Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



away the central guide — and not 20,000 doctors, 

 each with 20,000 books to consult and 20,000 

 phials of different contents to administer, could 

 meet the myriad cases of disease which would 

 ensue, or bolster up into " wholeness " the being 

 from whom the single radiant unity had departed. 



Probably there has never been an age, nor any 

 country (except Yankee-land ?) in which disease 

 has been so generally prevalent as in England 

 to-day ; and certainly there has never (with the 

 same exception) been an age or country in which 

 doctors have so swarmed, or in which medical 

 science has been so powerful, in apparatus, in 

 learning, in authority, and in actual organisation 

 and number of adherents. How reconcile this con- 

 tradiction — if indeed a contradiction it be ? 



But the fact is that medical science does not 

 contradict disease — any more than laws abolish 

 crime. Medical science — and doubtless for very 

 good reasons — makes a fetish of disease, and 

 dances around it. It is (as a rule) only seen where 

 disease is ; it writes enormous tomes on disease ; 

 it induces disease in animals (and even men) for 

 the purpose of studying it ; it knows, to a marvelous 

 extent, the symptoms of disease, its nature, its 

 causes, its goings out and its comings in ; its 

 eyes are perpetually fixed on disease, till disease 

 (for it) becomes the main fact of the world and the 

 main object of its worship. Even what is so grace- 

 fully called Hygiene does not get beyond this 

 negative attitude. And the world still waits for 

 its Healer, who shall tell us — diseased and suffering 



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