i66 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



[Aug. 17, 1888. 



Averrois, Damascene, and Constantin, 

 Bernard, and Gatisden, and Gilbertin " — 



yet, alas ! as a sad balance in the way of defect to all 

 this learning of ancient, and also of then quite modern 

 date, it is quaintly and humorously added, in a single 

 line, without even an attempt at amplification or excuse, 

 that— 



" His studie was but little on the Bible." 



This, then, is the position and stigma that we have to 

 deal with as physicians or students of Nature and science 

 in the present, as in all former ages, in proof of which you 

 will allow me simply to refer (without at all dwelling upon 

 it) to an article in the actually current number of the 

 Contemporary Review* I will, therefore, close this address 

 with a very few thoughts of my own on the subject, not 

 at all in the way of controversy or of recrimination, but 

 as expressing the matured convictions of a lifetime on a 

 theme which must needs come home to every man's 

 conscience in the exercise of our profession, and on which 

 I should despise myself if either the desire of saying 

 smooth things or the fear of saying the opposite were 

 to move me in the least degree in addressing an assem- 

 bly like this. 



That the active ministry of the healer, if fitly and 

 diligently pursued in a serious and not a sordid spirit, 

 cannot possibly tend to irreverence or to what I would 

 call essential atheism or godlessness, is, I think, so 

 obvious that it is only wonderful that any doubt should 

 ever have arisen on the subject. That ministry is the 

 ministry of the body, no doubt ; physical, therefore, in 

 its aim ; physical also, to a certain extent, in its limita- 

 tions ; and I am not one of those who would argue that, 

 because it is so, the physician is thereby degraded and 

 straitened unless he is also constantly invading the pro- 

 vince of the religious teacher. But when we con- 

 sider how closely the one province trenches on the 

 other, and, further, that in all the greater and 

 graver crises of the lot of man on this earth — birth 

 and death, sickness and 1 health, moral contamina- 

 tion producing disease, and, on the other hand, physical 

 disease inducing moral aberrations, and, with or without 

 these, positive insanity — we must acknowledge that the 

 spiritual element in man is brought necessarily into the 

 sphere of the physician's daily work. I am confident 

 there is not a man in this room who will not emphati- 

 cally agree with me in saying that a physician who even 

 inclines towards irreverence as his habitual attitude of 

 mind is thereby disqualified from performing aright the 

 greatest of all the services that at times he can render to 

 the sick. 



The physician of the future will, I believe, be much 

 more, instead of less, inclined to study the Bible than 

 hitherto, and in this respect will differ greatly from the 

 representative and typical " Doctour of Physike " of the 

 " Canterbury Tales." But he will study it in the spirit 

 of modern scientific freedom and of historical research, 

 not under the influence of mere tradition and ecclesias- 

 tical authority. And thus only, as it seems to me, can 

 the reconciliation of science and religion ever be brought 

 about. 



The physician of the future will do well if he remem- 

 bers always the pernicious despotism -which has been 

 exercised over his own art (though in a minor degree) 

 by the fetters of these dead orthodoxies, and will there- 

 fore be very slow to acknowledge their claims upon him 



* " The Scientific Spirit of the Age," by Frances Power Cobbe, 

 Contemporary Review, July, 1888, p. 126. 



to any more than a historical regard, even in the realm 

 of theology. He will say of them, in the noble words of 

 the Westminster Confession, which (but for the formula 

 connected with it in our Scottish churches) might almost 

 be taken as the Magna Charta of Christian liberty in all 

 such documents, " All synods and councils since the 

 Apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err, 

 and many have erred ; therefore they are not to be made 

 the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as an help in 

 both."* But I desire you very specially to remark, as my 

 own personal anticipation, shared, I have no doubt, by 

 many of those now present, that the physician, in his 

 character of student of Nature, will make, and in the end 

 will establish, this claim to emancipation, not in virtue 

 of any irreverent, much less atheistic tendencies, but 

 for the very reason that he has access to a revelation of 

 God distinct from the written revelation, and requiring a 

 wholly distinct method of investigation. In obedience 

 to this call he will, sooner or later, absolutely decline to 

 walk in the leading-strings of ecclesiastical tradition. 

 And in so doing he will (far from fulfilling old Dan 

 Chaucer's satirical description) studiously insist upon the 

 Bible, and especially the New Testament, and, above all, 

 the recorded life, words, and works of our Lord Himself, 

 as containing by implication the charter of his emancipa- 

 tion, and the only perfectly free religious atmosphere as 

 yet opened to human thought and inquiry. — Lancet. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



The Editor does not hold himself responsible for opinions expressed 

 by his correspondents, nor can he take notice of anonymous com- 

 munications. All letters must be accompanied by the name and 

 address of the writer, not necessarily for publication, but as a. 

 guarantee of good faith. 



"WHENCE COMES MAN?" 

 Mr. Bell, the author of the above-named book, writes to 

 complain of " a strange mistake " in the notice of it which ap- 

 peared in your issue of July 27th. The "strange mistake " 

 is the substitution of the word " private " for " privative," in 

 a quotation from his book, and Mr. Bell finds therein reason 

 sufficient for the expression " rigmarole " as applied to his 

 remarks. I hasten to assure him that the mistake is due 

 wholly to the printer, and that my critical comments are in no 

 way connected with or influenced by it, as I perfectly ap- 

 preciated his use of the word " privative," although I made 

 no special allusion to it. As a matter of personal opinion I 

 may perhaps be allowed to say that, with a little more care, 

 Mr. Bell might easily have seen that no part of my criticism 

 depended in any way on the " strange mistake." 



The Writer of the Review. 



SHOWERS OF FROGS. 

 I read in the papers various accounts of " showers of frogs " 

 of recent or former occurrence. But I do not see that any 

 one, except " Korax," in the Evening News, alleges having 

 actually seen the frogs falling. It may even be doubted 

 whether he ican be regarded as an eye-witness, since he 

 merely speaks of people putting up their umbrellas " to ward 

 off the living shower." Where the little amphibians are not 

 seen in the act of falling, the probability is that they 

 have come, not from cloud-land, but from some sheet of water. 

 That whirlwinds may occasionally carry frogs up aloft along 

 with other "unconsidered trifles'' cannot be questioned, but 

 such cases are doubtless rare. S. D. 



* " The Confession of Faith, Agreed upon by the Assembly o 

 Divines at Westminster, etc., "chap. xxxi. : " Of Synods and Coun- 

 cils." 1643. 



