623 
x 884 -] Correspondence. 
Philosophical Medicine, has in all ages, with more or less cer- 
tainty, always postulated this hylo-phenomenalism, which in our 
days is placed quite beyond dispute by the materialistic principles 
of Bichat’s and Hunter’s histology, accepted as the only basis of 
all contemporary sound Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics. 
To Medicine, and not to Mathematics, Metaphysics, or Theology, 
really belong the “ great problems ” of Life, Disease, and Death. 
On these data Hygiene, or supreme culture of body and mind, 
which latter is only a bodily function, becomes the substitute foi 
Religion or Divine Worship, thus eliminated from reality not 
merely as a baseless, useless, and mischievous chimaera, but as 
an absolute impossibility . Sir W. Gull posits these same, con- 
clusions in his Harveian Oration (1870) as the “ categoric impe- 
rative ” of Modern Medicine, which rigidly excludes all dualistic 
Animism from nineteenth century Philosophy. Hyloism or 
Materialism is thus enthroned as the Magna Charta and Mo- 
narches of human Reason. The whole question is really so very 
simple that it seems to be only complicated by formal argument. 
On the hylo-phenomenal theory surely every one, learned or un- 
learned, ought to see that Self must be the sole author of its 
own world, both of sense and thought. All concrete objects, as 
we see or know them, can be only mental imagery, Deity not 
excepted. Solipsismal Egoism must be therefore to us the be- 
all and end-all of existence. Beyond that extreme limit of mortal 
vision we can never penetrate. Christ termed himself “ Son of 
God,” but Modern Science, and especially Medicine, caps his 
idea by divinising Humanity itself, by constituting Man, and 
every separate unit of mankind, father of God and of all things 
visible and invisible to human Gnosis. 
Robert Lewins, M.D. 
September iS, 1884. 
WASPS INDISCRIMINATE IN ANGER. 
If your correspondent “J. C. ” should ever happen to pass a 
wasp’s nest which has been recently disturbed, he will receive a 
very practical answer to his query in your last number. 
Experientia. 
