i 5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thorough legal investigation has twice utterly disproved the 

 miracle which gives sacredness to the place, are survivals of this 

 same conception of disease and its cure. 



So, too, with a multitude of sacred pools, streams, and spots 

 of earth. In Ireland hardly a parish has not had one such sacred 

 center ; in England and Scotland there have been many ; and as 

 late as 1805 the eminent Dr. Milner, of the Roman Catholic Church, 

 gave a careful and earnest account of a miraculous cure wrought 

 at a sacred well in Flintshire. In all parts of Europe the pious 

 resort to wells and springs continued long after the close of the 

 middle ages, and has not entirely ceased to-day. 



As to all these the argument was simply this : if the Almighty 

 saw fit to raise the dead man who touched the bones of Elisha, 

 why should He not restore to life the patient who touches at Co- 

 logne the bones of the Wise Men of the East who followed the 

 star of the Nativity ? If Naaman was cured by dipping himself 

 in the waters of the Jordan, and so many others by going down 

 into the Pool of Siloam, why should not men still be cured by 

 bathing in pools which men equally holy with Elisha have con- 

 secrated ? If one sick man was restored by touching the gar- 

 ments of St. Paul, why should not another sick man be restored 

 by touching the seamless coat of Christ at Treves, or the winding- 

 sheet of Christ at Besangon ? And out of all these inquiries 

 came inevitably that question whose logical answer was espe- 

 cially injurious to the development of medical science : "Why 

 should men seek to build up scientific medicine and surgery, 

 when relics, pilgrimages, and sacred observances, according to an 

 overwhelming mass of concurrent testimony, have cured and are 

 curing hosts of sick people in all parts of Europe ? * 



Still another development of the theological spirit, mixed with 

 professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold 

 injury. Even to those who had become so far emancipated from 

 allegiance to fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbid- 

 den to consult those who, as a rule, were the best. From a very 

 early period of European history the Jews had taken the lead in 



* For sacred fountains in modern times, see Pettigrew, as above, p. 42 ; also, Palyell, 

 Parker Superstitions of Scotland, pp. 82 and following ; also, Montalembert, Les Moines 

 d'Occident, t. iii, p. 323, note. For those in Ireland, with many curious details, see S. C. 

 Hall, Ireland, its Scenery and Character, London, 1841, vol. i, p. 282, and passim. For 

 the case in Flintshire, see Authentic Pocuments relative to the Miraculous Cure of Wine- 

 frid White, of the Town of Wolverhampton, at Holywell, Flintshire, on the 28th of June, 

 1805, by John Milner, P. P., Vicar Apostolic, etc., London, 1S05. For sacred wells in France, 

 see Chevart, Histoire de Chartres, vol. i, pp. 84-89, and French local histories generally. For 

 superstitions attaching to springs in Germany, see Wuttke, Volksaberglaube, 12 and 

 356. For one of the most exquisitely wrought works of modern fiction, showing perfectly 

 the recent evolution of miraculous powers in a fashionable spring in France, see Gustave 

 Proz, Autour d'Une Source. 



