More than three centuries before Francis Bacon advocated the experimental method, Roger Bacon practised it, and the results as now revealed are wonderful. He wrought with power in philosophy and in all sciences, and his knowledge was sound and exact. By him, more than by any other man of the middle ages, was the world put on the most fruitful paths of science—the paths which have led to the most precious inventions. Among them are clocks, lenses, burning specula, telescopes, which were given by him to the world, directly or indirectly. In his writings are found formulæ for extracting phosphorus, manganese, and bismuth. It is even claimed, with much appearance of justice, that he investigated the power of steam. He seems to have very nearly reached also some of the principal doctrines of modern chemistry. But it should be borne in mind that his method of investigation was even greater than these vast results. In the age when metaphysical subtilizing was alone thought to give the title of scholar, he insisted on real reasoning and the aid of natural science by mathematics. In an age when experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on experiment and braved all its risks. Few greater men have lived. As we read the sketch given by Whewell of Bacon's process of reasoning regarding the refraction of light, he seems fairly inspired. 96
On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most conscientious men of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they did it too well. It was not that he disbelieved in Christianity; that was never charged against him. His orthodoxy was perfect. He was attacked and condemned, in the words of his opponents, "propter quasdam novitates suspectas."
He was attacked, first of all, with that goodly old missile, which, with the epithets "infidel" and "atheist," has decided the fate of so many battles—the charge of magic and compact with Satan.
He defended himself with a most unfortunate weapon—a weapon which exploded in his hands and injured him more than the enemy, for he argued against the idea of compacts with Satan, and showed that much which is ascribed to demons results from natural means. This added fuel to the flame. To limit the power of Satan was deemed hardly less impious than to limit the power of God. 97
The most powerful protectors availed him little. His friend Guy Foulkes having been made pope, Bacon was for a time shielded, but the fury of the enemy was too strong. In an unpublished letter, Blackstone declares that when, on one occasion, Bacon was about to perform a few experiments for some friends, all Oxford was in an uproar. It was believed that Satan was let loose. Everywhere were priests, fellows, and students rushing about, their garments streaming in the wind, and everywhere resounded the cry, "Down with the conjurer!" and this cry, "Down with the conjurer!" resounded from cell to cell and hall to hall. 98
But the attack took a shape far more terrible. The two great religions orders, Franciscan and Dominican, vied with each other in fighting the new thought in chemistry and philosophy. St. Dominic, sincere as he was, solemnly condemned research by experiment and observation. The general of the Franciscan order took similar grounds.
In 1243 the Dominicans solemnly interdicted every member of their order from the study of medicine and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this interdiction was extended to the study of chemistry. 99 In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order, assembled at Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teachings.
Another weapon began to be used upon the battle-fields of that time with much effect. The Arabs had made noble discoveries in science. Averroès had, among many, divided the honors with St. Thomas Aquinas. These facts gave the new missile: it was the epithet "Mahometan." This, too, was flung with effect at Bacon. 100
Bacon was at last conquered. He was imprisoned for fourteen years. At the age of eighty years he was released from prison, but death alone took him beyond the reach of his enemies. How deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be gathered from that last affecting declaration of his: "Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science!"
Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had the world not refused the gift. He held the key of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also. The nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thirteenth. But for that interference with science, the nineteenth century would, without doubt, be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century. Thousands of precious lives shall be lost in this century, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken religious fight against Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth.
In 1868 and 1869, sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales of scarlet fever; probably nearly as many died in this country. 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, 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 which he gave his life to open. 101
But, despite the persecution of Bacon and the defection of those who ought to have followed him, champions of natural science and the experimental method arose from time to time during the succeeding centuries. We know little of them personally. Our main knowledge of their efforts is derived from the efforts of their opponents and persecutors.
In 1317 Pope John XXII. issued his bull Spondent Pariter, nominally leveled at the alchemists, but really dealing a terrible blow at the beginnings of the science of chemistry.
In 1380 Charles V. of France carried out the same policy, and even forbade the possession of furnaces and apparatus necessary for chemical processes. Under this law the chemist John Barillon, for possessing chemical furnaces and apparatus, was thrown into prison, and it was only by the greatest effort that his life was saved.
In 1404 Henry IV. of England issued a decree of the same sort; and in 1418 the republic of Venice followed the example of pope and kings. But champions of science still pressed on. Antonio de Dominis relinquishes his archbishopric of Spalatro, investigates the phenomena of light, and dies in the clutches of the Inquisition. 102
Pierre de la Ramée stands up against Aristotelianism at Paris. A royal edict, sought by the Church, stopped his teaching, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew ended his life.
Somewhat later, John Baptist Porta began his investigations. Despite many absurdities, his work was most fruitful. His book on meteorology was the first in which sound ideas were broached. His researches in optics gave the world the camera obscura, and, possibly, the telescope. In chemistry he seems to have been the first to show how to reduce the metallic oxides, and thus to have laid the foundation of all those industries based upon the staining and coloring of glass and enamels; and, last of all, he did much to change natural philosophy from a "black art" to a vigorous open science. He encountered the same old policy of conscientious men. The society founded by him for physical research, "I Secreti," was broken up, and he was summoned to Rome and censured. 103
In 1624 some young chemists of Paris, having taught the experimental method and cut loose from Aristotle, the Faculty of Theology besets the Parliament of Paris, and the Parliament prohibits this new chemical teaching under penalty of death. 104
The war went on in Italy. In 1657 occurred the first sitting of the Accademia del Cimento, at Florence, under the presidency of Prince Leopold dei Medici. This Academy promised great things for science. It was open to all talent. Its only fundamental law was "the repudiation of any favorite system or sect of philosophy, and the obligation to investigate Nature by the pure light of experiment."
The new Academy entered into scientific investigations with energy; Borelli in mathematics, Redi in natural history, and many others, pushed on the boundaries of knowledge. Heat, light, magnetism, electricity, projectiles, digestion, the incompressibility of water, were studied by the right method and with results that enriched the world.
The Academy was a fortress of science, and siege was soon laid to it. The votaries of scholastic learning denounced it as irreligious. Quarrels were fomented. Leopold was bribed with a cardinal's hat and drawn away to Rome; and, after ten years of beleaguering, the fortress fell: Borelli was left a beggar; Oliva killed himself in despair. 105
Still later, just before the great discoveries by Stahl, we find his predecessor Becher opposed with the following syllogism: "King Solomon, according to the Scriptures, possessed the united wisdom of heaven and earth. But King Solomon sent his vessels to Ophir to seek gold, and he levied taxes upon his subjects. Now, if Solomon had known anything about alchemy, he would not have done this; therefore Solomon did not know anything about alchemy (or chemistry in the form which then existed); therefore alchemy (or chemistry) has no reality or truth." And we find that Becher is absolutely turned away from his labors, and obliged to devote himself to proving that Solomon used more money than he possibly could have obtained from Ophir or his subjects, and therefore that he must have possessed a knowledge of chemical methods and the philosopher's stone as the result of them. 106
And, in our time, Joseph de Maistre, uttering his hatred of physical sciences, declaring that man has paid too dearly for them, asserting that they must be subjected to theology, likening them to fire—good when confined, but fearful when scattered about—this brilliant thinker has been the centre of a great opposing camp, an army of good men who cannot relinquish the idea that the Bible is a text-book of science.
ANATOMY AND MEDICINE
I pass, now, to fields of more immediate importance to us—to anatomy and medicine.
It might be supposed that the votaries of sciences like these would be suffered to escape attack; unfortunately, they have had to stand in the thickest of the battle.
The Church, even in its earliest centuries, seems to have developed a distrust of them. Tertullian, in his "Treatise upon the Soul," stigmatizes the surgeon Herophilus as a "butcher," and evidently on account of his skill in his profession rather than on account of his want of it. St. Augustine, in his great treatise on the City of God, which remains to this day one of the treasures of the Church, speaks with some bitterness of "medical men who are called anatomists," and says that "with a cruel zeal for science they have dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes of sick persons, who have died under their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body to learn the nature of disease and its exact seat, and how it might be cured!" 107
But it was not until the mixture of theology and science had begun to ferment, in the thirteenth century, and the ecclesiastical power had been aroused in behalf of this sacred mixture, that the feeling against medical science broke into open war. About the beginning of that century Pope Innocent III. forbade surgical operations by priests, deacons, or subdeacons. Pope Honorius went still further, and forbade medicine to be practised by archdeacons, priests, or deacons; in 1243 the Dominican authorities banished books on medicine from their monasteries; somewhat later, Pope Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection as sacrilege. 108
Toward the close of that great religious century came a battle which serves to show the spirit of the time.
The great physician and chemist of the day was Arnold de Villa Nova. Although he has been overrated by some modern historians as a votary of the experimental method, and under-rated by others as a votary of alchemy, the sober judgment of the most thoughtful has acknowledged him as one of the most useful forerunners of modern masters in medical and chemical science.
The missile usual in such cases was hurled at him. He was charged with sorcery and dealings with the devil. The Archbishop of Tarragona first excommunicated him and drove him from Spain; next he was driven from Paris, and took refuge at Montpellier; thence, too, he was driven, finally, every place in France was closed against him, and he became an outcast. 109
Such seemed the fate of men in that field who gained even a glimmer of new scientific truth. Even men like Cardan, and Paracelsus, and Porta, who yielded much to popular superstitions, were at once set upon if they ventured upon any other than the path which the Church thought sound—the insufficient path of Aristotelian investigation.
We have seen that the weapons used against the astronomers were mainly the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." We have also seen that the missiles used against the chemists and physicians were the epithets "sorcerer" and "leaguer with the devil," and we have picked up on various battle-fields another effective weapon, the epithet "Mohammedan."
On the heads of the anatomists and physicians were concentrated all these missiles. The charge of atheism ripened into a proverb: "Ubi sunt tres medici, ibi sunt duo athei." Magic seemed so common a charge that many of the physicians seemed to believe it themselves. Mohammedanism and Averroism became almost synonymous with medicine, and Petrarch stigmatized Averroists as "men who deny Genesis and bark at Christ." 110
Not to weary you with the details of earlier struggles, I will select a great benefactor of mankind and champion of scientific truth at the period of the revival of learning and the Reformation—Andreas Vesalius, the founder of the modern science of anatomy. The battle waged by this man is one of the glories of our race.
The old methods were soon exhausted by his early fervor, and he sought to advance science by truly scientific means—by patient investigation and by careful recording of results.
From the outset Vesalius proved himself a master. In the search for real knowledge he braved the most terrible dangers. Before his time the dissection of the human subject was thought akin to sacrilege. Occasionally an anatomist, like Mundinus, had given some little display with such a subject; but, for the purposes of investigation, such dissection was forbidden. 111 As we have already seen, even such men in the early Church as Tertullian and St. Augustine held anatomy in abhorrence, and Boniface VIII. interdicted dissection as sacrilege.
Through this sacred conventionalism Vesalius broke without fear. Braving ecclesiastical censure and popular fury, he studied his science by the only method that could give useful results. No peril daunted him. To secure the material for his investigations, he haunted gibbets and charnel-houses; in this search he risked alike the fires of the Inquisition and the virus of the plague. First of all men he began to place the science of human anatomy on its solid, modern foundations—on careful examination and observation of the human body. This was his first great sin, and it was soon aggravated by one considered even greater.
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing that has ever been done for Christianity is the tying it to forms of science which are doomed and gradually sinking. Just as, in the time of Roger Bacon, excellent but mistaken men devoted all their energies to binding Christianity to Aristotle; just as, in the time of Reuchlin and Erasmus, they insisted on binding Christianity to Thomas Aquinas: so, in the time of Vesalius, such men made every effort to link Christianity to Galen.
The cry has been the same in all ages; it is the same which we hear in this age for curbing scientific studies—the cry for what is called "sound learning." Whether standing for Aristotle against Bacon, or Aquinas against Erasmus, or Galen against Vesalius, or making mechanical Greek verses at Eton instead of studying the handiwork of the Almighty, or reading Euripides with translations instead of Lessing and Goethe in the original, the cry always is for "sound learning." The idea always is that these studies are safe.
At twenty-eight years of age Vesalius gave to the world his great work on human anatomy. With it ended the old and began the new. Its researches, by their thoroughness, were a triumph of science; its illustrations, by their fidelity, were a triumph of art.
To shield himself, as far as possible, in the battle which he foresaw must come, Vesalius prefaced the work by a dedication to the Emperor Charles V. In this dedicatory preface he argues for his method, and against the parrot repetitions of the mediæval text-books; he also condemns the wretched anatomical preparations and specimens made by physicians who utterly refused to advance beyond the ancient master.
The parrot-like repeaters of Galen gave battle at once. After the manner of their time, their first missiles were epithets; and, the almost infinite magazine of these having been exhausted, they began to use sharper weapons—weapons theologic.
At first the theologic weapons failed. A conference of divines having been asked to decide whether dissection of the human body is sacrilege, gave a decision in the negative. The reason is simple: Charles V. had made Vesalius his physician, and could not spare him. But, on the accession of Philip II. of Spain, the whole scene changed. That most bitter of bigots must of course detest the great innovator.
A new weapon was now forged. Vesalius was charged with dissecting living men, 112 and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II. allow, Vesalius became a wanderer. On a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to this world.
And yet not lost. In this century he again stands on earth; the painter Hamann has again given him to us. By the magic of Hamann's pencil, we look once more into Vesalius's cell. Its windows and doors, bolted and barred within, betoken the storm of bigotry which rages without; the crucifix, toward which he turns his eyes, symbolizes the spirit in which he labors; the corpse of the plague-stricken, over which he bends, ceases to be repulsive; his very soul seems to send forth rays from the canvas which strengthen us for the good fight in this age. 113
He was hunted to death by men who conscientiously supposed he was injuring religion. His poor, blind foes destroyed one of religion's greatest apostles. What was his influence on religion? He substituted for repetition, by rote, of worn-out theories of dead men, conscientious and reverent searching into the works of the living God; he substituted for representations of the human structure—pitiful and unreal—truthful representations, revealing the Creator's power and goodness in every line. 114
I hasten now to the most singular struggle and victory of medical science between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Early in the last century, Boyer presented Inoculation as a preventive of small-pox, in France; thoughtful physicians in England, led by Lady Montagu and Maitland, followed his example.
Theology took fright at once on both sides of the Channel. The French theologians of the Sorbonne solemnly condemned the practice. English theologians were most loudly represented by the Rev. Edward Massy, who, in 1722, preached a sermon in which he declared that Job's distemper was probably confluent small-pox, and that he had been doubtless inoculated by the devil; that diseases are sent by Providence for the punishment of sin, and that the proposed attempt to prevent them is "a diabolical operation." This sermon was entitled "The Dangerous and Sinful Practice of Inoculation." Not less absurd was the sermon of the Rev. Mr. Delafaye, entitled "Inoculation an Indefensible Practice." Thirty years later the struggle was still going on. It is a pleasure to note one great churchman, Maddox, Bishop of Worcester, giving battle on the side of right reason; but as late as 1753 we have the Rector of Canterbury denouncing inoculation from his pulpit in the primatial city, and many of his brethren following his example. Among the most common weapons hurled by churchmen at the supporters of inoculation, during all this long war, were charges of sorcery and atheism. 115
Nor did Jenner's blessed discovery of vaccination escape opposition on similar grounds. In 1798 an anti-vaccine society was formed by clergymen and physicians, calling on the people of England to suppress vaccination as "bidding defiance to Heaven itself—even to the will of God," and declaring that "the law of God prohibits the practice." In 1803 the Rev. Dr. Ramsden thundered against it in a sermon before the University of Cambridge, mingling texts of Scripture with calumnies against Jenner; but Plumptre in England, Waterhouse in America, and a host of other good men and true, press forward to Jenner's side, and at last science, humanity, and right reason, gain the victory. 116
But I pass to one typical conflict in our days. In 1847 James Young Simpson, a Scotch physician of eminence, advocated the use of anæsthetics in obstetrical cases.
Immediately a storm arose. From pulpit after pulpit such a use of chloroform was denounced as impious. It was declared contrary to Holy Writ, and texts were cited abundantly. The ordinary declaration was, that to use chloroform was "to avoid one part of the primeval curse on woman." 117
Simpson wrote pamphlet after pamphlet to defend the blessing which he brought into use; but the battle seemed about to be lost, when he seized a new weapon. "My opponents forget," said he, "the twenty-first verse of the second chapter of Genesis. That is the record of the first surgical operation ever performed, and that text proves that the Maker of the universe, before he took the rib from Adam's side for the creation of Eve, caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam."
This was a stunning blow; but it did not entirely kill the opposition. They had strength left to maintain that "the deep sleep of Adam took place before the introduction of pain into the world—in the state of innocence." 118 But now a new champion intervened—Thomas Chalmers. With a few pungent arguments he scattered the enemy forever, and the greatest battle of science against suffering was won. 119
But was not the victory won also for religion? Go to yonder monument, in Boston, to one of the discoverers of anæsthesia. Read this inscription from our sacred volume: "This also cometh from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working."