NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE, 163 



established in neighboring cities, an effort was made to enforce 

 compulsory vaccination. The result was, that large numbers of 

 the Catholic working population resisted and even threatened 

 bloodshed. The clergy at first tolerated and even encouraged 

 this conduct ; the Abbe* Filiatrault, priest of St. James's Church, 

 declared in a sermon that, " if we are afflicted with small-pox, it 

 is because we had a carnival last winter, feasting the flesh, which 

 has offended the Lord ; ... it is to punish our pride that God 

 has sent us small-pox." The clerical press went further : the 

 Etendard exhorted the faithful to take up arms rather than sub- 

 mit to vaccination, and at least one of the secular papers was 

 forced to pander to the same sentiment. The Board of Health 

 struggled against this superstition, and addressed a circular to 

 the clergy, imploring them to recommend vaccination ; but, 

 though two or three complied with this request, the great major- 

 ity were either silent or openly hostile. The Oblate Fathers, 

 whose church was situated in the very heart of the infected dis- 

 trict, continued to denounce vaccination; the faithful were ex- 

 horted to rely on devotional exercises of various sorts ; under the 

 sanction of the hierarchy a great procession was ordered with a 

 solemn appeal to the Virgin, and the use of the rosary was care- 

 fully specified. 



Meantime, the disease, which had nearly died out among the 

 Protestants, raged with ever-increasing virulence among the 

 Catholics ; and the truth becoming more and more clear, even to 

 the most devout, proper measures were at last enforced and the 

 plague was stayed, though not until there had been a fearful 

 waste of life among these simple-hearted believers, and germs of 

 skepticism planted in the hearts of their children which will 

 bear fruit for generations to come.* 



Another class of cases in which the theologic spirit has allied 

 itself with the retrograde party in medical science is found in the 

 history of certain remedial agents ; and first may be named cocaine. 

 As early as the middle of the sixteenth century the value of coca 

 had been discovered in South America ; the natives of Peru prized 



* For the opposition of conscientious men to vaccination in England, see Baron, Life 

 of Jenner, as above ; also vol. ii, p. 43. Also, Duns's Life of Simpson, London, 1873, pp. 

 248, 249. Also, Works of Sir J. Y. Simpson, vol. ii. For a multitude of statistics showing 

 the diminution of small-pox after the introduction of vaccination, see Russell, p. 380. For 

 the striking record in London for 1890, see an article in the Edinburgh Review for Janu- 

 ary, 1891. The general statement referred to was made in a speech some years since by 

 Sir Spencer Wells. For recent scattered cases of feeble opposition to vaccination by 

 Protestant ministers, see William White, The Great Delusion, London, 1885, passim. For 

 opposition of the Roman Catholic clergy and peasantry in Canada to vaccination during 

 the small-pox plague of 18S5, see the English, Canadian, and American newspapers, but 

 especially the very temperate and accurate correspondence in the New York Evening Post 

 during September and October of that year. 



