4 Peoria Scientific Association. 
people. Many of our modern discoveries were known to 
them, as the circulation of the blood and anesthetics, which 
are thoughtto be —and justly so—wonderful modern discoyer- 
ies. They had fine surgical instruments, and understood their 
use as well as we do now. 
Medicine was systematized much as it is now, and some of 
our best remedies were used by them and for the same purposes 
we use them now. 
Egypt was overrun with barbarian fanatics, her great libraries 
burned, her institutions of learning, her sciences, medicine in- 
cluded, buried, and, with them, her civilization. For more than 
a thousand years she has been a land of darkness. With her 
sciences went out light, liberty, peace, prosperity and happiness. 
Some time before the Christian era the emperor of China 
issued an edict, which was executed to the letter, directing all 
scientific books in the realm, except those on astronomy, to be 
destroyed. It was also ordered that any physician who used a 
new remedy or anew method of practice should do so at his 
peril—that was, if the patient died he should suffer death. 
From that hour she began to retrograde, and continued to do 
so until a general lethargy prevailed over the whole of that vast 
country. Now our western civilization is beginning to stir her 
stagnant waters, and it may be hoped that, with the reintroduc- 
tion of science, after a long lapse of time, she may be again 
renovated. 
From some cause or causes with which I am not familiar a 
knowledge of the sciences faded from India, and with it all 
civilization that is worthy the name. 3 
Science never conflicts with truth; it never yields to or com- 
promises with error. What was truth a thousand years ago is 
truth to-day, and will be forever, though it may be forgotten 
by men. What was science a thousand years ago is science 
to-day, and will ever be, though the dust of ages may have hid- 
den it from view. There is truth without science, but there is’ 
no science without truth. All disputes among scientists are as 
to what is true, not as to the truth of science. The moment a 
proposition, a theory, or any thing, is demonstrated. to be a 
truth, all disputes cease. : 
