July 3, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



9 



insalubrity of Northern Africa, lapsed into 

 barbarism. Neuburger writes: 



Fortunately the fate of medieval medicine was 

 not dependent on Byzantium alone. An admirable 

 illustration of the doctrine of conservation of 

 energy is afforded by the fact that, with the de- 

 cline of intellectual energy at home, a contempo- 

 raneous development of Greek medicine took place 

 abroad, which, if at times misguided, was yet full 

 of vitality, whilst the medical art of the newly 

 arisen world of Islam reached a height unsur- 

 passed during the middle ages. 



In the greater part of Europe, ignor- 

 ance and disease held full sway. In the 

 midst of great calamities "the will-o-the- 

 wisp of superstition is an irresistible at- 

 traction and offers the only ray of hope." 

 Strong men, neglectful of their earthly 

 duties, betook themselves to secluded places 

 and lost themselves in dreams of a heavenly 

 paradise. Mysticism, fanaticism and super- 

 stition dominated all conditions of men. 

 Eulers, illiterate, immoral and even inces- 

 tuous, occupied palaces while the masses 

 died of starvation. The history of the time 

 is a record of diseased, degenerated, de- 

 mented man. There can be no doubt that 

 disease has overthrown civilizations in the 

 past, and there is no surety that it may not 

 do so again. The recent outbreak of the 

 plague in Manchuria and its more recent 

 appearance in Cuba are not without their 

 warnings. It remains to be seen if those 

 who control our government have the intel- 

 ligence necessary to protect our country 

 against the invasion of pestilence. The 

 failure to provide for camp sanitation in 

 1898, the behavior of California officials on 

 the finding of plague in San Francisco and 

 the general indifference of national and 

 state authorities toward the eradication of 

 disease discourage the hope that intelligent 

 patriotism is widely distributed among us. 

 As a contemporary of Mr. Dowie and Mrs. 

 Eddy and as a citizen of a country in which 

 the osteopath and chiropractic flourish, I 



feel some embarrassment in speaking of 

 the fanaticism and ignorance of the dark 

 ages. 



The history of medicine is that of man^ 

 kind. Born in naked ignorance, bound in 

 the swaddling-clothes of credulity and 

 nursed on superstition, medicine has had 

 its savants and its fakers, its triumphs and 

 its failures, its honors and its disgraces. It 

 has attracted and still attracts to its ranks 

 men of the purest motives and those who 

 are impelled by the basest desires. It can 

 be said without fear of contradiction that 

 medicine has done more for the growth of 

 science than any other profession, and its 

 best representatives in all ages have been 

 among the leaders in the advancement of 

 knowledge, but the average medical man 

 conforms in intellect and character to the 

 community in which he lives. The food of 

 the faker is ignorance and he thrives where 

 this commodity is most abundant. The un- 

 controlled fool moves to his own destruc- 

 tion. This is the only way in which nature 

 can eliminate him. A wise government pro- 

 tects its incompetents from medical and 

 other fakers, but such government can exist 

 only where wisdom predominates. 



A study of epidemics shows that in the 

 presence of widespread contagion mankind 

 in the mass tends to revert to the barbaric 

 state. This is the unvarying testimony of 

 all authorities, medical and lay, secular 

 and religious, who have made the records. 

 The historian Niebuhr, in discussing the 

 report on the plague in Athens by Thu- 

 cydides says: 



Almost all great epochs of moral degradation 

 are connected with great epidemics. 



F. A. Gasquet, abbot president of the 

 English Benedictines, in his history of the 

 black death, writes : 



The immediate effect on the people was a relig- 

 ions paralysis. Instead of turning men to God, 

 the scourge turned them to despair, and this not 



