i 4 NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the 

 earth. 



In two recent years sixty thousand children died in England 

 and in Wales of scarlet fever ; probably quite as many died in the 

 United States. Had not Bacon been hindered, we should have 

 had in our hands, by this time, the means to save two thirds of 

 these victims ; and the same is true of typhoid, typhus, cholera, 

 and that great class of diseases of whose physical causes science 

 is just beginning to get an inkling. Put together all the efforts 

 of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not done so 

 much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by 

 the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger 

 Bacon, and closed the path wliiafc"*"" 1 "'" * * ' ' 



But despite the persecutic 

 who ought to have followed 

 method rose from time to tii 

 We know little of them pers( 

 efforts is derived from the en 



In 1317 Pope John XXI 

 leveled at the alchemists, bi 

 the beginnings of chemical sc 

 knavish is no doubt true, bi 

 evil from the good was shov 

 this and in sundry other bull; 

 virtue of -his infallibility as tl 

 tains to faith and morals, co 

 science alike. In two of these 

 by wisdom from on high, he c 

 are in danger of their lives fr 

 that such sorcerers can sen 

 rings, and kill men and wome 

 tried to kill him by piercing h 

 name of the devil. He, theref 

 ecclesiastical, to hunt down th 

 faithful, and he especially incr 

 various parts of Europe for th 



The impulse thus given to c 

 investigation of Nature was f 

 chemistry came to be known a 



These declarations of Pope 

 after generation, until nearly 

 came the yet more terrible bull 

 Summis Desiderantes, which k 

 and armed them with the me 

 destroy men and women by t 

 magic. 



