102 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
Compare, if you will, the weakness of the new religionist who 
without a proof can question so formidable an array of think- 
ers, from the days of the Palaeontologist to the Physiologist of 
today even to that startling phrase, the immortality of the 
Protozoa (Weismann). 
Are we and have we not proved that Nature buries her 
secrets deeply, not lightly or weakly for human eye to see? To 
those who dig and delve, her whims, her schemes may some day 
be unbared. To offer you to observe, reflect, compare, record, 
not one alone, but together prove that Nature is God’s own 
Servant for the Truth. 
Ten years after the Battle of Sedan, and thirty-three before 
the present war, the great French physician, Charcot, in his 
“Lectures on Senile Diseases”, p. 20, (Trans. New Sydenham 
Soc. Lond.1881. Trans. by Tuke) indulges in comment on French, 
German and English medicine that is perhaps more striking 
now than when first it was written. The pride of the French- 
man in Laennec and the Stethoscope is evident. Slow waking 
up of the German to modern scientific medicines and the in- 
fluence of Schonlein, of Purpura fame, and of Rokitansky is 
charmingly described. For nobody should forget that Science 
owns no country and is the property of no race. His contrast 
of “the exclusive and illiberal ideas of the Prussian savant,” 
(Virchow), with “the grand words of one of England’s greatest 
physicians (Graves) is striking: 
“The empire of reason, extending from the old to the new 
world, from Europe to the Antipodes, has encircled the earth; 
the sun never sets on her dominions—individuals must rest, but 
the collective intelligence of the species never sleeps.” 
