelligent physicians, a vast amount of what is
now presumptuously called research--experiments disguised under learned
names, but which are really the irrational mutilating and diseasing of
sentient living creatures--are no more _scientific_ research than is
the gratification of a child’s curiosity when it sticks a pin with a
thread through a cockchafer, to see how long it will fly and how loud
it will buzz. The child, when punished for its thoughtless cruelty,
might remonstrate in learned terms that it should not be restrained,
for it was investigating the vital endurance of the _Melolontha
vulgaris_ and the acoustic properties of its wing-covers, under
interesting and abnormal conditions.

A large proportion of what is simply conscienceless curiosity, often
starting from more or less frivolous tentative diversions of the
laboratory, though now by courtesy named research, is no more valuable
than the child’s spinning of the cockchafer, and should be as sharply
checked.

The genesis of discovery in biology, with its necessary relations to
therapeutics, has yet to be written. Extending experience is more and
more clearly showing us, as a practical fact, that whilst observation
and rational--_i.e._, humanely limited--experiment are legitimate
and noble efforts for the attainment of improved medicine, cruel
and merely curious experiment, condemned by our moral faculties, are
misleading and mischievous.

Men like Professor Henschel, of Upsala, and Professor Pettenkofer, of
Munich, warn our eager young investigators against drawing conclusions
as to human beings from experiments made on animals.

We find, as a matter of fact, that all the _permanent_ advances of
medicine have been gained whilst pursuing rational and righteous
methods, whilst all the fiascoes of supposed discovery have resulted
through departing from them.

Anæsthetics, antiseptics, and sanitation are not the result of cruel
experimentation.

_Danger of Inoculation._--The most serious fallacy arising from
erroneous methods of biological research is the practice of vitiating
human blood by the introduction of the diseased products of animals.
This dangerous method, which threatens to undermine national health,
is the necessary outcome of diseasing animals on the plea of seeking
remedies for human disease.

The intellectual fallacy involved in this practice will be considered
later; but its ethical character as affecting conscience must here be
noted, as it is this line of research which is productive of the most
extended form of cruelty to the lower animals--viz., _slow_ torture.

The following extract from records of the Belgian Academy of Medicine
illustrates this subject: ‘Researches on the inoculability of cancer
ought to be encouraged. The numerous experiments made on animals are
still contradictory in results. Drs. Francotte and De Rector have in
the years 1891-92 inoculated mice under the skin of the shoulder. The
inoculations were carried on from June, 1891, to May, 1892, when the
following appearances were presented: The whole region of the shoulder
was inflamed; there was necrosis of the corresponding upper extremity,
which dropped off from dry gangrene; the stump left was indurated,
hard, and painful, whilst the lymphatic glands in connection with the
part were enlarged. The examination of the tumour disclosed nothing
very particular. The bones were the seat of osteoporosis, and the
arteries showed arteritis. The investigators believe the tumours were
cancerous, but this statement must be received with caution.’

Such long-continued torture, even of a mouse, is morally degrading,
and, as if in retribution, is doomed to be useless.

A Chinese medical author, Tuan Mei, writing in the last century, 1716
to 1797, lays down a true medical axiom when he marks the difference
between death and torture as follows: ‘Living creatures are for our
use, and we may put them to death. But we may not make death a boon,
and then withhold it from them.’



                             CHAPTER VIII

                    _What is Scientific Research?_

The apparent opposition between popular and medical judgment in
relation to certain methods of biological research which claim to be
scientific, necessitates a clearer knowledge of what science is, and
a recognition of the methods of research which can alone be called
scientific.

It is certain that knowledge of truth must reconcile varying but honest
opinions, and furnish plans of investigation that neither shock the
humane development of our nature nor hinder our intellectual progress
towards truth.

The terms ‘science’ and ‘scientific’ are constantly used and abused.
They are often applied to the accumulating of facts or of phenomena;
but such accumulation is not necessarily science, and may even hinder
science. For although the collecting of facts may bring together
valuable materials essential for future use, it may also bring together
rotten or sham materials, which will interfere with sound work. A
faulty method of endeavouring to obtain facts may seriously destroy
the value of the phenomena thus observed.

The gratification simply of intellectual activity or curiosity must
not be confounded with genuine research. Curiosity is the outcome
of ignorance. Now, our ignorance of much in Nature is no reproach
to anyone, but the way in which curiosity is gratified marks the
difference between the simple child and the rational adult. In the
childish development curiosity, though useful, is superficial and
short-sighted; it is necessarily a shallow impulse, which cannot
realize the wide relations of existence, and its satisfaction has no
necessary connection with the acquisition of valuable knowledge. But
the adult rises into a higher plane of thought. Curiosity is no longer
unduly exercised, but has grown into a love of truth. It has become
that reverential use of reason which is the basis of truth, and which
forms the true guide to the attainment of scientific knowledge; for
rational method does not isolate a fact from all its connections, but
sees it in its relations and in due proportion. Thus only can valuable
knowledge be acquired.

Neither is analysis science. It is only when the observations of
analysis are corrected and proved by synthesis that the truth of
science can be obtained.

A clear recognition of the different use of analysis and of synthesis
is essential in any claim of research to be called scientific.
‘Although by analysis we separate and by synthesis we combine, yet in
the synthesis there is more than in all the parts taken analytically.
The mere synthesis introduces something entirely new.’

Kant, in speaking of the use of analysis and synthesis in logic, lays
down the test of all scientific inquiry. He says: ‘Analysis is the
first and chief requirement in making our knowledge distinct. For
the more distinct our knowledge of a thing is, the stronger and more
effective it can be; only the analysis must not go so far that at last
the object itself disappears.’

Truth being a unity, the science which demonstrates it must correlate
all knowledge.

Science is not, therefore, an accumulation of isolated facts, or of
facts torn from their natural relations. To know a thing scientifically
is to know it in just relation to all other things. For science unites
and demands the exercise of our various faculties as well as of our
senses.

Science is proved knowledge. It is the study of causes and their
relations applied to facts; but such proof can only be obtained by
search which is in accordance with the laws of Nature--laws which are
gradually discovered by our race.

Natural law is deduced from all the facts of human experience, in
searching for and collecting which we must recognise the conditions
under which we are placed, the limitations of the present phase of our
intellectual powers, the gradual growth of conscience.

Science being proved truth, scientific method requires that all the
factors which concern the subject of research shall be duly considered,
in order to arrive at correct thought respecting the special subject of
inquiry.

The application of scientific method necessarily varies, therefore,
according to the subject under investigation.

Thus, the construction of a bridge and the calculation of an eclipse
equally involve the bases of scientific method--viz., observation,
deduction, and experiment; but each subject requires a special
application of scientific method, suited to the varying nature of the
subject of study.

Consequently, biological research, in order to be scientific, requires
a special modification of method, because the new factors of sensation
and consciousness come into play in biology--factors which do not exist
in astronomy, or geology, in mechanics, physics, or chemistry.

In order to attain truth respecting biology, therefore, the facts
concerning sensation and consciousness and their relation with, or
the way in which these new factors modify the facts of, physics and
chemistry must be carefully considered in this higher state which
we call life, or the investigation is not scientific, no matter how
interesting as an intellectual exercise.

When first endeavouring to find a recognised definition of the term
‘science,’ I consulted the latest _Encyclopædia Britannica_ of our
public library, thinking that from such an acknowledged authority a
correct statement could there be obtained. To my surprise, I found that
the word ‘science’ was not included in the list of subjects. Searching
further in this record of nineteenth-century thought, under the head
of ‘Biology’--that department which is ordinarily supposed to be the
science of life as distinguished from the consideration of non-living
things--the following principle was found to be laid down--viz., that
there was no essential difference between organized and unorganized
Nature, for life was simply a property of matter.

It is well to weigh the argument for this doctrine, which necessarily
destroys the essential idea of right and wrong, and removes the
foundation of good and evil. It is set forth in the following manner:

‘The abstract-concrete sciences are mechanics, physics, chemistry....
Whilst their subject-matter is found in a consideration of varied
concrete phenomena, they do not aim at a determination of certain
“abstract” quantitative relations and sequences known as “laws,”
which never are manifested in a pure form, but always are inferred
by observation and experiment upon complex phenomena, in which the
abstract laws are disguised by their simultaneous interaction.... These
sciences of mechanics, physics, and chemistry have for their object to
explain concrete phenomena by reference to the properties of matter set
forth in their generalizations.’

The following important dictum in regard to biology is thus laid down:

‘It is the business of those occupied with that branch to assign living
things in all their variety to the one set of forces recognised by the
physicist and chemist ... and its evolution’ (that is, the evolution of
life) ‘as the necessary outcome of those forces--the automatic product
of those same forces.... The discovery of the mechanical principle of
evolution completed the doctrine’ (of the material origin of life).
‘... It may be said to comprise the history of man, sociology, and
psychology--viz., the survival of the fittest in the struggle for
existence.’

This ignoring by the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ of any definition of
the word ‘science,’ and also the attempted reduction of life to a
property of matter, is, however, too limited a view of Nature to be
accepted by many thoughtful students of the present day. Turning,
therefore, to _Chambers’ Cyclopædia_, which is the latest expression
of the views of the able thinkers of North Britain, an explanation of
the term ‘science’ was found, which is far truer to advancing thought.
The comprehensive definition is there given that science ‘is the
correlation of all knowledge.’

As science searches for causes with their relations, and is proved
knowledge, so no branch of knowledge or method of acquiring knowledge
can be considered scientific which contradicts any facts of Nature, or
which bases its methods on the destruction of those facts.

Truth can only be arrived at by considering various or apparently
opposite aspects of human problems; so biological facts, or the
problems of organized or living creatures must be considered, not
simply from the side of ‘mechanics, physics, and chemistry, or the
automatic action of the forces of matter,’ but also from the equally
positive facts of life, and the forces which careful observation is
gradually showing to be enfolded in the fact of mind as developed
through protoplasm onward. The facts of affection, companionship,
sympathy, justice, are positive forces. They exercise a powerful
influence over the physical organization of all living creatures.

These mental forces can change the action of the bodily functions in
the most surprising manner, arresting the heart’s action, interfering
with secretion, or changing natural secretion into poison, and
destroying the normal and beneficial controlling action of the nervous
system. They are proved by experience to be so striking that they
cannot be overlooked in any unprejudiced investigation of natural
forces.

A fit of passion in a nursing mother has destroyed her infant;
the industrious cultivator seeing his field of strawberries, the
products of his toil, carried off by thieves, has fallen dead in his
vain efforts to stop the cruel depredation. But such instances are
world-wide, and corroborated by everyone’s experience. They prove that,
although the forces of mechanics, physics, and chemistry are employed
in the animal economy, there are also powers far beyond these limited
forces, which must be studied also in biological research, if we are to
learn how these physical may be overridden by mental forces. Without
such correlation of knowledge we fail to realize the unity of Nature,
and cannot attain to true science or proved knowledge.

It is thus seen that, as already stated, in useful scientific
investigation the object to be attained, the method to be employed, and
the application to be made of the knowledge searched for, must all be
considered in determining the distinction between genuine science and
simple unguided intellectual activity or curiosity.

It is necessary to emphasize the fact, because this vital distinction
is often overlooked in the claim now made for the grand term ‘science.’

In defining the meaning and scope of science as pursued by rational
beings, it must be recognised as a fundamental principle, which cannot
be too often dwelt upon, that what we can do, is not a measure of what
we ought to do. Thus, when Stanley attempted to excuse the infamous
action of his naturalist, Jameson,[18] by saying that he was a real
good fellow, but ‘his science misled him,’ he degraded the term
‘science’ by applying it to an act of morbid curiosity.

Again, when the Russian nobleman purchased a child and condemned it
to be brought up with a deaf and dumb nurse, under the unnatural
condition of deprivation of all social relations, his action was not
scientific, but a gratification of inhuman curiosity.

It is within our power apparently to drown an animal, human or brute,
and recover it to life again and again, but we gain no scientific
knowledge by so doing. We torture the creature and violate our natural
instincts, but we acquire no practical benefit to human welfare; on the
contrary, we endanger the mental integrity of the experimenter.

It is a short-sighted and hopeless attempt to do violence to Nature in
a search for scientific truth. Distinction must be made between the
possible and impossible in the conditions under which we are placed
in life. Thus, we cannot destroy the family relation, but we can make
it happy and conducive to the welfare of the race. We cannot change
the method of human generation, but we can spiritualize its exercise.
We cannot destroy the instinct of private property, but we can guide
and limit it. We cannot change structure, but we can educate it;
nor abolish curiosity, but we can restrain and direct it; nor check
invention, but it need not be applied to evil purposes. Neither can
we make races equal, but we can establish justice and mercy in the
relations of the stronger to the weaker.

This study of the natural laws which necessarily limit rational human
action applies with especial force to biological research, and explains
the reason for limiting scientific method.

Thus, the study of living creatures under unnatural or destructive
conditions, although it may be a well-meaning attempt to acquire
knowledge, is, nevertheless, a dangerous one. It is intellectually a
false method which may lead to practical error, and produce a labyrinth
of confusion and contradictory experience which hinders the attainment
of exact knowledge. It is morally a false method, because it injures
those elementary instincts of justice and mercy by whose evolution
civilization advances. Thus the progress of the race is retarded.

The present astounding multiplication of drugs, of inoculations, of
mutilations in the practice of medicine, with the eager attempt to
prove each new invention by a formidable array of imperfect statistics,
is a striking object lesson in the present day of the error into which
false methods of research have led many members of a noble and humane
profession. It is a fallacy necessarily proceeding from a wrong view of
what science really is.

Although this erroneousness is by no means solely connected with
vivisectional methods, yet if the high claim which the noble art of
medicine makes to advance our social well-being be justly founded, a
stringent obligation rests upon it not to injure the moral sense of its
members by the methods employed in education or in practice.



                              CHAPTER IX

                        _The Axiom of Science_

The fundamental law, without whose observance reliable biological
investigation is impossible, is stated as follows:

‘In studying the laws alike of organic and of inorganic Nature, the
experimenter must be careful not to destroy the phenomenon that is
being investigated.’

Intellectual error, as well as practical danger, arises from the
attempt to transfer to man results supposed to be gained by fallacious
experimentation on the lower animals. The fallacy consists in noting
general resemblance of structure, but not the far more remarkable
differences of function. If, for instance, the life habits of two dogs
of good breed are closely studied, it will be seen that, although
certain individual differences are observed between the dogs, yet they
are as nothing when compared with the enormous variation of function
between the dog and the human being. The bones and garbage swallowed
without injury, and the licking of its body, show the different type of
digestion and assimilation, the action of the kidneys, of the various
senses, and the possession of senses which we are unable to appreciate;
in short, its distinctive type of existence proves the impossibility
of drawing safe inferences for man from the digestive or other canine
functions. Again, observation and rational experiment, solely for the
benefit of one species of animal, may incidentally lead to the benefit
of other races of animals, but direct experiment on one type for the
supposed benefit of another kind is unscientific.

It is this error that vitiates the famous postulates of Professor Koch,
through the system of ‘controls,’ the latest exemplification of this
fallacy being the attempt to prove the existence of cholera in man by
cultivating the bacilli in animals. The same error also produces the
failure of M. Pasteur to prevent hydrophobia in man.

It is well known how the influence of what we term ‘mind’ governs the
action of the bodily functions, either promoting or disturbing their
normal condition. This is a fact of growing importance in practical
medicine. Similar influence is exerted in varying degrees on all living
creatures. Destructive or non-natural experimentation on living animals
is always subject to the fallacy of morbid condition.

The established law of research stated above exposes the error of
pursuing biological investigation (or the study of vital action) by the
process of mutilating or diseasing living animals.

In research the radical difference between inorganic and organic Nature
cannot be too clearly insisted on. Whilst in the former we can resolve
compounds into their elements and recombine them, such process is
impossible in organic Nature. We can take a steam-engine or a watch to
pieces, examine their parts, repair them, and put them together again,
thus proving our knowledge in this realm of Nature. But a living thing
cannot be treated in the same way. Not only the difference of animal
type forbids destructive method of investigation, but as the type rises
in the scale of creation the growing fact of individual idiosyncrasy
increases the uncertainty of erroneous method.

Therefore the law of scientific research, which forbids the destruction
of phenomena to be studied, is profoundly true.

If this law be not observed, intellectual activity may be gratified,
self-conceit or love of novelty and excitement may be pandered to, the
panic of fear in human beings may be worked upon, but the attainment of
scientific truth in biology will be impossible.

It is thus seen that methods of biological research which involve cruel
or destructive experimentation are both ethically unjustifiable and
intellectually fallacious. They are unscientific methods which will
inevitably be abandoned as we attain to clearer views of that unity of
truth in which the reconciliation of human conscience with intellectual
activity becomes alone recognised as science.



                               CHAPTER X

                   _Rational Experiment in Research_

As an illustration of legitimate and even heroic experiment, the trial
made with cholera bacilli by Dr. Von Pettenkofer of Munich on himself
during the cholera epidemic of 1891 deserves permanent record.[19] It
is of importance as showing the fallacy that may be involved in the
exaggerated search for bacilli, as the chief cause of disease, which is
the favourite theory and practice of the present day.

Dr. Von Pettenkofer (in opposition to the common medical belief)
asserts that the diffusion of the cholera germ or cholera bacillus is
not the chief cause of cholera. He states that there are two other
absolutely necessary conditions, without which no outbreak of cholera
is possible, and if these conditions are not present, the cholera germ
may be breathed with no production of cholera.

The first condition is the unhealthy state of the soil or locality. But
even this does not produce an outbreak if the second condition does
not exist--viz., individual predisposition; and he shows that neither
the cholera germ nor the insanitary locality, nor both combined, will
produce cholera if this individual predisposition does not exist. He
further states that no experiments upon the lower animals can be relied
on; the only _proof_ in relation to cholera must be from the experience
of human beings.

Dr. Von Pettenkofer proceeded to experiment on himself, choosing
Munich, in daily communion with Hamburg (where the epidemic was
raging), as the place of operations, and sent to Hamburg for the
cholera germs. On October 7 he swallowed a centimetre of fresh cholera
culture, in the presence of witnesses--_i.e._, infinitely more than
could be taken in by touching the lips with contaminated fingers, a
cubic centimetre of culture being calculated as containing a thousand
million microbes. He in no way changed his manner of living, eating
accustomed food, including fruit, cucumbers, and other forbidden
articles of diet. During the following week his physiological
condition, pulse, temperature, etc., were carefully noted. Nothing
unusual occurred but a little internal rumbling and slight diarrhœa,
which passed away of itself. Two skilled bacteriologists, MM. Peiffer
and Emerich, carefully examined the secretions during this experiment.

M. Von Pettenkofer himself thus states the results:

‘The comma bacilli not only prospered in my digestive tube, but had so
multiplied in it that it was evident they found a congenial soil. They
were found there in quantities, and in a state of pure culture. But
on October 14 all the secretions were normal, only containing a few
isolated microbes, which had entirely disappeared on the 18th.

‘Now, most bacteriologists assert that the cholera bacilli remaining in
the intestines secrete there a poison, which, being absorbed, produces
the cholera. But what a quantity of poison must have been secreted
by these milliards of bacilli during the eight days’ sojourn in my
intestines! Yet I felt perfectly well, had an excellent appetite, felt
neither indigestion nor fever, etc., and I attended every day to my
usual occupations. Whence I conclude that the comma bacillus, though
it may cause a little diarrhœa, produces neither European nor Asiatic
cholera.

‘Now, it must not be imagined that I am the adversary of the cholera
bacillus; but it is erroneous to suppose that when a specific microbe
has been discovered in the secretions of an infectious disease that the
means of fighting it has also been discovered. The discovery of the
bacillus of consumption was just as interesting as the discovery of
the cholera bacillus, but since its discovery phthisis has destroyed
neither one man less nor one man more.

‘These (bacteriological) methods for protection against cholera rest
purely upon theory, and it seems to be thought that henceforth cholera,
etc., ought to behave according to the prevalent theory, instead of
theory being modified according to the cholera. Instead of trying to
catch the comma bacillus and draw a cordon around it, the essential
thing is to make all the dwelling-places of man healthy.’

Such is the vigorous and genuinely scientific experiment of a
distinguished medical investigator.

Other experimenters have confirmed Dr. Von Pettenkofer’s observations.
On October 17 Dr. Emerich made a similar experiment on himself, with
like results.

Since then, experiments have been made in the Vienna Pathological
Institute, with the following results: Six persons partook of the comma
bacillus in no mean quantity, and not one of them has had the disease.
The six are two doctors, the servant of the Institute, two medical
students, and a private gentleman. Professor Stricker treated them
all. Two did not feel their health impaired at all; one had headache,
was slightly feverish, and could not sleep; two had slight attacks of
diarrhœa; and only one was really ill, but recovered at the end of a
week. These experiments inspire medical men with serious misgivings as
to the theory which considers the comma bacillus as the cause of all
cholera.

The supremacy of sanitation is the lesson which is being gradually
taught by such humane scientific experiments. Dirt in its largest
sense, as matter in the wrong place, whether in air, water, food,
clothing, habitation, soil, or contact, is undoubtedly a main physical
cause of disease.

But in all epidemic disease the emotion of fear must be recognised as a
most potent predisposing cause. The great fact of mind or emotion is a
powerful influence in producing, in preventing, or in curing disease.

This psychological side of medicine is only beginning to receive due
attention. As the fallacies which arise in animal experimentation
from the production of fear, pain, and coma have not yet been fully
recognised, so the inevitable influence of mind in modifying physical
conditions has never yet been studied scientifically in human medicine.
Yet facts exist in unsuspected abundance which need to be collected,
verified, tabulated, and their laws of action diligently studied.

It is known that even that strong muscle the heart may be ruptured by
the agony of intense emotion. At Blackburn the daughter of a woman
charged with theft became dumb with horror at her mother’s sudden
arrest. Hydrophobia, cholera, and even small-pox, appear to have been
caused by fear.

The extent to which even the so-called microbes of infectious
diseases may be produced by fear acting on idiosyncrasy demands very
serious investigation; for as it is now generally conceded that morbid
micro-organisms do not exist _ab æterno_, it is essential to know by
what unhealthy conditions the micro-organisms, or living particles that
always surround us, become disease germs.

One of our most distinguished London physicians has full records of
the following noteworthy case, which is given, not as scientifically
proved, but as indicating a line of research which it is folly to
ignore or refuse to investigate.

This gentleman attended a patient some years ago in an attack of
confluent small-pox under these remarkable circumstances: This
patient had always exhibited a morbid horror of the disease, refusing
to hear anything about it or to allow it to be referred to in his
presence. A friend on one occasion brought a very fine collection of
anatomical plates to show him, sent over from France. Amongst them
was a representation of confluent small-pox in a woman. No sooner had
this gentleman beheld it than he cried, ‘Take it away! I cannot look
at it; it makes me ill!’ The next day his son sent for the doctor to
see his father, who had felt unwell ever since the shock of seeing the
pathological plate. He was found suffering from the first symptoms of
an illness which proved to be an attack of confluent small-pox. The
most searching inquiry failed to discover any traces of the disease,
either in the neighbourhood or in any connection whatever with the
patient. The cause of this illness, one of the most severe cases the
doctor had ever met with, remained a mystery.

It has become of vital importance to investigate ‘how far the mental
attitude determines or permits the onset of infectious disease.’



                              CHAPTER XI

                   _The Range of Painless Research_

‘I am content to let Nature do all the torturing and man all the
relieving ... the grandest physiology and physiological discovery could
exist outside every shade of painful experiment.’[20]

These are the words of one of our wisest physicians, deliberately
written in the full maturity of a life devoted to original research and
its practical application to medicine. His experience led him to the
recognition of this great truth: that the supreme aim of the medical
profession must become more and more the advancement of sanitation. In
any comprehensive view of medical art as a science the cure of disease
is rationally secondary to its prevention.

This, notwithstanding the trade exigencies of competitive living,
is recognised by the established rule of the profession--that the
physician’s first duty is not to injure his patient.

Sanitation necessarily takes into consideration all the elements, both
mental and physical, of our complex nature.

It is by the investigation of the laws of healthy created life and
their practical application that progress in medicine must be looked
for. By observing ‘scientifically’ the method and variations of these
laws we shall approach nearer to the understanding of ‘vital force.’

An immense range of biological inquiry urgently invites the genius of
those who are gifted with the rare power of original research.

This range is practically unlimited. The collection of all useful
or suggestive facts gathered by genuinely scientific methods from
the enormous accumulations to be found in our Government reports, in
the records of our medical periodic literature, in the observations
of hospitals, societies, cliniques, and private practice, would, if
properly arranged and tabulated, form a most useful branch of such a
centre. If such collection and examination were extended to the records
of other countries, the value as well as labour of the work would be
greatly increased.

The observation of the dietetic and hygienic as well as medical
treatment of disease, including climate, soil, atmospheric conditions,
the distribution of disease, the effect of occupations, prenatal
influences, and later training, are essential.

The action of mineral waters, of compressed and medicated air, the
hydration of tissues, the conversion of vegetable into animal tissue,
the action of the various constituents of the human body as curative
of disease, present necessary subjects of investigation.

A careful judicial inquiry into the claims of specific cures, where
a sufficient case for investigation is presented (as _Echinacea
angustifolia_ in snake-bite, also the Russian bath as preventive of
hydrophobia), would form another valuable department.

In fact, it is impossible to specify the full range of important
subjects which demand the devotion of able and painstaking research,
working upon the careful study of each type of life for the benefit and
improvement of that type.

In no branch of this wide range of inquiry is painful experiment
necessary.

Our homes, our industrial occupations, our legislative enactments,
should all be guided by hygienic knowledge, and its diffusion should be
actively encouraged by the community. Our hospitals and dispensaries
need to promote practical hygiene. Our medical schools should turn the
force of their learning, ability, and great influence to the conversion
of their students into a vast body of sanitary missionaries. If our
thousands of medical graduates turned out every year into practice
could go forth inspired with enthusiasm for health, convinced that the
preservation of health was their especial work, and that all disease
must be regarded as a violation of the laws of health, a violation
which it was their special duty to fight against, a mighty step in the
advancement of medicine would be taken. The impulse to such progress
should come from improved instruction in our medical schools, and in
the management of our hospitals.

We much need also an unprejudiced and exhaustive history of the
progress of biological inquiry since the Middle Ages, with its present
result in therapeutics. Such a history may be expected to confirm the
not unfounded opinion that the most important advances in practical
medicine have been made by methods which are not in any way at variance
with our natural instincts of justice and mercy.



                              CHAPTER XII

                    _Recapitulation of Principles_

I. The attainment of truth, not the gratification of curiosity or of
personal ends, is the sole and distinctive aim of genuine scientific
research.

II. It is a radical intellectual error to apply the same methods of
investigation, suitable to inorganic facts, to the study of organic
facts. Natural law being mind ruling matter, every method employed
in research into organic Nature must respect and take into account
the inseparable mental factor in each type of sentient life, or it
becomes unscientific, and may promote fallacy, not truth. Destructive
experiment on living creatures, even under the partial suspension
of consciousness produced by anæsthetics, is an erroneous method,
producing confused or contradictory results.

III. Scientific research in biology must be based upon close and
extensive observation of the varying forms of animal life, under
natural conditions, with post-mortem examination of the records left by
health and disease. Experiments, whether for the repair of lesions or
the cure of disease, can only become scientific when made upon the type
of life to be benefited by the experiment.

IV. Any experimentation which creates involuntary suffering in living
creatures vitiates the necessary conditions of scientific research,
and tends to degrade human conscience by producing indifference to
suffering.

V. In training our future practitioners of the healing art, the
cultivation of respect for life and the strengthening of enlightened
sympathetic conscience in dealing with all poor or helpless creatures
are of paramount importance. The present system of medical education
requires revision in order to make health, not disease, the central
subject of study.

Finally, full and generous encouragement to those who are engaged in
important painless research is urgently needed. Such research should be
carried on, if possible, in connection with the great body of serious
scientific investigations, by persons of proved ability and clear moral
sense, and the work should be cordially open to the observation of all
earnest friends.

Such research, reconciling by right methods of investigation
intellectual activity with human conscience, would increase our
knowledge and advance our well-being in accordance with the higher
reason of the race. Only when thus guided by intelligence and
conscience can biological research deserve the noble name of science.

It is by the recognition of this true method of biological research
and by the generous support of physiologists who honestly seek for
truth, even when opposed by temporary fashions of medical opinion, that
medicine will become a science.


FOOTNOTES:

[10] Sir B. W. Richardson, _Biological Experimentation: its Functions
and Limits_, p. 15.

[11] This sound method is well exemplified in the writings of the
French naturalist, Le Roy.

[12] The former horrors of the hospital operating-room are graphically
described from personal observation in Sir B. W. Richardson’s treatise,
_The Mastery of Pain_.

[13] See the standard work of Hirsch, _Handbook of Geographical and
Historical Pathology_ (New Sydenham Society), vol. ii., pp. 416-466.
The value of this translation is greatly increased by its excellent
index.

[14] Thus, the authorities of Paris ordered twenty friendless dogs to
be tied to the branches of trees in a wood, and a shell made in the
municipal laboratory exploded amongst them, riddling and mangling them
fearfully.

[15] The humane and carefully-guarded Bill drawn up by the Royal
Society for the Protection of Animals, and introduced by the Earl of
Harrowby and Lord Carnarvon, was rejected.

[16] The judicious remarks of Lord Farrer in relation to municipal
affairs apply equally to the subject under consideration. He says: ‘My
immediate object, however, is not to preach upon the general question,
but to make a practical suggestion. What we want to know is, Which of
the two ways of doing any particular work is the cheaper and better?
Much experience of public departments leads me to doubt their own
reports upon their own doings; not, of course, from any dishonesty on
the part of the officials, but from a natural tendency in every man to
make the best of what he does. It is for this reason, as well as from
want of sufficient experience, that I cannot feel absolute confidence
in the reports made to the London County Council on the results of
their own experiments.’

[17] ‘Professor Leon le Fort, Professor Verneuil, Professor Duplay,
and Professor Tillaux, have been asked by a public journal for their
opinions on the operative mania (_furie opératoire_) said to be
prevalent at present. Professor le Fort says it is much more widespread
in France than in other countries, and in a long letter he protests
against the custom amongst the young French surgeons, in order to
bring their names before the public, “to seek out some operation
unknown in France, then seek out a victim on whom they can perform
it, in order to report it before a medical society, and perhaps also
show the patient.” Then, says M. le Fort, they take up the operation
as a speciality, perform it on 100 or 200 patients, and thus gain a
reputation. Professor Verneuil protests against the abuse of operations
in general, and especially of gynæcological operations. He deplores the
prurigo secandi with which so many of the French surgeons are attacked.
Professor Duplay and Professor Tillaux express the same opinions.’ See
_Medical Reprints_, May, 1893.

[18] This naturalist, when amongst cannibals in the Emin Pasha
Expedition, bribed the cannibal tribe to eat a young negro girl.

[19] The entirely negative results of all experiments made upon the
lower animals to determine if cholera is communicable, or where the
poison resides, is demonstrated by an endless series of experiments on
the lower animals made in many countries. The extent and severity of
these experiments, as well as their inconclusiveness, is impartially
detailed in the classic work of Hirsch, _Handbook of Geographical and
Historical Pathology_, vol. i., pp. 476-480.

[20] Sir B. W. Richardson, _Biological Experimentation: its Function
and Limits_, pp. 92, 93.



                          CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM

            _THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE EASTER SEASON, 1882_



                          CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM


About thirty years ago a little band of ardent and earnest men joined
themselves together as Christian Socialists, under the guidance of
the Rev. F. Maurice, Rev. Chas. Kingsley, and other able and hopeful
leaders. They shared in a high degree that ardent desire after
‘Practical Christianity’--that embodiment in every act of daily life of
the spirit of our Master’s teachings--which has always existed in the
Christian Church, and which can only cease with the disappearance of
the Christian faith.

The grand idea of human brotherhood is a vital principle of our Lord’s
teaching. It is the foundation on which He builds His Church. But
practical Christianity cannot exist unless political and social economy
are founded upon this principle of brotherhood. Trade and manufactures,
agriculture and education, national government and the individual
home, are not Christian unless they are inspired by this central
principle, laid down by our Divine Master, and reiterated in every page
of His wonderful life--viz., that we must live as brethren under the
inspiration of a wise and loving Father.

Attempts to realize more fully this fundamental portion of the
Christian faith, by special associated efforts, have always been
observed in every age. From those early times when the disciples laid
their offerings at the Apostles’ feet, and strove to ‘have all things
in common,’ to the present day, the attempt to secure higher ends by
the power of combination--a combination inspired by the highest idea of
right--is always going on.

Christian Socialism, therefore, is no new idea. It is as old as
our faith. It is the shaping of actual daily life on the principle
of Christian brotherhood. It enters in some degree into every
association--church, chapel, or society of any kind whatsoever--which
seeks to embody an unselfish or a higher spiritual idea; but the
Christian Socialist believes that the structure of society in every
part should be moulded by the idea of united interests.

The very gradual acquisition of wisdom by our race, however (a slowness
which seems to be the necessary condition for securing both freedom and
strength), leads to the frequent exercise of zeal without knowledge.
Direct attempts to join people together under better conditions
than the haphazard methods by which villages swell into towns have
frequently ended in failure.

But each successive generation enters upon active life with increased
intellectual development and with increased command over material
forces. If equal enlargement of the moral nature accompanies the growth
of intelligence, then the generation has made a solid advance in
wisdom, and the practical Christianity of true brotherhood is nearer at
hand. The Christian Socialist believes that many principles on which a
better society must be founded have come into clearer light during the
past thirty years, and have been, and are being, tested by varied and
valuable experiment.

The term Christian is here used in a legitimate practical sense.
Reverently and heartily a Christian must accept the rule and guide of
life so emphatically laid down by our Master--viz., that in eating and
drinking, in buying and selling, at home and abroad, we are to act for
our brethren, not for ourselves alone. We are to seek, first of all,
righteousness.

The problem we have to face is the ever-increasing amount and
variety of evils which we see around us, and to ascertain how far
this is caused by the present selfish structure of society, by the
false individualism which hypocritically asks, ‘Am I my brother’s
keeper?’ Evils now increase upon us more rapidly than we can remove
them. Pauperism and vice, drunkenness and crime, mammon worship and
frivolity, dishonesty and corruption, are all bred by ourselves. They
are largely produced by the conditions of the society into which
children are born, and by which they are moulded. Ten years of squalor
or degrading conditions may deteriorate or ruin the nature of the
child. My attention was once called to a bright and charming little
girl, brought to a public institution by a poor mother fallen into
sickness and poverty. One year was given to the mother to reclaim her
child. On a subsequent visit, after eighteen months’ interval, I failed
to recognise that child; her brightness was gone, her movements had
grown listless and awkward, her intelligence was dulled, her expression
vacant, she was sinking with frightful rapidity into the hopeless
pauper.

How pitiful are the results of our penitentiaries and reformatories,
of our workhouses, orphan asylums, and industrial schools, of all
the various charities by which we painfully and vainly try to mop up
evil and misery, or to sweep it out of our sight. The recipients of
punishment or care, when released, in the large majority of cases, fall
back again into the crime, temptation, and evil from which they had
been taken, and the flood of ruffianism and vice rises ever higher.

In the hard and crushing strife for decent living in which the great
mass of our population are entangled, health is injured, hope dies out,
and the gas-lighted gin-shop is the solace, as the dreary workhouse
is the refuge of those who have ceased to hope. Yet the great mass of
these persons have tried to do honest work. They have once hoped to
support wife and children as an honest man should do. How is it that
capital and labour have failed to come together in such a way that
every willing worker can secure a comfortable livelihood, that every
honest man can bring up his family in health and virtue? The relation
of capital to labour is a vital question of practical Christianity.

Consider also the great agrarian fight always going on to some extent
and periodically breaking out in revolution and outrage. Why is it that
the great bulk of English men and women are divorced from the soil?
Why are they always crowding into towns, whilst the precious natural
heritage of land is so often wasted and going out of cultivation?
Health and happiness should be found in country life. Such a life
should not be one of dreariness and ennui, or of hopeless drudgery.
There is no life so suitable for the healthy development of childhood
as a country life, with natural home influences. The care of animals,
the cultivation and observation of natural objects, the pure air and
abundant exercise which can be enjoyed, mark the country as the natural
home of childhood. Again, the production in perfection and abundance of
all the articles which naturally belong to various soils is a primary
need of healthy national growth. The conditions under which such
cultivation can be best carried on, with the kind and proportion of
manufactures which might advantageously spring up in connection with
it, affect the very structure of society. They provide the necessary
material and social conditions which furnish the possibility and
favouring of a religious life, or which create serious obstacles to
such a life.

The relation of the people to the soil of their native land is a very
serious question of practical Christianity.

Again, in what manner is the education of the various classes of our
children carried on? Consider the education given to the boys of the
aristocracy and upper classes. What chance have these lads of growing
into a sense of Christian brotherhood? They are fawned upon from
babyhood; initiated at school into the most heathen vices; corrupted
by luxury, taught that money can do everything, that rank will be
servilely worshipped. How can these poor lads become the large-hearted
leaders of a society founded on the Great Master’s teaching of
brotherhood? The character of education does not depend only on the
more or less wise oversight and arrangements of the schoolmaster, but
still more on the constant influences of the life in which the child
grows up. Trace the various stages of education downwards, through
all classes of the community, to the enormous mass of little boys and
girls trained from babyhood into vice and ruffianism, and we see that
education is a vital subject of practical Christianity.

Consider next the relations of the sexes. This subject is the
fundamental question of society, for the element of society is the
man, woman, and child, not the individual. How do our laws and customs
inculcate manly honour, womanly dignity--in short, Christian life?
Carefully studying this subject in its widespread ramifications, it
is seen to be the deepest question of human brotherhood--_i.e._, of
practical Christianity.

When, proceeding from more private to public affairs, we examine the
modifications or arrangements of municipal institutions which have
arisen in our towns, the examination is not encouraging. It is the
heathen, not the Christian, principle which is chiefly exemplified.
It is self intensified. The new power created throws off a sense
of responsibility to those who create it. No enlarged sense of
duty springs from the trust that is thus given to individuals; but
petty cabals and bickerings arise, narrow party views are fostered,
selfish interests advanced, or a foolish air of authority is assumed.
The more high-minded inhabitants shrink from entering into corrupt
political contest; centralization increases as municipal control is
degraded. Local and general government is too often only a parody of
representative institutions. The important question arises, In what way
can we who believe that public as well as private life should be guided
by a religious spirit attain the end? How can we form associations and
delegate necessary authority in such a way as to advance Christian,
not heathen, life? In observing the effect of Law upon the education
of a nation, we find that its embodiment in government forms a very
important branch of practical Christianity.

When we ponder all these vital questions, and earnestly strive to
put into practice the principles of action which we believe to be
profoundly true, we find our Christian sense of right shocked at every
turn by fixed conditions, which are the result of selfishness, not of
brotherhood. The spirit of self-interest, only useful as a servant,
has usurped the false position of master. Like all our faculties,
self-interest needs a higher guidance, or it degenerates into the
narrowest selfishness. We have not yet learned the one grand lesson of
Christianity--viz., that the largest view of self-interest can only be
found in brotherhood.

The inquiry now to be made is whether any new principles of
association, co-operation, combination--or by whatever name we choose
to express united interests--have so grown and been proved within the
last generation, that we may make successful advance on the path dimly
seen by the noble men I have referred to.

There have been many failures in attempts at the realization of
associated or organized life; but there are also many and striking
examples of successful, though imperfect, organization, founded either
upon a religious idea or on business enterprise, or on the enthusiasm
of some clever and benevolent individual. Roman Catholic, Moravian,
and Shaker communities will illustrate the first series of successful
organization; joint-stock enterprises and co-operative stores the
second; Leclaire’s house decorators’ guild and the Familistère of Guise
the third. It is through union of the forces exemplified in these three
classes of association that we may attain to a nineteenth-century
realization of practical Christianity in the future growth of towns or
colonies.

The following are some of the chief applications of the principle of
Christian brotherhood, which we believe will remould the structure of
future society:

1. The repurchase of land by Christian joint-stock companies, in order
that its control and management may henceforth belong to those who live
upon it and use it.

The absolute irresponsible individual possession of land becomes, as
society advances, contrary to the best interests of a nation. The soil,
which is limited in quantity, but indispensable to the maintenance and
welfare of the people, should not be treated as an individual selfish
speculation, regardless of its most advantageous use, and of the needs
of those who may live upon it.

It is the slow but sure result of the irresponsible monopoly of the
soil by individuals which is at the root of a great evil--viz., the
unnatural and diseased growth of great unorganized or selfishly
organized towns. Our towns, formerly the haphazard growth of accident,
are becoming more and more the growth of selfish speculation--_i.e._,
the false organization of self-aggrandizement. The hereditary or
other holder of land leases it to speculators, whose one object is
to make as much pecuniary profit as possible out of the lease. This
is the one point held steadily in view, often through a series of
underletting, in which each fresh speculator seeks to make a new
profit. Health, convenience, human welfare in its necessities and
interlinkings, are never thought of, or are entirely secondary to
gain. A showy neighbourhood for the rich, yielding the highest rents
that can be screwed out, and a crowded neighbourhood for the poor,
with still higher proportionate rents, are created. Gardens disappear
in the dreary mass of showy, badly-constructed brick-and-mortar
quarters in which the young generation grows up--dreary quarters, but
where rents and rates are constantly rising. This is the result of
irresponsible individual ownership and perverted organization in all
our rapidly-growing towns. It is a potent cause of growing immorality.

The control of land by a society or colony living upon it and using it,
does not forbid the leasing of land, under wise conditions, to persons
who are members of the society. It is the irresponsible individual
possession of land, with the speculation which such a method of holding
gives rise to, which is the principle always ultimately injurious to
society.[21]

2. Economy in distribution and management. A rational economy in the
retail distribution of products, in the domestic arrangements of our
homes, in the official management of local and general government, will
set free an immense number of persons whose time is now needlessly
occupied. The talent and energy of this wasted multitude should be
turned to increase of production and other necessary and valuable
employment, under the wise freedom of united interests.

3. A fair share of profits to all workers. This is a most important
principle, which can only be solved under the guidance of Christian
brotherhood. In the increased production which will result from wise
economy in distribution, management, and government, an equitable
division of profits between capital, ability, and labour must be
arranged. Interests must be united, industry stimulated, and hope held
out to the humblest worker in a Christian colony. When a young man
commences life in the honourable estate of Christian marriage, it is
the first duty of Christian society to support his hope and energy. The
future of this family is a matter of national concern. Steady industry
deserves a fair and increasing share in the profits it helps to
create. Counsel, if needed, encouragement to the mother in the healthy
and virtuous education of her children, and opportunity for hopeful
occupation, are all positive duties owed to every member of a Christian
society. The fulfilment of this duty depends in a great measure upon
the righteous relation of capital to labour.

4. The formation of insurance funds which will secure aid to every
worker in sickness or old age. Thrift, self-control, and an honourable
sense of independence are the results of such provision, which would be
the greatest possible aid to the noble temperance movement.

5. An arrangement of dwellings which will facilitate communication,
domestic service and supply, sanitary arrangement, the education of
children, and municipal government. These objects must be secured if
the rapid degradation of our poorer English homes is to be checked.
Parental influence and responsibility are equally disappearing in the
homes from which all sanctity has departed.

6. The entire abolition of all trade in the human body.

The waste of virile force and the degradation of womanly character
which result from the barbarous remnant of slavery existing in our
midst under the form of prostitution is incalculable. No community
which aspires to Christian life can permit this hideous trade to
exist. The buying and selling the human body is a natural wrong. The
fearful evils, moral and physical, which result from such trade prove
its inherent iniquity. Love, with the duties and responsibilities
which accompany its expression, is the only Christian warrant for the
intimate union of the sexes, and the growth and welfare of society
absolutely depends upon the wise guidance of these relations by
Christian principle. The wonderful advance of intelligence and moral
perception on this vital subject during the present generation is
the most hopeful sign of the nearer approach of organized Christian
society. As a striking contrast to growing immorality, the possibility
and incalculable benefit of equal purity for boys and girls, for men
and women, is the great truth which is springing into vigorous life
in this Nineteenth Century. A new world of hope and freedom opens to
women, a new realm of energy to men, from the consecration of this
mighty power of sex, which is descending upon our age as a great guide
for the future. This God-created force has hitherto been squandered
in these earlier centuries of our world’s life. Ignorance of woman’s
true dignity and providential position has been the greatest obstacle
hitherto in the Christian organization of society. This ignorance now
slowly but surely vanishing, opens to us a great and glorious promise
of unlimited future progress.

The principles thus expressed in very condensed form appear, from
their present maturer development, to be the especial gain of this
age. They are the legitimate results of Christian thought, growing in
comprehensiveness, and conscientiously applying itself to a solution of
the problems of social life.

Every proposition now set forth requires, however, long and careful
consideration. Some persons may not realize the dangerous and growing
evils which the prevalence of opposite methods of action is inflicting
on society. Young countries possessing abundance of unoccupied land may
not appreciate evils from which older countries suffer from individual
monopoly of land. Other persons may fail to see the full bearing
of these principles of Christian Socialism on our daily relations.
Others, again, may be entirely unable to foresee the methods by which a
Christian organization of society can ever become a practical fact. For
these reasons union in preparation is indispensable. The wisest ways
of realizing these principles in all their practical details require
the varied knowledge of different classes of persons. They require the
careful consideration of many minds, possessing both varied experience
and a profound sense of the necessity of Christian organization. If,
however, the principles laid down are true, then their realization must
be only a question of time. In our towns much may be done to place both
business relations and domestic life on a sounder basis. The gradual
introduction of methods leading in the right direction is possible,
by both men and women, in the two spheres of business and home life,
when the end to be obtained is thoroughly understood. A still more
rapid advance may be made by those who wish to establish country life
on a more Christian plan by uniting religious principle, joint-stock
enterprise, and wise guidance in the organization of an industrial
colony--a colony which would be the most potent Christian Missionary
Society.

Religious principle must be recognised as the essential basis of
permanent future growth. Only a large comprehension of the Christian
teaching of human brotherhood creates the highest conscientiousness,
with a sense of responsibility to an unseen but parental Creator. No
accumulation of material wealth, no appeal to the lower faculties of
our nature alone or chiefly, will ever hold human beings together in
permanent and harmonious organization of daily life.

Christian conscientiousness is the only power we know of, capable
of controlling and guiding selfhood. This controlling force is
indispensable in any wise effort to unite human beings together in
the varied interests of everyday life. Without religious principle
we possess no efficient check either upon the selfish scramble for
wealth, or on the soulless pursuit of science, or on the enthralment of
physical pleasure.

Consider some of our popular social maxims--‘Charity begins at home,’
‘Take care of No. 1,’ ‘Competition is the life of trade,’ ‘Demand
must govern supply,’ ‘Buy cheap and sell dear,’ etc. No one will deny
that there is an element of truth in all these maxims; but their
direct logical results, pushed to an extreme under the sole guidance
of selfish interest, become diabolical. This is clearly illustrated
by a remark once made to my own father by a Southern sugar-planter.
He stated that he could raise slaves so cheaply that it was the most
profitable plan to use them up in five or six years, and supply their
place with fresh ones!

The same necessity for the guiding influence of Christian
conscientiousness is seen in the pursuit of science. The modern
dicta, ‘Medicine has nothing to do with morality,’ ‘Knowledge is its
own end and justification,’ are the maxims of heathen, not Christian
philosophers. Indeed, many of those who now pursue scientific
investigation willingly assent to this statement, having lost all
knowledge of the value of true Christianity as the highest spiritual
guide of our race.

Accepting, then, the principle of Christian brotherhood as the
necessary religious foundation and constant guide of any true
organization, it is evident that all these weighty problems, now
briefly indicated must be considered and solved by the ‘Church.’

A Church, in the true sense of the word, is a society of men and women
who, accepting the Divine Mission of Christ, strive honestly to embody
His teaching in daily life. As each age grows out of the life of the
preceding age, so the practical incarnation of our Lord’s teaching
varies in form from age to age. In 1882 the form which Christian life
takes must necessarily vary from its form in 1800. Three generations
of men have gained immensely in intellectual, scientific, and moral
development. All the conditions under which human beings grow up
have changed. What we now especially and urgently need from the
‘Church’ is aid in adapting the never-changing principle of Christian
brotherhood to the ever-changing conditions of Nineteenth-Century
life. We need sermons and conferences and earnest life in the Church;
but the sermons must take up the Christian view of the relation of
capital to labour, the Christian view of the relation of the sexes,
the Christian protection and sound education of the young--in short,
the whole conduct of life, from the cradle to the grave, in private
and public. A certain inevitable hypocrisy is engendered by listening
week after week to lofty theories which are never put into practice,
or to impracticable suggestions. The soul grows callous when teaching
demands one course of action and daily life enforces a quite opposite
course. We need to learn in what way our actual life, public and
private, can be guided by our Lord’s injunction of brotherhood instead
of selfhood. Our Church Conferences should be the honest and eager
effort of every man and woman to consider together how these true
principles can be carried out by them. A Christian Church Conference
must ponder the life of that army of little drudges in our underground
kitchens, of the blasphemous boys and girls who gather at night in our
public places, of the vicious roués who crowd on us from London, of the
struggles of the poor householder who knows not how to pay the heavy
rent, of the tendencies of the trader oppressed by taxes, who sinks all
scruples in the desire to get money, and of the speculator whose one
desire is to make ‘wealth accumulate, though men decay.’ These are the
problems for Church Conferences which the practical Christianity of the
Nineteenth Century urgently requires should be solved.

It is only on these humble but indispensable foundations that a Church
which meets the needs of the age can be founded. It is only in a Church
so founded that prayer and praise and the worship of the Great Father
can become a glorious reality, and never sink into formalism.

A true Church, then, suited to the needs of this age, must be a
self-governing, industrial community, guided by Christian principle,
holding and managing its own lands, varied industries, and colleges.
It should send off out-shoots from time to time, new self-governing
colonies at home and abroad. These colonies necessarily possessing
varied individual colouring, according to occupation and composition,
should all agree in the one great uniting principle--organization on
the principles of Christian brotherhood. The Christian idea of united
interest, instead of the narrow antagonism of individual selfishness,
will be the distinguishing mark of true Church colonies--the practical
Christianity of the future.

There are large numbers of sincere followers of our Spiritual Guide
who clearly perceive the radical evils above referred to: persons who
long to devote thought, time, and means to the labour of forming a
Christian society; persons who would rejoice to leave their possessions
to the noblest Missionary work of the age. But these earnest seers are
scattered far and wide; they require the indispensable strength of
union. A grand work is before all the Churches to join their members
together under the noble banner of Christian Socialism. By careful
study of the various practical examples which now exist of successful
although imperfect organization, preparation can be made for union
together in the formation of a true Church Colony. A band of Christian
Socialists thus uniting in earnest preparation (whilst neglecting no
immediate duty) will be strengthened and guided in the course of a few
years to initiate the most important and urgent work that our age now
calls for.

The meaning of the Easter season is the arising of Christianity from
the grave--that grave where it lies bound in darkness, corrupting in
worldliness, dying through selfishness; but, thank God! not yet dead.
May our religious people awake from their fatal lethargy and roll away
the stone from the sepulchre, by the establishment of a true Christian
Society!


FOOTNOTES:

[21] The works referring to the economic principles laid down in this
paper, with the statistics and experiments which support and illustrate
them, are too numerous to mention here; but they are of the utmost
value to the Christian Socialist.



                             ON THE DECAY

                                  OF

                  MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

               _A CHAPTER OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, 1885_



          ON THE DECAY OF MUNICIPAL REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT


It is only in the belief that a simple narrative of facts, exactly as
they occurred, will show more vividly than an abstract statement can
do, the dangers which threaten our free institutions, that I venture to
offer this personal narrative to municipal voters, and particularly to
women householders.

When, in 1879, I became a householder in Hastings I did not at all
realize that I thereby acquired the right to vote in municipal
affairs, and that this right necessarily involved a corresponding
duty and responsibility--the duty, viz., of voting intelligently,
and necessarily a certain responsibility for the way in which the
government of the town was carried on.

I soon observed, however, that in the autumn, although I was neither
a Conservative nor a Liberal, I was called on by the Conservative and
the Liberal candidates for election to the Town Council to ask for my
vote, and although these visits often led to interesting conversation,
and my opinions were assented to with the most flattering courtesy
before the elections took place, I soon perceived that all influence
ceased with the election; the matters went on in the same way without
me as with me, and my supposed privilege of voting seemed really to
be very much of a mockery. Being, moreover, a peaceable person, and
much occupied with subjects of interest, it appeared to be rather a
waste of time to concern myself with an election which was managed by
cliques on strictly party issues, with no regard to questions of social
well-being, nor necessarily to the selection of the wisest and best
man, but only of the person who could in any way secure the largest
party vote.

Being compelled, also, as far as my limited powers of observation
admitted, to criticise the two great parties of the State, as both
committing much injustice, and as rather guided by class selfishness
than by high morality, I could not feel any enthusiasm for elections
carried on by party strife.

I thus began to fall into that easy state of indifference which
seems rapidly becoming the general condition of the mass of people
who are supposed by their votes to control municipal affairs; I
retained, however, an uneasy consciousness that in some way I was
failing to meet a duty that was laid upon me. I was roused from this
fatal moral lethargy by witnessing what seemed to me an act of gross
injustice--viz., a robbery of the poor of their inheritance. This
was the diversion of the funds of the Magdalen Charity (a bequest
from the piety and beneficence of past ages, now grown to an income
of some thousands annually) to the foundation of a middle-class
grammar school. The injustice was committed under the sanction of the
Charity Commissioners, notwithstanding a brave fight by some of our
conscientious inhabitants, carried on for more than two years. But
class interests and short-sighted officialism proved stronger than
justice in this case.

So painful an experience effectually opened my eyes to the irreligion
of not attending to the duties which lie nearest to us, and I saw that
the condition of the poor is very near to us. I fully realized, also,
for the first time, the constant duty which rests upon all those to
whom special municipal rights are given, to concern themselves with
the management of the town in which they live, this responsibility
especially resting upon every one on whom is laid the duty of voting.
Beginning, then, to attend my parish meetings, my sympathy was soon
aroused by seeing the bitter struggle of the industrious poor going
on all around me, to avoid sinking into pauperism. Cases of inability
to pay the rates were constantly coming before us[22] from weary
struggling men and women, who, if they sometimes ‘drink and forget
their poverty,’ demand pity more than blame.

Every year the pinch of poverty grew sharper. My own respectable young
servant could not marry her decent lover because rent was so dear. As
roomy lodging-houses and hotels spread along the sea-front, speculation
grew, and the mass of the people were huddled together in smoky cram
or squeezed out into dreary suburbs, far away from their work or from
opportunities for honest industry. I soon also learned the horror
with which the poor regard the workhouse; how they would willingly
die in peace in the forlornest home rather than be forced into what
they regard as a hopeless, cruel prison. My indignation deepened as I
thought of the deed still in our archives, in which, ‘I, Petronilla de
Cham, of Hastings, in the pure and lawful power of my widowhood,’ grant
a tract of land for maintaining the poor old men and women of Hastings
in decent maintenance and godly service; the brothers and sisters
of the Magdalen Hospital. ‘And I, Lady Petronilla and my heirs will
warrant and defend the aforesaid five acres of land with precincts,
to be held by the brothers and sisters freely, quietly, well, and
peacefully for ever,’ they praying for the souls of their benefactors.

As descendants of humane and pious ancestors, it seems to be as clearly
a religious duty to consider the condition of the poor in 1885 as it
was in 1292, when Lady Petronilla de Cham made her foundation gift to
the Magdalen Charity.

The more I considered this important problem of how to aid the
struggling poor in their heroic efforts to live decently, the more
important to my mind became the subject of taxation; how the rates
of a town are raised, and how they are expended. Unhappily, we see
all over the country that, in the same way, ancient endowments for
doles, retreats, pensions, and portions are swept away because the
workhouse system is said to provide for the poor; ancient endowments
for training, clothing, and apprenticing poor children are also swept
away, because the ‘Board of Education provides for the poor.’ Thus
the various necessities of social life, education, benevolence, etc.,
are being committed to the hands of officials--_i.e._, everything is
rapidly being thrown upon the rates, until the rates crush the poor
into pauperism.

Now, the question of rates is not at first sight an attractive
one, particularly to a person who has unusually little talent for
arithmetic. But in the present day they take the place of ancient
beneficence, and are administered by Town Councils instead of Church
organizations. I therefore determined to attend a meeting which was
being called to meet the Local Government official, in order to obtain
sanction for a new loan. This was my first appearance at a ‘Statutory’
meeting. To my surprise, when I took a seat at the Council Board, I
found that I was the only non-official ratepayer present, although
the sum to be borrowed was a large one. It was stated that this
proposal had received the unanimous assent of the ratepayers. To this
statement I was compelled to make a short protest, as I had learned
from inquiries that many ratepayers knew nothing about the proposed
loan. I was informed that the time for objections had not arrived; and
the London official proceeded to inquire into various details of the
way in which the loan of six thousand guineas was to be spent, extent
of grading, kind of concrete, etc. When all was completely settled I
was then requested to state any objection I had to make. I spoke of
the burdens of taxation on the poor, and I begged to know what was
the present debt of the town. I found that with this new loan our
municipal debt would be nearly a quarter of a million. This seemed a
very large debt for a small town, where the people found a difficulty
in paying their rates, and as a prudent housekeeper I objected to go
into debt for our municipal housekeeping. I was informed by the Local
Government Board Inspector that ‘that was a question to be settled at
the polls.’ So, of course, my single protest was of no practical use.
This occurred in August. I then thought that, as the November elections
were approaching, it might be useful to try and get municipal questions
discussed with the candidates who were to be elected for three years to
the Town Council.

The proposed councillor in my parish cordially assented to the proposal
I ventured to make to him--viz., that he should meet the ratepayers
before the time of the elections, and discuss with them various
important questions which would come before the decision of the Town
Council. This gentleman willingly promised to attend such a meeting if
it were called.

Unfortunately, I could not find any householder willing to aid in
such an effort. The following is a type of the responses received from
householders:

‘I do not think my presence at a conference would be of any service. I
have so little knowledge of municipal affairs, never having attended
a meeting since I resided in Hastings.’ The same sort of answer came
from busy tradesmen and leisured gentry. It therefore seemed that a
more decided educational effort was needed, an effort to show our
voters how a Town Council really represented in modern days much of the
practical action of the Church in past ages, and that it ought really
to present the Theocratic idea--_i.e._, government by the Highest Good.
But here, too, unhappily, I could find no one who did not seem to think
that the function of a Town Council was to save them all trouble and
responsibility, and that it must be elected on party grounds.

Thus, more and more I recognised the profound character of the disease
of indifference, which has become endemic in our municipalities,
and the urgent need of remedial measures. I therefore entered into
correspondence with the Social and Political Education League, which
has borne in succession the honoured names of Professor Seeley and
Mr. Froude as Presidents. I received a cordial letter from the
honorary secretary, who forwarded a list of 107 names of lecturers,
with numerous addresses that they would be willing to deliver.
Unfortunately, in this printed list of several hundred lectures I
could find nothing that met our special need--viz., short, simple,
progressive instruction, inviting questions, ‘on the use of a Town
Council and the meaning of a vote.’ I was meditating on what to do when
I became most unexpectedly involved in municipal work, where I was
compelled to take a prominent part, for which I was not fitted either
by knowledge or experience.

At the town meeting in August already referred to, when the addition
to the public debt was made, a Corporation Bill was spoken of, which
appeared to be of very great importance, and which was to come before
the town later. I therefore watched the notices by the church doors,
and marked down the date of the Statutory Meeting, which must be
called in order to sanction this Bill. I was much surprised not to
see attention strongly called to this important measure by the local
press and others; but the local politicians were all in such a state
of excitement because Hastings was to lose one of its Parliamentary
representatives that the way in which municipal affairs were carried
on seemed to excite no interest. I called at the Town Clerk’s Office a
few days before the meeting to sanction the Bill was to take place, and
asked for a copy of the Bill, but was told that there were ‘no copies’
for ratepayers; neither could the Bill be seen. I spoke to about ten
persons in the course of the day, but no one knew anything about the
Bill. I then wrote to several ratepayers to beg them to attend the
Statutory Meeting. One replied that there must be a mistake as to date,
naming a meeting three days later, which, being a ‘Party’ meeting on
Redistribution, entirely drew attention from the municipal meeting.
Another householder consulted a gentleman friend, who told her that
the proposed Bill was one to lessen taxation, so there was no need of
attending the meeting. I was unable to find a single ratepayer who knew
anything about the Bill, or had even heard of it. The time came, a
very stormy evening; about seventy persons attended out of over 8,000
ratepayers. No one had seen the Bill, which, from the short abstract
given by a Councillor, was evidently of the utmost importance to every
class of the inhabitants, and particularly to the industrious classes.
It was urged by the Town Council Committee in charge of the Bill that
no opposition to it should be made, for two reasons. In the first
place, the next day was the last chance of registering the Bill for the
present Session of Parliament, and a year would be lost if the Bill
were not accepted that night; in the next place, it was stated that
any opposition would be very expensive to the town, for, as they had
already paid £500 for the expenses of the Bill, and would pay about as
much more to complete it, if any opposition were raised it would cost
the town some thousands of pounds.

As no other ratepayer seemed to discover any flaw in these statements,
I ventured to suggest that, as no one amongst us had seen the Bill,
we ought not to sanction it without any opportunity of examination,
and that it would be better to lose a Session than do so. I therefore
begged to move an adjournment; this was seconded by a ratepayer, but
not put to the meeting. The Bill was accepted in the name of the
ratepayers by a vote of 47, the Parliamentary agent who directed the
proceedings most courteously assuring me that ‘there would be ample
time to object to the Bill in London.’ Of course, I knew, and many
of the poorer ratepayers present knew, that it would be too late to
consider the Bill after it was accepted in our names; but I was struck
with the inability of those present to formulate their objections,
although much dissatisfaction manifested itself in the meeting. Entire
ignorance (in which I fully shared) also existed as to what steps to
take in such a case. Had I insisted, as I ought to have done, upon the
motion for adjournment being put, it would probably have been rejected
by a small majority. But I was utterly ignorant of what was right to
do in such a strange position, and it seemed almost unladylike for me
alone to oppose the Mayor and Town Council, with their Parliamentary
Committee and legal advisers, particularly as it was insisted that
opposition meant distrust of the Council, whereas I thought simply
of my duty as a ratepayer. I did not know then, and no one present
seemed to know, that any ratepayer has a right to demand a poll;
and, if insisted on, it must have been allowed. In this case the few
pounds it would have cost the town would have been well expended, in
delaying what proved to be an exceedingly bad and retrograde Bill. But
nothing has struck me more in this singular experience than the utter
ignorance of all our otherwise intelligent burgesses as to the steps by
which their municipal rights may be guarded, either in the borough or
in London. This ignorance seems to arise from the inattention and habit
of indifference to municipal duties produced, not only by the pressure
of private affairs, but by exclusive absorption in party politics.

As soon as the Corporation Bill was thus nominally accepted by the
burgesses, copies of the Bill were allowed to circulate. I saw at once,
on scanning this enormous Bill of 243 folio pages, thus sprung upon the
town, that it was a very retrograde Bill, and would prove especially
tyrannical to the poor. Being fully convinced that a fundamental duty
of any community is to guard the industrious poor from being crushed
into paupers, I looked at the Bill from that point of view, and was
shocked by it. It was drawn up to favour the growth of that modern
mistake, a fashionable lodging-house town, by endeavouring to attract
rich temporary visitors, instead of promoting permanent productive
industry. By its provisions it largely increased the debt of the town;
it withdrew expenditure from control of the ratepayers; it provided for
a largely-increasing bureaucracy, by placing all the new institutions
under officials of the Town Council; it confirmed and established a
virtual octroi on coal and the necessaries of life; it introduced the
most minute and arbitrary regulations in relation to building, sanitary
inspection, police arrests; it re-enacted the obsolete regulation
which regards vice as female; and in many other ways it sought to
convert the Town Council into masters instead of servants of the people.

I immediately commenced asking individual ratepayers if they had seen
this Bill, which interfered with every class of inhabitant. No one had
seen it, and later inquiry seemed to prove that not one member even of
the Town Council itself had read the Bill carefully through, outside
the little Parliamentary Committee who followed the guidance of the
London official agent.

I am glad to say that the first note of serious public alarm was
sounded by the Medical Profession, who, finding they were to be
turned into family spies by this Bill, refused to submit, and, having
an organized medical society unanimous in opinion, they commenced
an opposition to those objectionable clauses which affected their
position. But weeks of precious time were lost before attention was
aroused to the generally tyrannical character of the Bill. At last the
growing discontent found a voice in an active, enlightened burgess.
A crowded public meeting was held, attended largely by the poorer
ratepayers, and a committee was formed to see what amendments could
be introduced. But there was then not time to examine thoroughly this
enormous Bill before it was read in Parliament. Here, again, two
circumstances were noteworthy. First of all, the complete indifference
of the richer inhabitants to the Bill and to all that involved
trouble on their part, with the dread of the poorer inhabitants of the
frightful law expenses which opposition would entail.

The second noteworthy point was the utter ignorance of all parties
as to the best and exact method of procedure in the various steps
necessary to be taken in seeking to amend or oppose the Bill--as, for
instance, the times allowed for the various stages, the parties to
address, the ways of addressing them, the rights of the burgesses to
appear, etc. No one, either layman or lawyer, possessed exact detailed
knowledge.

For my part, I sought information at headquarters in London. Here,
once for all, I beg to state that nothing can exceed the courtesy and
often kindness with which my crude inquiries have always been met by
those highest in authority. Indeed, all my life long, though painfully
compelled to work against rather than with social conditions, I have
always found men eager to help an honest, unselfish worker.

In London I learned some rather surprising facts. These facts may be
thus briefly summarized: First, that it is the effect of the action of
the Central Government to weaken the Municipalities by encouraging them
to run heavily into debt; secondly, that, taking advantage of their
weakness, they apparently intend to assume themselves the authority
that has hitherto resided in the Municipalities as self-governing
communities.

These are very serious facts, not at all due, I think, to any
influence exerted by the enlightened heads of Departments, who change
with every administration, but to the enormous growing system of
permanent officialism, which acts like a tremendous machine, crushing
individual freedom, because it naturally seeks to work without
friction. The term ‘vortex,’ familiarly applied to the system when
any individual interest is drawn into its current, well expresses the
terrible power of these official forces.

My first amazement was awakened by the reply to my objection concerning
the increased power of borrowing given by our Hastings Bill to a little
town of 40,000 inhabitants, that already had a debt of nearly a quarter
of a million. ‘What is the rateable value of your town?’ was asked.
‘£300,000.’ ‘And do you consider a quarter of a million a large debt?
Why, let me tell you, your town is most fortunate in having such a
small debt! Do you not know that Government allows you to borrow to the
extent of two years’ annual rating?’

Such was the astounding view taken by a political economist of the duty
of Government. I thought of our hundreds of poor ratepayers unable to
pay their taxes. I thought of the statistical report that ‘In Great
Britain the municipal and other local debts rose in the period of
ten years from 84 to 140 millions,’ and I was simply dumb with fear
for the future. For I have already seen that power to borrow means
encouragement to borrow, and that the municipal purse is not regarded
as a Trust, to be more scrupulously guarded than the private purse.

My next discovery related to sanitary and police clauses, and
particularly to those which pressed especially upon women. I maintained
that there were no such things as good brothels; that they were
illegal institutions, to be gradually and steadily suppressed by the
growing morality of the people, who should be encouraged by increased
facilities to set the law in motion; and that any legal distinction
as to bad houses that were ‘a nuisance to the neighbourhood’ was a
mischievous distinction. I also pointed out that the term ‘prostitute’
should be entirely struck out of all legislative enactments as an
obsolete injustice, and that any necessary checks to growing vice
should apply to ‘all persons habitually or persistently’ offending.

These honest suggestions were considered quite impracticable in
official circles; but I learned that the Central Government would be
quite ready to strike out any unusual local provision in order to take
all sanitary and police measures into its own hands.

This appeared to me a most alarming intention. Surely a deadly blow
would be struck at individual liberty if all sanitary and police
regulations were to be drawn into the ‘vortex.’ The mistakes of
municipalities rouse individual conscience, and may be turned to the
education of the community; but take away this natural power of growth,
and we become a feeble, self-seeking mass, swayed by demagogues, and
the slaves of official Bastilles.

I began to understand the wide bearing of a fact that had excited my
surprise a short time previously. Scandals occurring in one of our new
parks, permission had been obtained from the Local Government Board
to place an additional policeman there. Noticing this fact, I asked
our Councilman: ‘Why on earth did you consult the Local Government
Board about our own policemen? Does not our Watch Committee attend to
our police matters?’ He replied: ‘Oh, don’t you know that the Local
Government Board pay part of our police expenses?’ Looking over the
Borough Accounts for 1884, there, sure enough, I find this police item:
Treasury contribution, £1,881 16s. 1d.

Our poor tax-payers cannot pay their rent, so we rob Peter to pay Paul;
we get money from the General Government, which all have to contribute
to supply, with the idea of lessening local rates, and in return allow
the central authorities to interfere with our police. Surely this is
selling our birthright for a very deceptive mess of pottage!

As our Town Council became aware of the legitimate discontent which
existed respecting the Bill they had sent up to London, with really
imperfect knowledge of its contents, they endeavoured with willing
courtesy to meet the Ratepayers’ Committee, and at the last moment for
legal opposition, certain important amendments were accepted by the
Council, which removed the power of arbitrary arrest by the police, and
softened some of the other harsh interference with individual rights.

The People’s Committee were compelled to accept these imperfect
concessions. The limit of time for opposing the Bill had arrived.
No rich or leisured resident showed the slightest concern in this
measure. The remark had been made to me by a high London authority:
‘If your townspeople really consider this such a bad Bill, then
they have nothing to do but to put their hands in their pockets
and raise the money to oppose it.’ This remark shows how little
rich people, high in authority, know of the conditions of life in a
fashionable lodging-house town. The work of revising this Bill--work
necessarily incomplete--had been done by burgesses of moderate means
and overwhelmed by private cares, and the time needed for this public
work had been stolen from sleep. There was neither possibility of
withdrawing a Bill on which much public money had been already
expended, nor of raising the heavy sums of money necessary to carry on
legal opposition to it.

Thus, a new Corporation Bill of most retrograde character has been
forced upon the town--a Bill which greatly strengthens the official or
bureaucratic organization, removes much of the control of ratepayers
over expenditure, plays into the hands of a centralizing Government,
establishes protective duties on the necessaries of life, and
vexatiously interferes in various ways with the legitimate personal
liberty of the inhabitants.

The latest ‘Battle of Hastings,’ in 1885, has ended in defeat.

This familiar narrative of late experience in one of our little towns
is now given for a practical purpose.

A similar course of things appears to be taking place in all our towns,
large and small. Unchecked, this neglect of social duty and thoughtless
submission to official formalism must steadily deteriorate our national
character. It can only be checked by the voluntary organization of
individuals who will resolutely battle for the Theocratic principle
of human rights against the selfish demagogueism of party strife. The
plainest fact in history is the Divine Moral Government of the world.
A nation given up to selfishness and lust always degenerates and
perishes, and is replaced by new races. This is the great lesson of
the ages. We only fail to read it because the method of action of the
Creative Power is so much grander and surer than the methods of our
individual action. But all that is strongest and noblest in our human
nature can be but a faint reflection of what is immeasurably stronger
and nobler in the Almighty Creative force. The careful study of our
own human needs measured and limited by the needs of all other human
beings is the foundation of all growth. This mutual limitation and
government of human rights by human duties is Theocracy. It alone can
be a permanent form of Government, for a righteous democratic rule must
inevitably be Theocratic rule.

If the Churches cannot yet see that the education of the people in
their municipal life is the urgent need of the age, if political
parties are too corrupt or self-seeking to learn the same lesson, then
help must come from other sources. Perhaps women ratepayers not yet
entangled in party politics, and men who have risen above them may hear
the Divine voice which speaks to them, and may kindle a little sacred
fire which will grow into a beacon-light to the nation.

It is now urgently necessary to consider the way in which organizations
of householders may be gradually formed in all our municipalities, for
the purpose of mutual education and legitimate criticism.

An unofficial organization, sufficiently suited to respond promptly to
any sudden municipal call, has really become of vital importance. The
animating centre of such organizations must be three or four earnest,
unselfish persons (a true Theocratic brotherhood) who will carefully
study municipal or social questions, and plan and initiate a work of
gradual education, particularly addressed to women voters and our
poorer ratepayers. I especially mention women because nothing has been
done for their enlightenment as to the new duties laid upon them in
1867. It is a noteworthy fact that when 2,000,000 more men were lately
placed on the register, the most active efforts of the Cobden Club and
others were at once given to instruct these new voters after party
fashion, but no effort whatever has been made directly to instruct
the hundreds of thousands of women to whom the municipal vote, the
corner-stone of our political system, was given in 1867.

There are questions of policy having a large and important national
bearing which need to be studied by united householders. Few persons
know clearly what should be the direct action and indirect influence
of a Town Council--its duty to resist encroachment by the central
government; its duty to encourage the interest and action of burgesses
in their own institutions, and to diminish the number of irresponsible
officials; its duty to consider the public purse as a solemn trust, and
to invite careful study of municipal accounts.

The abolition of obsolete practices, the consideration of changes or
adaptation to modern needs of municipal regulations, need consideration
by householders.

Few burgesses seem to know that ten ratepayers in a parish possess the
right to nominate any one of their fellow ratepayers to represent them
for three years on the Town Council. The nominations are now made in
secret by party cliques, a practice never intended by our Constitution.
This mischievous practice can be directly checked by the liberty of
independent action thus provided for. I have already referred to
the right to demand a poll at any statutory meeting where serious
objection is taken to any proposed measure, a most important guarantee
of municipal liberty, quite unknown, apparently, to the majority of
ratepayers.

I need not enter upon the important questions of the selection of
Poor-law guardians, of members of School Boards, and other officers
supposed to be elected by ratepayers, because the same criticism
applies to all. At present, indifference to all these important
elections prevails unless a sharp contest springs up on party politics.
Yet questions really vital to our national welfare are involved in
these apparently minor points in our municipal housekeeping, and I
believe that the indifference now felt towards our borough elections,
when not stimulated by party strife, proceeds from ignorance of these
larger relations.

It is in the hope of seeing this great municipal education begun on a
large plan, quite above party strife, that I have ventured to refer to
this episode of personal experience.

Those who profoundly believe in the moral government of this world,
and who would help in establishing a true Theocracy, must seek truth
from all sources. Our modern prophets, Herbert Spencer, John Ruskin,
and many another seeker for truth, must be earnestly listened to; not
as gods, but as men who with human limitations, nevertheless through
evil and good report, never swerve from the steadfast unselfish
search for truth--men who are enabled to see clearly great aspects of
Divine truth, and who can refresh and guide us in our humbler, but
providential task. Such men are often the truest followers of our Lord
in this nineteenth century.

To all women voters, to all our poorer ratepayers, I earnestly
recommend the formation of a union for the study of municipal
rights and duties, and I hope that my humble but earnest effort in
this direction will enlist the sympathy and guidance of all those
truth-seers most able to help us.


FOOTNOTES:

[22] Between four and five hundred summonses for rates this quarter in
our little town.



                                ADDRESS

                       DELIVERED AT THE OPENING

                                OF THE

                        WOMEN’S MEDICAL COLLEGE

                                OF THE

                NEW YORK INFIRMARY, 126, SECOND AVENUE

                          _November 2, 1868_


                                ADDRESS

Our Faculty has kindly insisted upon my saying the first words which
our new College addresses to its friends, and I am bound to comply
with their desire, although I could have wished that some abler person
might have shown the broad significance of those principles which are
involved in our work.

True growth is slow (as we measure time) and silent. The tiny sapling
shoots up with invisible and noiseless force; so have we worked
on--silently. Yet the truest growth has its striking phases of
development. We watch with glad anticipation the first tender green of
budding foliage; later still we luxuriate in the delicious flowering of
the apple-blossoms in May.

It was in 1853, in a parlour in University Place (as some two or three
of those now present will remember), that the little slip of a Medical
Institution for Women was planted, which slowly grew till it budded
into a small hospital in 1857. Many who are here to-night will recall
the opening of the hospital wards in Bleecker Street and the cordial
words of encouragement then given. They will remember that noble young
minister, cut down in his promising youth, who hurried in from his
pressing duties in a distant city, carpet-bag in hand, resolved to give
us a hearty God-speed, because the good cause was unpopular.

Now the tree has blossomed into a college, and once more the friends
gather round to rejoice in its promise of larger usefulness.

It has required fifteen years of patient work--work by faith, for the
way has been very dark--to lay the foundation of a college. This has
seemed strange to most persons, for many women’s colleges have sprung
up meanwhile; hundreds of women have received the physician’s diploma;
some have become highly-respected practitioners, and some have gained
large sums of money. Of the early friends of the Infirmary, many have
died, and some have been discouraged by its slow growth.

It is an easy thing to found a poor college. Our liberal Legislature
grants a charter to anyone who asks for it, and an audience can always
be gathered together by speeches and music to witness the presentation
of learned-looking parchment rolls to a class of well-dressed students;
but charter and diploma do not necessarily guarantee the fitting
education of a physician. To found a really good college is a work
of great difficulty, and up to the present time has been impossible
for want of professional assistance--of skilful teachers, and ample
clinical provision. To this difficulty has been added another--the want
of funds.

We have been facing these two perpendicular cliffs--money and
skill--for fifteen years, and striving in every possible way to climb
them. Everyone will sympathize with us in relation to the first
difficulty, but, at the same time, the promoters of ordinary benevolent
enterprises can hardly realize the added difficulty of begging for a
principle. People will give to a charity or popular enthusiasm, but
very seldom to a principle, more seldom still to such an unpopular idea
as the education of women in medicine.

Little by little, however, we have laid one stone upon another, until
we have gained a foundation sufficient to stand on. It is small,
certainly, but solid, and we all feel great hope of surmounting the
first grand difficulty.

In relation to the second obstacle--the want of professional support--I
need only refer to the prospectus of our College to show how happily
we have at last been able to surmount this second difficulty. How this
has been accomplished I really do not know. We are so accustomed to
be ‘despised and rejected’ that encouragement, welcome, success, seem
unaccountable. It is like breathing a new and delightful atmosphere,
which is, nevertheless, strange and dream-like; and one almost fears to
wake up with a shock and find again the cold, the gloom, and struggle
all around.

But, from whatever cause proceeding, the support now given to the
formation of the College is warm and cordial. Should we fulfil
the expectations of the wise and experienced physicians who have
sanctioned and counselled the formation of this school, professional
assistance will be increased to the utmost extent the student may
require.

We enter, then, upon this work under the most favourable auspices, and
we are encouraged to undertake it by the earnest request of medical
women from every part of the country. From the east and the west,
from California to Maine, have come the same heartfelt expressions
of interest in the establishment of a sound plan of education, the
same hope that other women may not enter upon their work under the
disadvantages of imperfect preparation that they have had to contend
with. The list of excellent women physicians who have enrolled
themselves as fellows of the College shows the trust which is felt in
this undertaking by our respected co-workers.

We have endeavoured to follow out the suggestions of our most
experienced medical teachers, and incorporate the following features
into our plan of instruction:

1. A three years’ college course.

2. A larger proportion of time devoted to teaching and practical
instruction than to lecturing.

3. A progressive succession of studies.

I shall only refer at this time to one of these--viz., the three years’
college course. I would remark, for the information of those who are
not familiar with medical tuition, that the Legislature, in granting
to a school the right to confer the degree of Doctor in Medicine,
requires that such degree shall only be given to those who have been
studying medicine for three years. Three years, then, is the obligatory
time of study, and no degree is legal which is granted on a less term
of study. But in the ordinary course of instruction the greater part
of that time is spent in private reading, the College being only
responsible for the instruction of two winter sessions of five months
each; in other words, for ten months out of the thirty-six required by
law. The remaining twenty-six months may or may not be well spent; it
depends upon the intelligence, resolution, and opportunities possessed
by each individual student. It is the great wish of the profession to
increase the collegiate part of instruction, and require attendance
at college during a portion of each of the three years of study. Many
colleges have added spring and autumn courses, but the attendance of
students is not obligatory, and it seems impossible to lengthen the
college course without united action.

For women there exist so very few opportunities for profitable study
that these precious twenty-six months are, to a great extent, wasted.
At the same time a weighty responsibility rests upon all those who
introduce women into medicine to see that they are fitted to fulfil
the trust worthily. Medicine is a learned and confidential profession,
and should draw into its ranks the most highly educated, the most
irreproachable in character. This most noble profession, like all high
things, is susceptible of the worst abuse. The good which women may
accomplish in medical practice is also the measure of the evil that
they may do. Education, long and careful, should be the safeguard
of society in this matter. From many causes women are peculiarly
exposed to a great temptation--that of practising ignorantly and
superficially. The College should foresee this danger, and provide
the long and careful training which can alone discriminate between
the worthy and unworthy candidate. This education, while it sifts out
the incompetent, will give to the earnest student those advantages of
drill, of substantial knowledge, of professional support, without which
women enter upon the practical work of medicine under the most cruel
disadvantages.

We propose, therefore, to adopt the most advanced plan of instruction,
and have arranged a progressive course of study which will require
for its completion attendance at college during three winter sessions
of five months each, which we hope eventually to be able to extend to
eight months. We shall thus be able not only to give to each student an
additional term of systematic instruction, with all those advantages
of hospital practice which belong only to a large city, but we shall
be able to keep her under college influence during the remainder
of each year, directing the intermediate studies, and forming much
more accurate acquaintance than were otherwise possible, with the
qualifications of each candidate for graduation.

We are compelled to face many difficulties by this plan. We must
anticipate a smaller class at first in consequence of the additional
expense laid upon the student, for however low the price of tuition
may be made, the added expense of boarding has to be met. The student
also, at the outset of her career, is unable to appreciate the great
advantages of this enlarged instruction, and is naturally tempted to go
where a diploma may most easily be gained. We are quite sure, however,
that in a few years the thorough education given by our College, and
the distinction conferred by its diploma, will draw to it the best
students from every part of our country.

There is one other feature of our College that I must allude to, as I
feel in it a profound and special interest: it is the introduction of
hygiene into our course as a prominent and obligatory study.

It seems strange that the prevention of disease should not always
have engaged the thought and instruction of the guardians of the
public health at least as fully as the cure of disease, and yet I
believe that this is the first college in America to found a chair of
hygiene. Consider the subjects involved in the development of a healthy
human organization--a healthy race. Physical and moral training;
the inheritance and transmission of qualities; the peculiarities
of individual constitution; the nature and influences of climate,
soil, food and customs; the prevention of epidemics; the municipal
regulations of our cities, etc.--all these subjects come directly and
unavoidably into the department of hygiene. Surely every student who
receives the degree of Doctor should be thoroughly acquainted with
all that Science at present knows on these subjects. How else can he
fulfil his noblest trust--the guardianship of individual and public
health? For a specialist with a narrowed range of duties such knowledge
may, perhaps, be of less importance; but for the family physician, the
trusted friend and counsellor year after year--for the public-spirited
physician who would give to his wisdom and experience the largest
usefulness, these studies are indispensable, and his initiation, his
first impulse and interest in this knowledge, should surely be given by
his college.

There is one branch of this subject which I think must weigh heavily
on the hearts of women physicians, and which will, I hope, through
them, engage the attention of every thoughtful woman in our land--I
refer to the frightful mortality of young children. Children are born
to live, not die. There is a wonderful force of tenacious vitality in
all growing organizations--far more proportionate vitality than in the
old or even the adult; yet, notwithstanding this beneficent provision
of nature, we destroy our young children nearly five times as fast as
the other members of our social body. If every woman in our city could
hear the daily moan of these dying infants, could feel that every day
multitudes of bereaved mothers were weeping over untimely graves,
and that her own skirts were not clear of this shedding of innocent
blood, we should see an army of earnest co-workers eager to save this
multitude of helpless children.

Infancy and early childhood are the especial charge of women, and
how do they fulfil this trust? It does not do to look around upon a
well-furnished home, bright with the smiling faces of happy children,
and say, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ Each one is his brother’s keeper
to the direct extent that knowing an evil can be cured, he refrains
from doing his part to cure it. Did the women of our city resolve to
save these children they might be saved. Year by year the mortality
might be lessened by the sanitary knowledge diffused by women, and
the sanitary regulations their influence might establish, until from
their own little circle they could look with joy to a bright cloud of
witnesses beyond--thousands of useful lives saved to their homes and
their country through their aid!

This suggestion of important practical usefulness will give force to
the great principle involved in our College--scientific training for
women.

Interest in natural objects, careful, comprehensive observation of
them, enthusiasm for unselfish and impersonal ends, are the main
principles of scientific study--principles that would enter with
invigorating force into the mental development of every girl, that
would regenerate the life of women.

Science is no hard dry thing as some imagine; it is the earnest study
of this wonderful world around us. It will take the form of each
individual mind. In a narrow unimaginative nature it will seem hard
and dry; in a warm and loving nature it will flow into every form of
benevolent action. It might work a most beneficent change in the
relation that we all consider most sacred--the relation of a mother to
her children.

The immense force of habit, second only to the original type of
constitution, and often overpowering even the original tendencies, is,
nevertheless, formed by the silent working of influences, hour by hour
and day by day, that are invisible and cannot be measured; that seem
absolutely valueless, taken item by item, in the long account, and yet
in the aggregate they will save or ruin the body and soul. A mother may
instil the love of reading or the love of dress; she may form the habit
of out-door exercise or the habit of gossip not by the set precept or
even formal regulations, but by her own tastes unavoidably moulding the
tastes of her children, and flowing out naturally into these external
arrangements that inevitably reflect the ruling spirit or affections of
the individual. Did the mother possess a hearty interest in the wonders
of field and forest, of sea and sky, what a treasury of delightful
intercourse might be found in the varied environs of our city! A
mother’s love joined to the broad tastes and knowledge would never
weary of the ceaseless questioning of childhood; the older the child,
the closer and more influential would be the companionship. The holiday
by the sea-side or amongst the mountains, so wasted now in idleness and
frivolity, might be a rich harvest-time of delightful knowledge drawn
from the treasures of land and water.

It is, then, because of the great value that enthusiasm for natural
science would be to woman, value to the individual life, to the home
life, and to society, that I think this College will owe its greatest
interest. From the fact that it is a Medical College it will derive its
practical efficiency in cultivating a taste for science.

A lady, now world-famous, once said to me before she began her noble
career: ‘We Englishwomen can study anything under the sun that we
desire to acquire. Not the slightest obstacle is placed in the way
of our becoming learned to any extent; but any attempt to turn the
knowledge to account, to work with it, is met with the bitterest
opposition, is ridiculed, sneered at, frowned down. Yet the greatest
impetus to study, the natural issues of study, lie in some noble
career.’

It is from this tendency of human mind to pour its knowledge into some
definite form that our Medical College, with its broad practical uses,
may prove so valuable as a centre for scientific study. As it becomes
older and stronger it will spread into those collateral branches as
botany, zoology, comparative anatomy, which will form so many points
of union for the professional and non-professional. Classes would
naturally form in connection with it for nursing, sanitary visiting,
for botanical and other excursions. There is no limit to its practical
usefulness if the spirit that animates it be earnest, truthful, and
intelligent.

We enter, then, upon our college work with a bright hope that stretches
beyond the college walls into the homes and cities around; into the
higher civilization of the future as well as the present.

Our excellent Faculty, in entire accordance with these views, commence
their patient and laborious work with a sustained enthusiasm which
recognises the difficulties in our way, but is resolved to conquer
them. They share the large and liberal views of modern medicine. They
belong to no ‘pathy,’ to no narrow and bigoted sect. They are members
of that great catholic community of science which, from the ‘Father of
Medicine’ onwards, in every age and country, under the most diverse
practical forms, has sought for truth through observation, experiment
and calm deduction; has proved all things, and held fast to that which
is good.

We invite the co-operation of all in this noble work. Especially do
we invite the co-operation of women. United action is of immense
importance in so arduous an undertaking as this. We will do everything
in our power to conciliate diverse interests. Principle only must
not be sacrificed. The College must be an honest and earnest attempt
to give to women the very highest education that modern science will
afford. It is on this ground that union must take place. This school
is the only one that the profession has confidence in, the only one
it has sanctioned. It has laid its broad foundation by fifteen years
of patient work, and it will quickly rise into an edifice of noble
proportions if all friendly helpers will unite in its construction.



                        THE RELIGION OF HEALTH

                     _A Lecture delivered in 1871_


                        THE RELIGION OF HEALTH

The words ‘the Religion of Health’ convey a profound meaning to the
physician who has spent a lifetime in relieving physical suffering. I
will try and state what those words seem to me to imply.

Obedience to Divine law is the highest wisdom of the human race.

Wherever God’s laws are clearly visible, stamped in immutable
characters so plain that every human being who is willing to read
them can do so, then the wisdom, the happiness--nay, the simple
common-sense of the race--lies in obeying them. The first lesson every
one of us has to learn profoundly is his subjection to law. There is
no escaping this inexorable destiny. Although each one is born with
free-will, his type--the plan and pattern of his being--is born with
him also. This type is a limitation to the nature, but it is also a
guide; it is the finger of Providence showing him the road to follow
in the great wilderness of creation; it is the Divine order, according
to which each one can freely grow and expand in body and soul to the
finest proportions. True freedom consists in the voluntary choice
of this type, in the full acceptance of all its conditions, and in
the endeavour to unfold its capacities. The will may refuse this
type, may deny the laws that govern it, may seek for license in a
lawless rejection of Divine order, but it is soon arrested by endless
obstacles, and persistence in the unequal struggle will only end in
degradation and self-destruction.

We recognise a Divine law when we see it existing age after age
unchangeably, carrying order and beauty in its fulfilment; penalties,
discord, desolation, with infringement. These laws are grand in design,
beneficient in their effects--equally so, whether we observe the
marvel of parental love, or explore the wonders of the skies; whether
we clothe them in warm, human garments, indispensable to the simple,
loving heart, or frame them in the clear precision of scientific
formulæ, indispensable to the truthful mind.

If there be one law that all can clearly recognise in the existence
of the material world around us, it is the unvarying method of human
development from infancy to old age. A certain plan exists, according
to which the infant expands through childhood and youth into manhood,
and thence changes through elderly life into old age.

This plan never varies in any epoch, or race, or country. It is the
same for the lowest savage tribe as for the most cultivated race. No
effort of ours can change this unvarying sequence in human life.

This is a wonderful fact. It is so common that we hardly notice it.
Yet it is wonderful, because it is so common--so common as to be
universal. It rises, as we regard it, into the dignity of Law.

Reverence for this unity of life increases the more carefully this
strange fact, called the human body, is studied, the more fully we
understand what it is that thus remains unchanged age after age. We
speak of the body as if it were a single, simple thing, to be used as
a tool and then laid aside; but its complicated structure is a little
world in itself. As a machine, it is such a model of compactness and
ingenuity that no human skill can approach its perfection. It possesses
a twofold life--a life for itself as well as a life for our use. In its
own proper life it carries on a thousand curious operations necessary
for its growth and maintenance, quite independent of our volition or
consciousness. It contains extensive manufactories full of complicated
and delicate machinery for the production of sugar, milk, acids,
alkalies, salts; it has storehouses of iron, lime, and other chemical
substances; there are magazines where it lays up supplies against
a time of scarcity; it has its refiners and scavengers; apparatus
for warming and ventilating; it has pumps and propellers constantly
at work, and a more perfect electrical apparatus than has ever been
invented. All these remarkable operations are directed by intelligence,
working according to a plan, and combining these manifold energies
for one purpose--viz., the maintenance, during a certain period, of a
healthy human body. Besides this independent existence of its own, the
body possesses a life of relation, by means of which it is fitted to
the uses of individual and social existence. Its powers of locomotion,
its active senses, its faculty of feeling, its wonderful human hand,
and its still more wonderful human brain, all belong to this other use
of the body as an instrument for the expression of intelligence and
emotion.

Equally remarkable is the system of general unvarying laws by which
this living structure is governed. The first law we notice in
human growth is the precedence of physical over mental growth. We
observe that physical development, though never separate from mental
development, is always in advance of it. This is shown by the wonder
and delight with which the parent receives the first sign of awakening
intelligence in the young infant, the first smile, the first indication
of observation. It is the awakening mind. But every physical function
essential to life has been perfectly performed from the first moment
of birth as perfectly, according to its wants, as it will ever be
performed throughout life. This precedence of physical life continues
throughout the whole period of growth, though it strikes us less as
the years roll on, and the mind gradually assumes that mastery over
the body which should be the condition of adult life. The brain is the
last part of the body to cease growth. Every other organ is perfectly
formed, every bone consolidated, the physical organization complete,
while the mind, with its necessary organ of expression, is still
growing. I place this important fact first amongst the rules which
govern the human economy because it strikes the key-note of education;
and it is only through a thorough appreciation of this principle that
we shall beneficially change our present systems of education.

Each age has its own special method of existence; thus there are
laws for growth, for maturity, for decay. There are the great facts
of growth by exercise or use; the necessity of maintaining a just
distribution of force amongst the various parts, lest one grow at
the expense of another; the alternations of action and rest required
in every part of the economy; the varied life of different functions
which give to each its individuality and special rule; the varieties of
race, of temperament, of individual peculiarities--these will slightly
indicate the extent and variety of these unchanging laws by which our
human nature is moulded. Their importance may be realized more fully by
dwelling for a moment on one or two of them.

What may be termed the balance of power or just distribution of force
in the various parts of our physical and mental nature--according
to each individual type--is essential to the perfection of the
organization--it is, indeed, the measure of health. It is attained and
preserved by the due exercise of all the functions of our nature. In
ascertaining what is this due exercise, we observe that the different
functions of the human being are subject to varying laws of constant
or occasional action. The higher the object of a function, the wider
is its scope, the longer are the intervals of rest required, and
the more direct is its subjection to reason; it is taken from under
the control of the automatic vegetative life of the body and placed
under the direction of the central authority--Reason--Conscience.
Thus, we see the lungs, whose sole object is the physical life of the
individual, breathing day and night unceasingly, with alternate rest
and action every moment. The digestive apparatus, with longer intervals
of rest and a wider range of objects, connected with the preparation
and enjoyment of food. The senses, with their great use both to the
individual and to society, locked in slumber every night. Thus, step by
step, the plan rises to the highest functions of human nature--those
which concern the race--which, above all others, are under the dominion
of reason, and not subject to that law of constant action which
controls the lower functions.

Equally interesting is that law of our nature which determines growth
by exercise. It is a fact clearly demonstrated by modern science that
the governing organ of the human body, the brain, has distinct portions
of its structure devoted to the service of distinct faculties of the
mind. Thus the intellectual, the emotional, and the locomotive powers
work through corresponding portions of the highly organized brain.
Each faculty grows by exercise. Not only does the mental faculty
become stronger by use, but its physical organ of expression in the
brain, with its dependencies in the rest of the body, become larger
and stronger with a richer supply of blood and greater aptitude for
instantaneous action. This condition of the physical organ reacts upon
the mind, which takes greater pleasure in acting in a certain direction
when it finds the brain so keenly responsive to its impulses. If the
proper distribution of force is disturbed in any individual by the
neglect to exercise important portions of our nature, an antagonism of
faculties springs up, one part growing at the expense of another part.
Thus the emotional may destroy the intellectual life in an individual
who is subjected to undue excitement of the passions, particularly if
the type of the nature is not largely emotional. The other faculties
will rapidly lose their power. The intellect suffers, judgment is
lost, and mental confusion produced, which is really a species of
insanity. Those organs of the body, also, which are most intimately
connected with the excited portion of the brain become involved, and
their functions may be entirely deranged. The automatic power of the
human body may also assume undue control in those who yield to fancies
and caprice, and lead an unnatural and sedentary life. There is an
antagonism between this automatic force and the life of relation or
brain-life of the individual. The more the balance of powers is lost
in the human brain--reason being no longer the controlling force--the
greater becomes the power of this instinctive life of the body, the
greater its capability of answering every fanciful suggestion, and
even of exciting those suggestions. The individual may thus become the
sport of his own unbalanced faculties, and a prey to every species of
morbid hallucination.

An organization so complicated (as this human body), designed for
such manifold uses, and at the same time drawing the elements of its
existence from the external world, must be powerfully influenced
by all the circumstances which surround it. Certain physical and
mental conditions are essential to human growth, to health. Hence the
question of food and clothing, of drainage and ventilation, of human
habitations, of exercise and occupations, attain equal importance and
dignity, as essential to the fulfilment of the great changeless plan of
life.

Thus we are brought face to face with a great fixed fact, a fact which
concerns every human being during every moment of life--viz., God’s
unchanging law of human growth. This law we are called on to study, to
obey, and obedience to it is placed first in the order of human duties.
Obedience can only be rendered by study of the objects of physical
life, of its structure, its conditions, its rules. Its learning, thus
regarded, becomes sacred learning, and ignorance is criminal.

The folly and wickedness of our practical contempt for the great
laws of human growth may be measured by the penalties of suffering,
illness, and premature death attached to this neglect. This is
rendered more striking by observing, first of all, the great force of
the principle of vitality, the strong tendency to live and resist
injurious influences, which we all possess. Nothing is more remarkable
in the history of the human race than its great power of adaptability.
Scattered all over the surface of the globe, under the most varying
conditions, men still live and thrive. The cities of Cuença and Quito,
at a height of 9,600 feet above the level of the sea, possess large
and flourishing populations; so also do the cities of Holland and New
Orleans, which lie below its level. Multitudes of workmen live in the
galleries of the deepest mines, many hundred feet below the surface
of the earth, deprived of light, breathing air much more condensed,
living under a much stronger pressure than that of the ordinary
atmosphere. And, on the other hand, scientific observers have taken
up their residence for a long period on the crest of Pichincha, at an
elevation of 14,826 feet. Agassiz spent some weeks in investigations on
the Jung-Frau. Gay Lussac attained the highest elevation ever reached
by man in his balloon, 28,000 feet. All can recall the thrilling
narratives of Arctic voyagers, where the thermometer has been known to
measure 91° below zero. Contrast this with the burning sun of India,
where 120° Fahrenheit is observed; where glass is cracked by the heat.
A wide range of more than 200° of temperature, and yet the heat of the
human body maintains its steady and necessary amount, never materially
varying under the two extremes. Similiar illustrations of the power of
human nature to adapt itself to unnatural conditions might be drawn
from all the other elements necessary to life.

Notwithstanding this remarkable power of vitality, which can brave
such extreme variations in physical conditions and endure enormous
privations, careful observation all over our country presents a fearful
record of death, sickness, and physical degeneration produced by our
own social arrangements--arrangements and habits so destructive to the
human organization that they overpower even this great capability of
adaptation.

This is seen in the statistics of our towns, in the condition of our
peasant population, in our social and domestic experience.

The statistics of all our large towns demonstrate the great and
unnatural destruction of life that takes place in these centres of
civilization, where the highest medical skill is found, and placed
freely at the call of poor as well as rich. The natural death-rate at
present is 17 per thousand--_i.e._, that under the most favourable
conditions as amongst the upper classes in our healthiest cities, in
the healthiest country districts, 17 out of every thousand persons die
each year all the world over, a lower mortality being exceptional; but
the following was the death-rate of our chief cities (1868) instead
of the natural rate of 17 per thousand: Bristol, 23; London and
Birmingham, 24; Dublin, 25; Edinburgh, 27; Liverpool, 29; Glasgow,
30; Manchester, 32. That means that in London alone, in a year of no
special sickness, more than 21,000 were killed who ought to have
lived. In the British Islands an army of over 176,516 lives were
swept off unnecessarily. This is not all: a much larger proportion of
the population is always ill at one time; about 78,000 in London is
reckoned, of whom one-third are suffering from preventable diseases.
This calculation does not take into account those feeble, ailing
persons who are never more than half well, who lack strength and energy
for the daily fulfilment of duty. It is shown that in the whole of
England the people have only a mean life-time of forty-one years--not
half the term of life that seems to belong naturally to our race. Of
those who died within the year, over 134,000 were in ripe manhood; but
yet more noteworthy are the deaths under the age of twenty-five: over
242,000 perished in childhood and youth. The wholesale slaughter of
children in our civilized country is truly appalling. Out of 233,515
deaths at all ages, 94,804, or 40·60 per cent., were those of children
under five years of age.

To understand fully the grave import of these records three facts
must be noted: first, that the death-rate of a country is always
under-stated; second, that town populations increase at a much more
rapid ratio than country populations; third, that the death-rate
increases in direct proportion to the density of the population.

In proof of these three propositions let me quote from recent testimony
of our most eminent statisticians:

‘Wherever the population is increasing the amount of mortality is
under-rated in consequence of there being an excess of young people in
those numbers, which make the mortality appear lower than it really
is. The mortality of London appears much less by statistics than
it actually is; it is reduced in two ways by having a large influx
of persons at the period of age when mortality is low, and by the
departure and return of patients to the country to die, as consumptives
for instance. The causes of disease in London are excessively active,
as is seen, for instance, in the mortality of male children under
five years of age, which is about 8 per cent. (_i.e._, 80 per 1,000),
while in some of the more healthy districts it is not more than 4 per
cent.’ Again: ‘Of the 20,066,224 persons enumerated in England in
1861, nearly 11,000,000 were in the towns and 9,000,000 in villages
and country around the towns. The total population in London and 71 of
the largest towns in England was over 7,667,622, and the population in
the country and in smaller towns was over 12,398,602, so that there
are nearly eight-twentieths of the population in those 72 towns. The
total increase from 1801 to 1861 in the population of England was over
11,173,688, and one-half of that increase was in those 72 towns. It
will thus be apparent that the town population is increasing at a much
more rapid rate than the country population.’ ‘The country population
now is very nearly the same as it was in 1801. By a law, which at
present is quite constant, the mortality increases rapidly with the
density of the population. In our thinnest districts the mortality
is about 15 per 1,000; in our densest districts it ranges from 28 to
33. This relation is a constant law: where there are 179 persons to a
square mile, there the mortality is from 17 to 19; where the density
of population varies from 3,000 upwards, the mortality ranges from
26 to 33; so that under our present arrangements there is a constant
connection between the density of population and its mortality. That
connection is not necessary; our towns might be made nearly as healthy
as these country districts, having a mortality of 17 to 20.’ Of the
circumstances under which large masses of our population grow up,
another distinguished physician writes: ‘They create special diseases,
demoralize the population, and in course of generations completely
overthrow the physique of the people. It is impossible to walk through
the central streets (of this large town) without observing that you are
in contact with a population awfully degraded, both in its physical
and moral attributes; a population whose mere external characteristics
impress you at once with the idea of a depth of degradation of bad
habits growing for generations, in consequence of these arrangements.’
‘Thousands and hundreds of thousands are thus brought up.’

Turning from the towns to the agricultural population, where we have
the right to expect the fullest measure of health, we find a condition
of things which strikes an observer with dismay. The cultivators
of the soil constitute the backbone of a nation. I have carefully
observed them in America, and have learned to consider them the ruling
force of the nation; independent, thoughtful, exercising judgment and
common-sense. Again and again I have seen the corrupt or mischievous
vote of the large towns reversed or overwhelmed by the country
majorities. The condition of the peasants who cultivate the soil all
over our country presents a terrible contrast to this picture. Fever,
produced by extreme misery, seems to be endemic amongst them, sapping
their strength and stupefying their minds, when it does not kill; they
are crippled by rheumatism and destroyed by scrofula; their miserable
cottages are damp, dark, close, and overcrowded; their pitiful wages
will not supply them with decent dwelling, sustaining food, and other
necessaries of life.

Let me quote testimony from high authority given within the year: ‘As
many as ten persons are often crowded into a sleeping-room not 12 feet
square;’ ‘the external walls are too thin, the rooms too small, no
ventilation, brick or tile floors;’ ‘cottages are frequently built in
marshy situations, and by stagnant water, or at the foot of hills where
there is no free circulation of air; the spot is chosen on account
of the small value of the land and its uselessness for agricultural
purposes;’ ‘they are not able to pay what would be a fair interest on a
decent cottage.’ ‘If a new colliery is opened in an upland valley, 200,
300, or 400 cottages are built very rapidly, and they are inhabited
long before they are dry. The foundations as a rule are simply upon
the sod, which is merely turned over, and a flag is put on that sod.
There is no drainage of any kind; 40,000 to 50,000 persons will live
in houses of this kind, in one valley.’ ‘There are numbers of villages
throughout England where the people are drinking polluted water.’ ‘I
have seen no place in England in a worse condition than this village.
I have seen many native villages in South Africa, but none so bad
as this!’ Volumes might be filled with similar testimony as to the
physical state of our country population--a population whose condition
is the truest measure of a nation’s substantial strength.

There is no error so dangerous in national life as the discouragement
of honest labour. If the conditions of labour are injurious and
repulsive, whether from exhausting hours of toil, unhealthy workplaces,
squalid homes, or dreary monotony of toil, the workers of either sex
will inevitably seek relief from hopeless drudgery in the excitement of
vicious indulgences.

Our social experience joins its testimony with these statistics of
town and country, to show how widespread is this destruction of
health. Every housekeeper knows the extreme difficulty of obtaining a
healthy servant; nine-tenths of those who apply for a situation are
suffering from some chronic form of disease, which, if they belonged
to a different class of society, would place them in the list of
permanent invalids. There is no more frequent cause of the ill-health
of domestic servants than the damp and sunless rooms in which they pass
so much of their time, owing to the injurious practice of building
dwelling-houses, both in town and country, without a cellar under the
whole house, drained, and ventilated from side to side. No room is fit
for human habitation which has not a six-foot cellar, dry, with ample
through ventilation underneath it. It seems surprising that, in a damp
climate like ours, with rheumatism and scrofula prevailing everywhere,
this necessity has not been perceived.

It is often thought that sanitary knowledge means chiefly ventilation,
food, and drainage; that it applies only to the lower classes, and
that we must await the action of Government to build better houses
and otherwise deal with the gigantic question of pauperism. This is a
profound mistake. Health depends upon the observance of all the laws
of our complex nature; it applies to the mind as well as the body.
A deteriorating influence which proceeds from within is more to be
dreaded than one that comes from without. The nervous system (from
mental or physical causes) may be completely shattered, leaving the
individual a wreck. The senses (from mental or physical causes) may
be rendered so craving and irritable that the noble proportion of the
nature is lost. An hysterical, feeble person is an unhealthy one;
equally unhealthy is a coarse, brutal one. In either case, health, in
the true meaning of the word, is thoroughly impaired. Those classes of
society who are able to command every physical appliance that wealth
will purchase are often, from their kind of suffering, more dangerously
diseased than the labouring classes. I need only mention the spread of
luxury, the delay of marriage, the frail progeny of unsuitable unions,
to show how inextricably the mind and body are blended in all that
concerns health.

The highest authority on this subject thus condenses the lessons of his
great work on health: ‘Hygiene is based upon the physical and moral
perfectibility of man, of which it furnishes the proof.’ ‘Health may be
described in two words--morality, competence.’

The general deterioration of health prevailing in all classes and
both sexes is most strikingly seen amongst women. It is proved by the
increase of nervous and special diseases, the prevalence of scrofula
by general fragility of constitution, and inability to bear the
unavoidable burdens of life.

The health of the mass of educated women is a matter of serious
national concern. These women form the heart of the nation, they mould
its family life, they create society, they exercise an unbounded
influence on the lower classes. If the health of the mother breaks down
family happiness is destroyed; so if the health of this class of a
people is deteriorated the welfare of the nation is imperilled both in
the present and the future.

Young parents enter upon the heavy responsibilities of family life
in deplorable ignorance of their duties to one another and to their
children. As parents, it is their first duty to secure right conditions
of health for the infant, for the child, and for youth, until they
leave the parental roof. Each age demands a varying set of conditions,
which become continually more complicated as the necessities of the
mind increase in proportion to the physical wants. The conditions that
will keep an infant in perfect health will not suffice to secure the
health of the boy or girl of fifteen. As a weak stomach will impair the
temper, so a vacant or corrupt mind will injure the body. Comprehensive
knowledge is needed to embrace the wants of every age, and such
knowledge all parents should possess.

In seeking the cause of this destruction and deterioration of
life, thus briefly stated, we find it in the universal ignorance
or neglect of the Divine laws of human growth. We find this
neglect and disobedience equally among rich and poor, learned and
unlearned, religious and worldly, in individual life, in business
enterprise. The fevers of the poor, the hysteria of the luxurious, the
indigestion of the learned, the devastation of our mining districts,
equally show contempt for the wonderful organization which God has
made--indifference to the conditions which He has clearly laid down as
essential to its welfare.

One of the most important problems of the present time is how to embody
the sanitary knowledge which we possess in the life of the nation so
that a higher standard of health may be gained by the present and
succeeding generations.

The solution of this great problem must be attempted in many
directions. It must be sought in the power of legislative action, in
the wide-spreading influence of education, and in the strength of
social combination.

The part which legislation should take in promoting national health
demands serious consideration. Legislation is the human imitation, or
visible representation, of the greatest facts in the universe--law,
and it derives from this representative character its immense power in
moulding the mind and habits of a people; for, as the Divine laws of
the human organization limit its powers and direct its modes of action,
so the human laws which rule a people determine their modes of thought
and their relations to one another. Legislation, therefore, not only
represents the life of the present generation, but is the most powerful
educator of the rising generation. Every law contains this latent
power hidden within it, and so often overlooked. In every subject
of legislation, whether it be the most trifling village regulation
or the gravest international question, there are principles hidden
behind the facts which induced legislation, and it is the attitude
that legislation assumes towards those hidden principles, which stamps
its character as good or evil, which makes the human law obedient or
disobedient to Divine law.

The health of a nation is a most important concern of a wise
government. No other agency can act with such extensive and combined
power. But much wise caution is needed in dealing with such a subject
as national health. Human agencies are very imperfect, and much has
to be learned as to the right way of dealing with most important
subjects of health legislation. If the authorities introduce a supply
of pure water into a village suffering from typhoid fever they do a
righteous thing. They deal with causes. By careful investigation they
have collected a body of facts which prove that impure water will
produce typhoid fever. In this act of introducing a supply of good
water there are many principles enfolded. Thus they destroy the cause
of a great evil; they express approbation of that good thing--pure
water; they educate the people into liking it; they show them, through
experience, the blessings that flow from it. They thus render obedience
to Divine law by their legislation. But it is very different if they
attempt to regulate a village gin-shop. Gin, as a drink, is always bad,
whether adulterated or not, and, in dealing with the greatest evil
that afflicts our country--the curse of drink--legislation must adopt
the same course that it did for typhoid fever: it must patiently and
persistently accumulate the facts which will show what produces this
dangerous disease of drinking.

Divine law rewards the good (_i.e._, the obedient), punishes the bad
(_i.e._, the disobedient), swiftly, surely, inexorably, no matter at
what cost or pain; and human law must never temporize with evil,
neither directly nor indirectly sanction it, or it loses its character
of law and becomes simply blind or blundering expediency. In dealing
with evils legislation is bound to investigate the causes of evil and
attack them. Herein lies the superiority of legislative over individual
effort--that it is able to accumulate that body of varied facts
through which causes can be clearly ascertained and the attention of
the community directed to them. It is only on this sound basis that
wise legislative measures can be framed; only in this way that great
questions of national health can be judiciously dealt with.

Our English Government--in advance of every other nation--is learning
to recognise this great function of legislation, and is gradually
accumulating such a storehouse of facts as will render comprehensible
measures of wise statesmanship possible. The mass of the people,
however, must become sufficiently intelligent to support such measures.
The difficulties which now stand in the way of health improvements
from want of this intelligence, are inconceivable to those who have
not considered the subject. No matter whether the health improvement
suggested be great or small--whether it be the redemption of a lovely
mountain river, whose sparkling waters have been turned into a black
source of pollution, or a swamp that ought to be drained, or a poor
cottage that needs the introduction of fresh air--there is always
the same opposition and misconception. Thus a short-sighted view
of expense will excite furious opposition from small ratepayers and
ignorant farmers, even to the most necessary measures--measures which
would rapidly diminish the poor-rates and increase the prosperity of
a place. Incompetent men or poorly paid men are appointed to carry
out Health Acts, or timid men, afraid to excite ill-will in the
neighbourhood. The Acts thus become a dead-letter, or lawsuits are
instituted against improvements, harassing and even destroying local
health boards. Large proprietors enclose the commons, farm out their
estates to agents, and thus neglect the duties which are inseparable
from rights. The same ignorance which opposes such endless obstacles to
the establishment of sanitary improvements often defeats the best laid
plans when they are carried out, and proves, if proof were necessary,
that a people must be educated to appreciate laws before the objects
which those laws were intended to effect can be accomplished.

Much confusion also at present arises from patch-work legislation that
has not been based on sound principles. This is shown by the present
Acts regulating towns: ‘A recent edition of the laws affecting health
and sanitary affairs gives the text of fifteen Acts relating to health,
diseases prevention, nuisances, local government, sewage, and kindred
subjects; twelve Acts consolidating provisions as to towns, lands,
markets, police, loans, bakehouses, etc. The public health and local
government supplemental Acts are twenty-nine in number, while the laws
treated by the work are affected by not less than 296 public general
statutes, which the author tabulates in the index as being referred
to in the text. No lawyer can grasp these enactments save by great
research, much less can a man who has his own business affairs to look
after.’

The sanitary investigations carried on by the Privy Council and other
government bodies, the labours of the Royal Commission appointed to
inquire into the condition of the poor, etc., cannot be overestimated;
but none feel more strongly than the very men who are carrying on
these measures the necessity of effort in other directions--directions
where the co-operation of every member of society is needed--viz., in
education and in domestic and social life.

We now possess enough sanitary knowledge to reform the physical and
moral condition of the human race if it were generally diffused and
its rules systematically applied. Scientific investigations and the
knowledge of hygienic laws are far in advance of the practices of
daily life. The knowledge is within our reach, which, if employed,
would save the lives of tens of thousands of human beings around us,
keep this army of sick in vigorous health, and make our homes the
precious centres of ennobling influence that they are intended to be.
We fail, however, in the means of diffusing and putting into practice
the substantial knowledge which scientific observation has laid before
us. The first duty, therefore, which rests upon us all is an endeavour
to secure the universal diffusion of sanitary knowledge. As every
human being in the British Isles should know how to read and write, so
every human being should be taught that health is a duty, and shown
how to secure it. Sanitary teaching (varying, of course, in its style)
should be introduced into every school and college in the kingdom--in
the common school, in Oxford and Cambridge equally, into every series
of lectures, whether at the Royal Institution or the South Kensington
Museum, into every Working Man’s Institute, and into every medical and
every theological seminary.

Above all other classes of men, it is certainly important that
physicians and medical men generally should be thoroughly educated
in sanitary knowledge. The authority which they possess, and their
opportunities for instilling this knowledge when families are keenly
alive to the dangers of illness, would give them greater success as
health missionaries than any other class of society. But medical men
are not taught that it is equally their duty to prevent disease as to
cure it; and their attention is not, therefore, sharpened to observe
and to deprecate the numerous habits in family life which tend to
produce disease. There are but two chairs of hygiene established in
connection with our medical schools, and attendance upon those lectures
is not obligatory--_i.e._, is not essential to the attainment of a
degree. Every practical instructor knows that the press of studies is
so great that the student always neglects whatever is not absolutely
necessary to his success. One of the most beneficial changes that
could be introduced into medical education would be the establishment
of hygiene as a first-class chair, of equal importance with anatomy,
a searching examination in its teachings being indispensable to the
attainment of any degree which gives authority to attend the sick.
Almost equally important is the introduction of sanitary instruction
into theological seminaries. The clergy generally seem to be sadly
ignorant of the laws of health. The powerful and legitimate influence
which they exercise would be more valuable if it were not so one-sided.
If the clergy all over the land, who command a mighty army of parish
visitors, could show those visitors the direct and positive connection
between pure blood (made out of food, light, and air) and pure thought,
what a revolution would be wrought in every country village! But the
clergy themselves must be educated in such knowledge, for it is not
simply intellectual assent, but a thorough realization of it that is
necessary. The same knowledge is as necessary to our schoolmasters. No
one is fit to direct the education of youth who does not perceive the
difference between the young and the old, and suit education to the
child’s nature and not to his own. The kind of studies, their variety,
frequent movement, and change, the arrangement of schoolrooms, the
unlimited supply of fresh air, the playground, etc., must all be based
upon an acquaintance with sanitary knowledge, which would be a proper
subject for examinations and certificates.

The education of children and youth in Health is a subject in which
women are especially concerned. It is a large subject; it demands
not only the introduction of sound sanitary instruction suitable for
different ages into all our schoolrooms and colleges, but the creation
of a love of such knowledge and the habit of its practical application.
But this is not all: our great need--education in Health--implies the
confirming and improving the health by means of education. It is not
sufficient that the course of studies laid down for children and youth
should not injure them--it is also necessary that it should do them
positive physical good; they should be stronger, better, and brighter
for the hours spent in technical education, or there is something wrong
in the plan of education. If lessons produce headache, lassitude,
inactivity of functions, if they make children pale, quiet, spiritless,
then the lessons are bad; they have done the children an injury, no
matter how slight the evil effect appears to be each day; and the
injury cannot be remedied by sending them out to play and repeating the
same process day after day. A wrong cannot be made right by constantly
committing it and then endeavouring to repair it. It cannot be too
strongly urged that, unless the plan of education adopted with children
does them a positive physical good in all its details, it does them a
positive physical harm; it cannot be neutral. This is also true of the
youth in college or boarding-school. The same principle is applicable:
if the course of study is not positively beneficial to the bodily
organization, it is positively injurious. The over-taxed brain cannot
be righted by boating and cricketing. The rules which apply to the
fully-formed adult organization do not apply to the growing youth, and
it could be clearly shown how much moral, as well as physical, harm
arises from our failure to recognise the radical difference between the
youthful and adult natures.

Education in Health, therefore--not simply theoretic instruction--is
what we need to make our children stronger; and it requires such a
reverence for health on the part of educators that there shall be a
constant endeavour to make every part of instruction strengthen the
physical as well as mental nature.

In seeking the best means of imparting sanitary instruction to youth
we find that a certain preparation is necessary before anything like
a full and direct hygienic education can be given. This preparation
must be laid in childhood. A knowledge of the structure and functions
of the human body is indispensable; yet young women generally shrink
with repugnance from physiological instruction for which they have not
been prepared. All reference to bodily functions is unpleasant to them.
They have never learned to respect the laws of their organization, and
they turn from the subject of physical structure as very repugnant, or
a great bore. The tastes of children, however, are of a very different
character; the intellect, as shown in untiring curiosity and incessant
questioning, is predominant in childhood, and taste for any study
may then be formed. Children will receive the elements of comparative
and human anatomy and physiology, learn to handle bones and examine
structure, not only without disgust, but with extreme interest; and
they may thus be prepared for the fuller instruction which they should
receive as youths. Everything should be done to cultivate the taste
for natural history and science that is latent in almost every child.
Their fondness for animals indicates this taste, and the care of
animals should be encouraged and directed. The manual of physiology in
every schoolroom should be pleasantly written, well printed, and with
abundant illustrations. Bright, well-drawn pictures, clean and fresh
specimens, shelves and little boxes for collections, should be provided.

To the intellectual training which results in the formation of tastes
the formation of healthy habits of life must be added. These habits
should be formed without, in general, giving any reason for them.
Children should not be taught to reason on matters of Health. They
utterly lack the power of proportion which is essential to reason, and
they run the risk of becoming morbidly conscientious or hypochondriacal
if compelled to reason on these practical matters. It is very important
that they should go to sleep early, eat simple food, live in fresh air,
and take a great deal of out-door exercise, but it is not desirable
that they should know too early why they do these things. The proper
time for reasoning on these habits has not arrived, but the healthy
habits early formed will gradually become a part of their nature.
Habits of self-control and obedience to rules are also an essential
part of the moral hygiene of childhood; they prepare the nature for the
intelligent obedience to law which should come in later years. Children
should not be worried with unimportant observances. The precepts which
it is necessary to give them will make more impressions if they are
not too numerous; the rules laid down must be wise rules; children
are trustful, and their trust must never be abused. If, as they grow
older, they learn to recognise the wisdom of the obedience that has
been exacted, they will escape that dangerous scepticism which so often
comes to youth, who find that their intellectual and moral guides have
cheated their youthful trust. Intellectual tastes, healthy habits, and
obedience to law being thus formed in childhood, the youth is prepared
for that full instruction in health which is adapted to the period
where reason is developed.

For the education of youth in health--_i.e._, in physical strength--and
in sanitary knowledge and habits a training college seems to be
urgently needed. The acquisition of knowledge, enthusiasm for the
study, and a practical realization of it must go hand in hand.
Modifications may doubtless be gradually introduced into the ordinary
plan of family and school instruction. But if, under the present system
of schoolroom discipline, we attempt to instruct young ladies in
the laws of health, we are called on to contend with insurmountable
obstacles, not only with an utter indifference to all subjects of
health and repugnance to many topics connected with it, but with
enfeebled powers from a neglected or misdirected childhood, and with
vitiated tastes from the substitution of artificial excitements for
natural healthy enjoyments; it is also impossible to find the necessary
number of teachers inspired with that respect for Divine laws which
would give them insight into matters of health and the true order of
education. This combination of difficulties makes the task of education
in health almost a hopeless one, unless the individual be placed in a
fresh educational atmosphere where the objects and methods of education
are entirely changed. Health education should train the body--of which
the brain forms part--into well-balanced strength, giving full command
of the various faculties and power to meet the demands of future life.
To accomplish this work the hearty co-operation of the individual
is essential; such education cannot be forced from without: it must
be accepted by the will. All the mixed motives which act upon human
nature are needed to vanquish indifference and excite enthusiasm: large
and beautiful arrangements in building and grounds; the sympathy of
numbers; the stimulus of honours and rewards; the increased prospect
of establishment in life. All the motives which act upon young men,
stimulating their zeal in college life, are also needed by young women.
The natures, if not identical, are strictly parallel. The broad rules
applicable in one case are applicable in the other, and success in
education can only be attained when it is adapted to the one common
human nature.

Education in health would be best attained by giving prominence to the
following subjects: First, the practical study of natural science,
including sketching from nature. Second, the practical study of
hygiene, which would include the structure and management of houses
and households. Third, the direct training of the bodily powers in
precision, agility, and strength.

1. The importance of the practical study of natural science in the
education of youth can hardly be too strongly urged. The love of
nature when strengthened by a knowledge of nature gives occupation,
amusement, mental and physical development of the best kind; it is
an antidote to the morbid influences of fashion and dissipation; it
hinders the premature development of function; it furnishes a basis
of intellectual companionship between the sexes, and would prove
invaluable to a mother in the education of her children. The power
of habits formed in children by their parents are second only to the
original type of constitution, and often overpower even the original
tendencies; these habits are nevertheless formed by the silent working
of influences, hour by hour and day by day, that are invisible and
cannot be measured, that seem valueless, taking item by item in the
long account, and yet in the aggregate they mould body and soul. A
mother may instil the love of reading or the love of dress, she may
form the habit of outdoor exercise or the habit of gossip, not by set
precept or even formal regulations, but by her own tastes unavoidably
moulding the tastes of her children, and flowing out naturally
into those external arrangements that reflect the ruling spirit or
affections of the individual. Did the mother possess a hearty interest
in the wonders of field and forest, of sea and sky, what a treasury
of delightful intercourse might be found in every country ramble! A
mother’s love, joined to broad tastes and knowledge, would never weary
of the ceaseless questioning of childhood; the older the child, the
closer and more influential would be the companionship. The holiday by
the sea-side or amongst the mountains, so often wasted in idleness or
frivolity, might be a rich harvest-time of delightful knowledge drawn
from the treasures of land and water.

It is the outdoor study of science and art that must be insisted on
with the young--the cultivation of the powers of observation rather
than memory--which powers compel the exercise of the muscles and
senses. The guiding principle of health education is to follow the
order of nature, and place the strengthening of the physical powers
not independently of, but in advance of, the mental powers. If the
order is reversed, and the immature mind be allowed to tyrannize over
the immature body, and disturb the proportion of Nature’s work by
withdrawing too much creative force to the exclusive stimulus of the
mind, the true relations of mind and body can never be restored, the
adult will never receive that ready and capable service that the body
should render to the mind. In thus urging the paramount importance
of some branches of study, particularly in a girl’s education, it
is not intended to exclude all others. Many accomplishments, as
well as various branches of knowledge, may be taught in such a way
as to conduce to physical and mental health, and all studies may
be so arranged and subordinated as to be innocuous. The principle
here insisted on is that those studies must predominate and lead in
the education of youth which most fully require the exercise of the
physical as well as mental nature in their pursuit.

2. The direct study of hygiene involves so large a range of
profoundly interesting subjects that it is difficult to display its
full importance in a condensed sketch. The creation of a healthy
happy home (which all will allow is the legitimate work of a woman)
requires comprehensive knowledge. The structure and arrangements of a
house adapted to the climate, soil, and wants of a family, including
drainage, ventilation, warming, economy of labour; the management
of a household in relation to individual wants and to society,
including the subjects of food and waste, domestic service, petty
trading, the care of the sick and prevention of disease, occupations
and amusements--these and many other topics belong directly to the
formation of a noble Christian home. These are subjects that men
and women have a direct personal interest in. They may be taught in
graduation with abundant illustration. The examination of economic
museums, exercise in the inspection of houses and neighbourhoods, etc.,
should be added for advanced students. Every method should be used to
impress facts on the memory and excite personal interest. To this end
a system of rewards would be useful, whether of prizes or honours.
There seems to be no reason why honorary degrees, scholarships, and
fellowships should not be bestowed for proficiency in knowledge that
relates to the health of mankind, as well as for distinction in
classical and mathematical study.

3. The third subject of education in Health is the direct cultivation
of the various bodily powers in strength, agility, and grace. This
culture presupposes close attention to the weak points in the health
of each individual student--those tendencies to disease which exist
at present in every person. All will have remarked that the same
morbid cause, applied to half a dozen people, will produce varying
effects, according to individual peculiarities; thus, a current of cold
air applied when the body is over-heated may cause either catarrh,
bronchitis, neuralgia, rheumatism, intestinal derangement, according
to the individual susceptibility. Youthful vitality masks, but does
not cure, weak tendencies, unless those tendencies are known, and the
exuberant vitality be especially directed to their cure. This season
of life is, however, particularly favourable to such cure. Nature will
never again present so valuable an opportunity of remodelling the
constitution. A doctor of health or preventive medicine, who shall
become acquainted with the constitution of each student and determine
how far exercise must be modified to meet individual peculiarities, is
an indispensable member of the faculty of any college that undertakes
to educate in Health. With this observation and caution modern
gymnastics and exercise in various forms will become an invaluable part
of education. The muscles of the body are capable of the same careful
training as the senses. As the eye and hand in painting, or the ear
and hand in music, require long and careful practice to acquire skill,
so the great variety of delicate or powerful muscles in the human body
require careful exercise to draw forth the varied powers that belong
to them. The ordinary movements of life do not call forth half these
powers. As the large majority of people go through life with only an
imperfect use of their lungs, from the constraint of clothing and
sedentary habits, which weaken the thoracic muscles, so it is with
other organs, and imperfect muscular action and weakened health is the
result.

The principles of education which are thus laid down are the following,
viz.: a constant observance of the order of human growth, the selection
of studies that will carry out this order, habits and arrangements of
college life that will enforce it, direct instruction in the necessary
conditions of health, and careful training of the body. It is giving
to education the grandest of all objects--use, which, if properly
understood, includes the highest and most permanent culture of which
the individual is capable. Were our beautiful sea-coasts studded with
such colleges, with their wonderful playgrounds washed twice a day
by the Atlantic waves, furnishing endless treasures for the eager
gatherers, enthusiasm for health-giving studies would grow up in the
youthful mind, and a stronger generation mould a nobler society.

The establishment of sanitary improvements by Government, and the
remodelling of education, are not the only means by which we must
seek to obey those Divine laws which are implanted in our nature.
Every class of society, every institution--in short, our whole social
life--needs to be re-born into the idea of health. The customs to which
we all conform, whether rich or poor, the standards by which we measure
success in life, and the means by which we seek to reach it, are all
opposed to the idea of health. The hours we keep, our dress, our food,
the excitements and strain of life, are injurious alike to mind and
body. The deeper we look into the structure and state of society, the
more serious are the effects of the general neglect of the laws of
human growth. Practical life now is a cruel foe to pure enthusiastic
youth; purity and enthusiasm are alike destroyed by the corrupt and
faithless society into which they enter. We preach one standard of
right; we practise another. We exact a superhuman effort from our
children when, surrounded by temptations, we tell them not to fall
into evil habits; we require an impossible thing when we expect them,
as social beings, to do what is right when society does what is wrong.
The diffusion, therefore, of sanitary knowledge through all classes of
adult society is as necessary as the remodelling of education. It is
through the gradual diffusion of this knowledge that combinations of
individuals may be formed who will be strong enough to put down some of
the senseless and injurious customs that now pervade society.

This principle of combination may wield a great and increasing power
for good. Departure from any established custom by a single individual
is an eccentricity, but the union of fifty for the same purpose will
exercise a decided influence, and a hundred resolute men and women form
a social power in the State. It is encouraging to recognise the power
that might be exerted by such a band resolved to carry out the ‘Laws of
Health’ in their daily lives!

There is only one form of combination, however, that I shall venture to
suggest, and whose utility I think will be at once apparent.

I refer to the formation of a National Health Society.[23] Such
a society seems to be much needed--needed to give combination,
direction, and impulse to the efforts of individuals; to form a
storehouse of information to which all could apply; to assist health
legislation by looking at this great subject from a family point of
view, and educating the community into an intelligent appreciation of
wise legislative measures; to attack such a great and growing evil as
that of unconsumed smoke; to suggest improvements in education, and
draw every charitable institution into health missionary work. Every
other subject of human interest is represented by some society, more or
less active, which takes up the social side of each particular work and
urges its claims. It seems characteristic of the general neglect with
which Health is treated that no national society of men and women has
yet been formed to promote this vital subject--Health.

Such a society should extend its branches into every town and village
of the land, and form a body of corresponding members, not only
throughout the kingdom, but abroad. It might, with great advantage,
promote the wide application of that excellent system of instruction
initiated by Mr. Twining, of Twickenham. This gentleman has devoted
his life to the diffusion of sanitary knowledge. Having established
a museum of domestic arts in his grounds, open to the public, he has
written a series of lectures, which are read by the curator of his
museum and illustrated by his librarian, the illustrations for each
lecture being ingeniously packed in a small box; he generously sends
this little establishment to any place which will make arrangements
for the delivery of the lectures. Such a system, varying the lectures
and illustrations, might be applied to every little village in England,
for two young ladies or gentlemen might certainly be found in every
place to read discourses so prepared. If a Health Society did no other
work than keep in constant activity such a simple plan of instruction
as this, it would do a work of immense utility. There is, however, no
limit to the practical suggestions that might thus be brought before
the public to the influence that might be exercised upon family life,
or to the sanitary institutions that might be formed by an energetic
Health Society.

I have thus endeavoured to show:

 1. That there are laws governing human growth according to an
 unvarying plan.

 2. That neglect to study and obey these laws produces individual
 suffering in all classes of society and national degeneration.

 3. That obedience must be rendered through legislation, education, and
 social life.

It is only when we have learned to recognise that God’s law for the
human body is as sacred as--nay, is one with--God’s law for the human
soul, that we shall begin to understand the Religion of Health.


FOOTNOTES:

[23] The same year (1871) at a drawing-room meeting held in Dr.
Blackwell’s house the National Health Society was formed, which has its
offices at 53, Berners Street, London, W.--EDITOR.


             BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.



                          Transcriber’s Notes

Page 57: “theories of bateriology” changed to “theories of bacteriology”

Page 127: “an acknowleged authority” changed to “an acknowledged
authority”

Page 178: “herioc efforts” changed to “heroic efforts”

Page 208: “thay will save” changed to “they will save”



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