54 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIF. 



War " was the object which the founders of the St. 

 John Ambulance Association in England and the 

 Colonies and of the Samaritan Schools of Germany 

 had in view. A decade has hardly passed, and what 

 has been accomplished ? At least 250,000 persons 

 have, in the United Kingdom alone, obtained 

 certificates of proficiency after a brief but satisfactory 

 course of instruction, while in Germany successful 

 students are numbered in scores of thousands. Nor 

 is this all : in addition to instruction how to face 

 accidents with fortitude, and some knowledge of 

 what to do in emergencies, many pupils obtain an 

 insight into the mysteries of the human frame, 

 which impresses and astonishes them, and refines 

 and elevates their thoughts. 



The crass ignorance of even educated people often 

 surprises doctors. Some years ago a clergyman — 

 no, fool I can assure the reader — was in his garden, 

 when his little boy disappeared in a pond, and was 

 speedily fished out. " What did you do ?" I asked. 

 " Do," he replied, "why, what could I do, but roll 

 him about the lawn till all the water had been got 

 out of him." Popular superstitions are hydra- 

 headed and not confined to any age or people. The 

 Abu Simbul battle-piece is a case in point : it goes 

 back to 1 36 1 B.C., and represents a battle between 

 the Egyptians, headed by Rameses, and the Syrians. 

 In the course of a fiercely contested and uncertain 

 engagement, in which victory at times inclines to one 

 side, then to the other, the Syrians are at last put to 

 flight, and the Prince of Aleppo falls into the 

 Orontes, and is drowned. He is dragged out by his 

 men, who on the opposite bank vainly endeavour to 

 bring him to life again by holding him up by his feet 

 and letting the water run out. How curious that on 

 the wall of the Ramesium at Thebes and at Abu 

 Simbul, a little to the north of that city, we should 

 have representations, one of them 57 feet by 25, of 

 the events connected with the battle of Kadesh, and 

 that in this fashion we should know that the ancient 

 Egyptian method of treating the drowned was the 

 same in principle as that of a Clifton clergyman of 

 our day. 



How little we know about life. Why death follows 

 certain injuries and not others ; why men grow old 

 and die ; why some diseases fasten themselves on 

 our frames we do not know — nay, we cannot even 

 conjecture. But we do know that the human body 

 is the most beautiful and complicated of all the 

 structures of which we have any knowledge. The 

 foundation of the full and accurate knowledge of our 

 day is due to Italy, where the first medical school 

 established in Europe was at Salermo in the seventh 

 century ; the second was probably at Montpelier, and 

 was founded about a hundred years later. Of that 

 primitive medical course nothing is now known. For 

 a long time the practice of medicine was almost 

 entirely confined to the clergy. The human body is 

 i ntended to discharge many most difficult and conflicting 



functions. It works like the steam-engine, but, 

 unlike that wonderful machine, repairs itself. It 

 cannot even stop for a single five minutes through- 

 out the whole ot life — on it must go toiling continu- 

 ously, and getting through an amount of work that 

 seems enormously beyond its limited capacity ; it 

 requires a constant supply of fuel and consumes it 

 more completely than any steam engine ; it is adapted 

 to do many things at the same time, any one of 

 which might be discharged with perfect ease and 

 great efficiency, but when twenty different things are 

 done at once, then indeed the perfection of the 

 machinery is seen to be almost too great for human 

 comprehension. What of the lightness and strength 

 of the human frame, of the protection, which the 

 bony framework affords to delicate structures, and of 

 the capacity for repairing injury ? No young student 

 can possibly comprehend these matters ; it is only as 

 years give experience, and the intellect strengthens 

 and develops, that he begins to grasp, though always 

 imperfectly, the surpassing beauty of the living 

 machine. Fearfully and wonderfully made is in- 

 scribed on every part, and the beautiful thought of 

 Tertullian is now better understood .than when first 

 uttered : " Man is made in the likeness of God ; God 

 in forming the first man took for pattern the future 

 man Christ." A young curate told me, a few days 

 ago, that he did not wonder that most doctors were 

 Atheists — the horrors of the dissecting-room would 

 undermine any one's faith. No doctor, he added, 

 could feel real reverence for human life and the 

 human body. Sad, indeed, if true ; but, thank God ! 

 false from beginning to end, the foolish words of an 

 ignorant teacher. From the contemplation of the 

 wonders of the glorious body of man, with its 

 bewildering functions, the thoughtful man rises over- 

 whelmed with the majesty of God. " What is man, 

 that Thou shouldest visit him ? or the son of man, 

 that Thou shouldest care for him ? " must possess his 

 mind during all his waking hours. 



The labour and thought given to ambulance classes 

 would be fully repaid had they done no more than 

 lift the veil from those mysteries, and impart some 

 knowledge respecting them. After listening to 

 lectures on the human body from a master, the self- 

 respect is increased, and we recognise that our body 

 is indeed the temple of God committed to our care ; 

 that we are responsible for its safe keeping, and that 

 it is well worthy to be the habitation of the mind and 

 spirit. The human frame is, moreover, the highest 

 embodiment of beauty ; it represents the sublimest 

 conceptions of the architect and the engineer ; its 

 lightness, economy of material, and surpassing 

 strength are unapproached by anything that man has 

 put together. Not in trees, hills, and lakes, did 

 Raphael find his inspiration, but in depicting the 

 saint, the mother, and the babe, and in reproducing 

 the human form the Greek sculptors achieved their 

 greatest triumphs. Need I say that, entered upon in 



