224 



DISCOVERY 



CH. 



apt reply by Simpson that " the Lord God caused a deep 

 sleep to fall upon Adam " before taking a rib from him 

 to make a woman for his mate. It was not, however, 

 until Queen Victoria had herself taken chloroform 

 during a confinement that the clamour of a section of 

 the clergy began to give way before the voice of wisdom 

 and experience. 



It is difficult to understand the mind that seeks for 

 Biblical justification of scientific achievement or applica- 

 tion. People who manifest it are like those of the 

 Middle Ages who attributed all disease to some special 

 outpourings of divine wrath on account of human 

 iniquities, and looked for relief from it to prayer instead 

 of works. In this way was the Black Death, or plague, 

 regarded in medieval times, and only in 1894 was its 

 cause discovered by two Japanese doctors, Yersin and 

 Kitasato, to be a particular parasite which grows in 

 bodies of rats and like animals. The disease is conveyed 

 from rats to human beings by the bites of fleas which 

 have fed upon the blood of rats containing the parasite. 

 For three thousand years " the pestilence that walketh 

 in darkness " took its toll of human beings without 

 being discovered, but now that its true nature is known 

 the human race has in its own hands the means of eman- 

 cipation from the disease. The chain which connects 

 microbe and man in the plague-stricken has been revealed, 

 and by breaking it humanity can be delivered from a 

 thraldom under which it has groaned for unknown ages. 



A few years ago mosquitoes, flies, ticks, fleas and 

 related biting and blood-sucking insects, were considered 

 by most people to be unworthy objects of serious study, 

 but it is now known that they are most important 

 factors in the spread of various diseases, especially in 

 tropical countries. It has been established by many 



