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P. BLAKISTON, SON & CO., Publishers,. Philadelphia.
BORDERLAND STUDIES
MISCELLANEOUS ADDRESSES AND ESSAYS PERTAINING TO
MEDICINE AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, AND THEIR
RELATIONS TO GENERAL SCIENCE AND THOUGHT
BY
GEORGE M. GOULD, A.M., M.D.
\^^
FORMERLY EDITOR OP "THE MEDICAL NEWS."
PHILADELPHIA
P. BLAKISTON, SON & CO.
1012 WALNUT STREET
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY GEORGE M. GOULD, M.D.
acs or WM. r. FILL ft oo..
1110-14 9ANSOM ST..
PHILADELPHIA.
PREFACE
Continued inquiries for many of the Essays contained
in this volume, at present out of print, have seemed to
^ justify their republication. To these I have added five not
o hitherto published, and a number of editorial articles from
(*)
the Medical Neivs, similar in character or object to that of
v the general collection. For courteous permission to re-
H
^f publish I am under obligations to the proprietors of The
Forum, The Medical News, The Monist, The Open Court, and
4- to the Council of the American Academy of Medicine.
+ GEORGE M. GOULD.
S-
' - Philadelphia, April, 1896.
CONTENTS
PAGE
1. Vivisection, 9
2. Concerning Medical Language, 40
3. The Role of the Maternal Instinct in Organic Evolution 59
4. Life and Its Physical Basis, .... 94
5. Is Medicine a Science? 131
6. The Duty of the Community to Medical Science, 144
7. Charity- Organization and Medicine, 158
8. Hospitalism 175
9. The Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of the Prevalent Epidemic
of Quackery, 197
10. The Untrustworthiness of the Lay-Press in Medical Matters, . . . 222
11. The Disorganization of Medical Science, 226
12. Concerning Specialism, 230
13. Medicine and City-Noises, 237
14. Medical Aspects of Life Insurance, 243
15. Foot-Ball 248
1 6. Muscular Development and Use the Conditions of Health, .... 255
17. Everybody's Medical Duty, 258
18. The Power of Will in Disease 277
19. The Apotheosis of Hysteria and Whimsicality, 280
20. Character, 287
21. The Modern Frankenstein 292
22. Dreams, Sleep, and Consciousness, 319
23. Human Life Under Denied Sensation, 351
24. Immortality 356
Vll
"VIVISECTION."*
Recently one of the best scientific men in America
said to me, " I would make thousands of animals suffer the
most atrocious torments for a thousand years if thereby a
human being could be spared one pain." This was said
by one who is a physician, one not himself a vivisector,
and one who is a particularly moral and gentle-mannered
man. There was, however, a certain peculiar emphasis
and even passionateness in his manner when he said this,
that betrayed the subconscious feeling that he was exag-
gerating. It seemed to me a noteworthy and significant
utterance.
To this testimony I will add the words of another scient-
ist, also a physician, and also not himself a vivisector :
In answer to objections against vivisection in public
schools this gentleman wrote : " I certainly think that child-
ren and every one ought to be familiarized with the sight
of blood, the pangs of disease, and the solemn event of
dying. Death and pain should not be concealed ; they are
the greatest of educators, for they teach us the value of
life in its highest measure." (The logical conclusion there-
fore would seem to be that the more death and pain the
better.) These words were written, not spoken in the haste
of discussion, and were in response to a request for candid,
well-considered scientific judgment, to be published for the
world's pondering. To these two many others might be
added, but it is unnecessary.
* Delivered at the Meeting of the American Academy of Medicine, at
Atlanta, May 2, 1896.
2 9
lu " VIVISECTION."
Now I do not, for the moment, aim at any criticism of
these statements, nor of the essential truth or error I may
think is contained in them. I adduce them and all the
practices of " vivisection " only as a thesis to be fixed in the
mind, and over against which we may now place the anti-
thesis. Without especial quotation, this antithesis consists
of \\\zfact of large and powerful societies, counting in their
membership hundreds of the great names of intellectual
and social life, societies devoted to the total abolition or
prohibition of " vivisection." In the antithesis must also
be included the fact of laws enacted and proposed for the
prohibition, limitation, or governmental control of all
scientific experimentation upon animals.
And now let us keep firmly before the attention the un-
criticised, unmodified facts, the thesis of the justification
and the practice of unlimited vivisection, on the part of
most scientific men, and, on the part of antivivisection
societies the antithesis of zealous and organized opposition,
more or less successful, to any and all vivisection.
Is it not plain that there must be extremism and exag-
geration somewhere ? I think wise men -have long ago
come to the sensible conclusion that truth does not dwell
with extremes. Partizanship is not conducive either to
learning the absolute truth or to a convenient modus
vivendi. In medio tutissimus ibis is a pretty good old road
for comfort, either in intellectual or in any other traveling.
In this connection it readily occurs to you that a tertium
quid has been omitted from our resume of the situation,
and that a large proportion of science-loving minds would
not assent to the thesis involved in the statements quoted
whilst an equally high proportion of intelligent laymen
would not join the ranks of the total prohibitionists. And
this is true, but not so true as might be supposed. Mug-
wumpery is sadly lacking in this controversy.
I confess, after a somewhat extensive review of the liter-
"VIVISECTION." II
ature, to a feeling of pitying disgust of both parties in this
controversy, and viewing the wild and almost insane hys-
terics or dogmatic bitterness of both controversialists, one
quite despairs, and almost wishes that a sort of Kilkenny-
cat battle might leave peace by extermination.
There seems to be a sorry tendency for good people to
rush to arms hotly for, or dead against, the other party,
and to lose that same self-control and judicially of dispo-
sition which saves us from woful error in all other affairs of
life. Sensible people smile at the unsaintly simplicity of
one who thinks that all political goodness is covered by one
of the meaningless names, democracy or republicanism,
whilst thinking that all governmental and legislative devil-
try naturally come under the other meaningless word. If
this is so in politics is it not much more true, or should it
not be, of a definite and clear concern of science ? It is
my purpose to try in a general way to discover some happy
middle way, and to ask if we may not lift this unfortunate
question out of the silly bitterness and partizanship into
which it has fallen. To do so it is plain that we must seek
to make clear the truth and the error in the position of
each partizan, and thus to unite the good, dispassionate
people of both parties in a common cause, and by harmon-
ious methods, make all to work for ends desired of both,
and higher perhaps than either alone have heretofore
sought.
What is the Truth and Strength of the Antivivisec-
tion Party. Let us now leave out of sight all criticism, just
or unjust, all extremism and exaggeration, all sentimentality
and nonintellectuality, and seek to learn the essential
truth whence the antivivisectionists derive their strength,
and which must become at least one of the fundamental
principles of the credo of sensible people. The secret of
wisdom is to learn from your enemy; the true philosopher
knows that no controversialist has all the truth or is
12 "VIVISECTION."
wholly in error, that opinion wins credence only by the
truth hidden, however deeply, somewhere in it.
It can scarcely be doubted that the primary condition of
human progress out of the most utter savagery, consisted
in the fact of the primitive man calling to his service and
aid the wild beasts about him. This view is brought out
with clearness in the most admirable book of Professor
Shaler on Domesticated Animals. " The process of domesti-
cation," he says, " has a far-reaching aspect, a dignity, we
may fairly say a grandeur, that few human actions possess.
If we can impress this view, it will be certain to awaken
men to a larger sense of their responsibility for, and their
duty to, the creatures which we have taken from their
older natural state into the social order. It will, at the
same time, enlarge our conceptions of our own place in
the order of the world."
It was by the domestication of wild animals that the
savage got his first lift out of lowest barbarism ; their food,
help, clothing and protection, directly and indirectly en-
abled one tribe or race to conquer the rival neighbor.
It did more : It helped to found and fix the idea and to
establish the fact of home-life, upon which all further pro-
gress depended, and upon which civilization itself rests.
It did more: During thousands and perhaps millions of
years this daily association with animals drew man out of
the bigoted subjectivity which is the great obstacle of all
mental development, as objectivity, sympathetic knowing
of other beings, is the condition of mental progress. His
animals became for man a sort of mirror wherein he saw
himself reflected, and from this self-study in others there
has gradually and progressively dawned upon humanity a
faint and growing recognition of the truth of the unity
and interdependence of all life. Tat twain asi, this (animal)
art thou, was the grand .truth condensed into a sentence
epitomizing much of the wisdom of Brahminic civilization.
"VIVISECTION." 13
Forth from the unknown, inexplicable, awful, by the
subtle, mysterious agency of cell-life and of sexualism,
springs the million-fold, ever renascent forms of living
things, each dependent upon all others, just as literally
and exactly as in physics or chemistry each particle is in-
terrelated with others. No animal or man can live without
the aid of the vegetable, no animal or man without vital
relations with other animal forms, no man independent of
any or all other men. Each is his brother's keeper, whether
the " brother" be the blade of grass, the bacillus, the cow,
the savage, or the lawmaker.
Civilization is but just beginning to grow conscious of this
fact, but the consciousness has been aroused only by hard
knocks. It has taken great disasters of flood and drouth
and loss, only to begin to get into our heads the lesson of
the stupidity of the denudation of the country of forests.
Tuberculosis in cattle is teaching us that the cow is some-
thing more than a digesting, milk-giving, and meat-produc-
ing mechanism. The value of the product of the domestic
hen is greater than that of all our silver mines. The loss
of harvests by insects is millions of dollars annually. The
death-rate of the human race depends upon our knowledge
and control of the laws of lowly forms of life, and when
that knowledge and control are perfect we may halve or
quarter the mortality.
To this conception, science, reaching always last toward
the heart of the mystery, is slowly now groping her way.
But the truth is already plain : Commensalism, cosmic
commensalism, we may denominate the scientific aspect of
the truth of what we have called the unity and interde-
pendence of all the world's life. We are all brothers or
cousins and we feed at the same table. There is no truth
plainer than this, and disease and dependence are daily
convincing us of the existence of the close relationship and
of the fatuity of ignoring the rights of all living forms.
14 " VIVISECTION."
Now it is the incomparable merit of the antivisectionists
and their allies that they have first recognized this all-
important truth. I agree with you if you dissent saying
they have only seen it partially, narrowly, and emotionally,
but that is no great criticism after all. They have seen it,
dumbly, and partially if you please, but still most vividly.
Their rational account of the matter may be faulty and
even ridiculous, but the heart always outruns the head, the
emotions always point out the objects and motives to the
intellect. Animals, all the worlds of living things, have
rights per se, and the sooner science builds upon that basis
the speedier will be the coming of her kingdom. Com-
mensalism is an inexpugnable fact. Utter and reckless use
of any living thing for human selfishness, with complete
indifference to the nature and rights of that living thing, is
as unscientific, as impolitic, and as suicidal as was slavery.
It is no great foresight to leave the hive enough honey for
it to live upon through the winter. That the honey should
be left because we love the bees is also quite as good a
motive as because it is good policy or to our selfish interest.
Sympathy or sentimentalism, properly understood, seems
to me eminently proper and good, and not a reason for con-
tempt or blame. "The great tide of mercy and justice
which marks our modern civilization had first to break
down the grievous and strongly founded evils of human
slavery. Having effected that great work, the sympathetic
motives are moving on to a similar conflict with the moral
ills which arise from an improper treatment of those slaves
of a lower estate, the domesticated animals." (Shaler.}
To have recognized even emotionally the fact of Life's
commensalism, to have earnestly, personally, vitally recog-
nized the fact of the unity, relationship, and interdepend-
ence of all life, to have seen it, however partially and
narrowly, but so acutely as to inspire a profoundly sincere
and unselfish zeal, this seems to me the ground and
"VIVISECTION." 15
strength of the antivivisectionist cause. Upon this basis
they may safely build, for it is as inevitable as is the fact of
evolution itself, that evolution is builded, and will continue
its development, upon that principle. Whatever contradicts
it will be destroyed, because humanity and science will
both unite to work out our destiny in obedience to it. In
our upstart egotism, and flushed with scientific success, we
have at times so placed and so expressed ourselves as to
give the impression that we were not only indifferent to but
derisive of this principle and fact, and our vain conceit has
been answered by a responsive indignation which has
placed in the Antivivisection-lists many of the greatest
names of our civilization. If we have but a fool's wisdom
we will not repeat this unpardonable error. As protesters,
the strength of the antivivisection-protest has been, or has
seemed to have been in the denial of what has been, or of
what has seemed to have been, a contemptuous ignoring
of the unity-idea, an indifference to the rights per se of the
animal-world, an outrageous hypertrophy of human ego-
tism. Wherever such denial or forgetfulness of commen-
salism, such non-recognition of animal-right has existed,
wherever such inordinate exaggeration of human right has
shown itself, the vivisection-protest is valid, and will prove
to be valid so long as time and life lasts. It is at once
good sense and good science, to acknowledge this, and to
build future action upon the acknowledgment.
The Weakness and Errors of Antivivisectionists,
are, however, many and patent. They may all be summed
up in the one criticism that these good people have not in-
tellectualized their emotions. They have been zealous in
the right but so blindly passionate against but one form of
wrong, that their zeal has all the attributes of wrong. The
emotions are good incentives but poor guides. They need
to be rationalized and the way lit up by the sun of intellect.
Passions, angers, indignations, need the balance-wheel of
16 "VIVISECTION."
logic to make them keep the world's true time. We
gladly acknowledge and fervently contend that, once for
all, the sentiment of kindness to animals is an acquirement
of modern civilization most profoundly precious and des-
tined to grow brighter, clearer, and more practiced with
every step of humanity's advance. Whoever disallows, or
derides, or even ignores it, is doomed. Let his name, in
the name of science and of humanity, be anathema !
But there are perhaps ten or twenty million barns in the
United States with cracks everywhere through which one
may put the hand. Has any vivisection-society organized
itself to protect the millions of shivering animals who suffer
long bitter nights for long winter-months after laboring all
day for their careless owners ? I would like to join such
a society. There are billions of fish and crustacean animals
that are killed with slow tortures dragged out for days.
Who has protected them from unkindness ? In one ship-
ment of cattle from their free, breezy western homes to
Eastern or English markets, there is a thousandfold more
awful agony than ever was in all the laboratories of all the
world. What about the wretched hunting and gaming-
business ? What about the slaughter-houses ? Is death
in them preferable to death in a laboratory ? No sensible
man, good friends, objects to your objection against cruelty
in laboratories. Sensible people will aid you to stop lab-
oratory-cruelty, but sensible people will ask you to extend
the realm of your activity to other and to all places where
cruelty exists, and to expend your main force where it is
most needed. At present you are open to the charge that
you care for but one kind of cruelty and that a small order.
Do you want to educate the world in kindness ? Then by
all odds do so by going to the millions who are ignorantly
and continuously unkind, not only to the few dozen whom
you have selected. Is it cruelty you protest against, or is
it only the cruelty of a certain small class of men ?
"VIVISECTION." 17
Another crying error of antivivisectionists is calling death
vivisection. Some time ago a most sensational account,
with roaring headlines and awful pictures, was published in
a New York newspaper of the vivisection atrocities carried
on in the Physiologic Department of Cornell University.
To call the cutting up of meat in a butcher-shop vivisec-
tion, and to have aroused indignation against the poor
butcher by headlines and pictures, would have been just as
honest and true. For the truth is that in this University
there has not been a single painful experiment since it
opened. Perhaps five hundred dead animals are there annu-
ally dissected, but only after a most humane and painless
death. Now this instance is only illustrative of the general
habit of antivivisectionists of charging those who kill ani-
mals for scientific purposes with cruelty and " vivisection."
At the same time against death in slaughter-houses, by
fish-dealers, hunters etc., there is no charge made, and no
blame is laid upon them. This is an unfortunate condition
of mind. Scientific men may justly claim that to those
who ruthlessly hunt animals for sport and thus produce
directly and indirectly a terrible amount of suffering, should
at least be meted out a hatred and denunciation as fervid
as against those who use them unselfishly in the service of
humanity and science. Not to have done this, to have
been guilty of this blind injustice, will ever remain the
shame and weakness of the antivivisection movement. I
have yet to learn that indignation against one kind of
cruelty rightly absolves a just conscience from the obliga-
tion of truthfulness and sincerity.
Indeed this principle deserves extension; until antivivi-
sectionists become practical vegetarians, they are at present
occupying a shameful and stultifying position. By " the
total prohibition of vivisection " they mean and represent
among other things the abolition of death in the laboratory.
But of course simple death in the laboratory and that in
1 8 "VIVISECTION."
the slaughter-house or fish-boat must alike be justified by
the objects and methods of the death. In the one case it
is for the good of science, the conquering of disease, and
the life of humanity. In the other it is to feed the single
body of the eater of meat. The illogic and ludicrous posi-
tion of the meat-eating prohibitional vivisectionist is thus
worthy of the limitless contempt of rational beings.
It thus becomes clear that the problem of the whole
controversy widens itself out into the greater problem of
the use of the animal-world as food. When the prohibi-
tionist becomes a vegetarian, he is worthy of respect as a
logical person, but while he still eats meat, utterly indiffer-
ent to the death or kind of death his animal endured, and
passionately indignant against vivisectionists, he becomes
a very silly butt of ridicule. The antivivisectionist must
therefore straighten out this tangle and make theory and
practice tally, before he is worth the consideration of rea-
sonable people.
In order to be clear and not to evade any issue, I may
add that personally I object to doing my own butchering.
I would rather be a vegetarian, although I am not so silly
as to seek to avoid my moral responsibility for the death I
order with my cutlet. Butchering for mere sport's sake,
called " hunting," seems to me to touch a lower depth of
degradation, to which I trust never to fall. Trap-shooting
and senatorial gunning are of course unspeakably low. In-
deed, the practice of vegetarianism would seem to be de-
feative of the very object it has in view. I think. we eat
too much meat, that we are too indifferent to the animal
right, careless of the manner of death, etc., etc., but total
prohibition here would not only slow down the march of
humanity's progress, but it would be sadly detrimental to
animalian progress. As a matter of fact it has not been
human hunger or appetite that in an appalling manner is
exterminating whole species and genera of animals from
"VIVISECTION." 19
the face of the earth, but it is the outrageous fury of the
hunter and of female vanity. Under proper restrictions and
laws the use of animals as food has served, and may still
further serve to perfect and beautify the animal world. Death
alone, uncruel death, for a useful purpose, least of all that
in the laboratory, threatens no animal genus with extinc-
tion, and in all our facing of the question, we need only to
keep in mind the object, the extent, and the method, of
our death-dealing. But while we have a ray of reason or
a line of logic in our minds, we must protest against the
antivivisectionist confusion, illogicality, and even misrepre-
sentation, that stigmatizes laboratory-killing as vivisection,
whilst innocently dining upon the products of the slaugh-
ter-house ; that would prohibit painless laboratory-experi-
ment, and laboratory-killing, while obliviously passing a
restaurant-window, or a train of stock-cars.*
Again, antivivisectionists weaken their own cause, lessen
the number of their sensible adherents, and do violence to
their own sense of truth by their intolerable denial of any
least good whatsoever gained by and through vivisection.
Now even in a good cause untruth does not pay. I regret
that I have not the space and time at present t adduce a
few examples out of hundreds that might easily be given
to show how erroneous is this dogmatism. The proofs
have often been gathered and it is unnecessary to repeat
the time-worn story. Thousands of children, for example,
are to-day growing to manhood and womanhood who
would have died without the diphtheria-antitoxin. (But
both sides to the controversy forget that the negative re-
sults, the showings that, except to the dispassionate in-
vestigator, are never shown, are quite as important in a
*See a series of excellent articles by J. Lawrence-Hamilton, M.R.C.S., on
Torturing and Starving Fish, Catching and " Crimping " Fish, etc., in The
Lancet of August 17, August 31, et^seq., 1889.
20 VIVISECTION."
scientific sense as the positive rewards of experimental
medicine.) In reading these tiresome reiterations of dog-
matism and denial, in witnessing the repetitions year in
and out of this eyeless prejudice, one feels like despairing
of the sincerity and sanity of the human mind. I perfectly
agree that vivisection-experimentation has often been re-
sultless, and worse than resultless, the great men of
science, the great vivisectors themselves freely admit it
but to contend that every such experiment has led either
to resultlessness or even to error, this only could a heated
controversialist bring himself to say. The least investiga-
tion of the facts, and the least impartiality of judgment
would insure against such blundering.
Yet another way in which the antivivisectionists should
intellectualize their emotions consists in their neglected
duty to be just to the laboratory-men. Almost every line
they indite, or word they utter, betrays a deep vindictive-
ness, a bitterness of suspicion and hatred, that is, well,
let us say pitiable ! But what is the truth ? Are these
men seeking selfish aims? Are they brutish in their social
or family life ? Are they liars about other things (than this
controversial one) ? Is the medical profession the most
selfish, or in truth the most unselfish, aye, the most ludic-
rously charitable, of all the professions ? Are men who
devote themselves to humanitarian, impersonal, and scien-
tific ends in other callings as well as in this, likely to be
fiendish and cruel ? I frankly admit that some vivisection-
ists are selfish, scheming, despicable fellows but are they
all so ? Are not some of the antis also baddish folk ? Is
it truthful or judicial to condemn all men of a party or
class ? To your shame we ask, Who carry on, payless, the
terrible labors of the hospitals of the world ? Who have
reduced the death-rate of your civilization, and increased
the average length of human life by some years ? In whose
hands to-day is lodged the hope of ultimate freedom from
"VIVISECTION." 21
disease, and its thousand resultant ills ? Who or what
class of men in all the weary world is bending its heroic
endeavors so zealously and so fearlessly to lessening the
world's miseries ? Who in fact and finally is doing as
much to lessen disease and suffering in the animals you
blindly love, as these same physicians who know as you do
not know, that disease in animal and man is the same ?
To your everlasting shame it is that you hate and oppose
them instead of aiding them. Love your lovable animals
wisely, not childishly, love them more, and you will work
with us and not against us ! If you can't enlarge your in-
tellect, at least enlarge your heart, and learn of vivisection-
ists how to make your animals healthy ! Who " crop "
your dog's ears and "worm" his tail, and " cadoganize,"
bit, and blinker, your horses ? Is it the laboratory-man ?
Ah no ! It is Fashion, which you are all too careful not to
antagonize, and which delights to do its charity very vica-
riously !
All of which leads to a linked corollary, the question
whether, by pushing a truth to its most reckless extreme,
you are not allying yourself with the forces that are antago-
nistic to civilization ? I have admitted that the unity of all
life, and by implication the care by human intelligence of
all lower life, is a fundamental principle that must hence-
forth guide all true biologic progress. I have admitted
that yours is the great honor of having, at least in part,
recognized this, and of having set yourselves to its practi-
cal realization. But the criticism has swiftly and neces-
sarily followed, that you have taken your duty too narrowly.
To love one dog or one horse, to the exclusion or to the
indifference of all other dogs and horses ; to love animals
rather than the animal kingdom, and to love the animal
kingdom rather than humanity, what shall we call this
but childishness ?
Or is it something else not so innocent as childishness ?
22 " VIVISECTION."
Have you ever calmly asked yourself how much of
the antivivisection-cry is but the concealed expression of
Science-hatred ? I am not quite sure but that the " cry "
is often the masked growl of defeated bigotry and super-
stition filled with hereditary hatred of clear-eyed and con-
quering Science, swiftly marching from victory to victory
and ejecting from the last hiding-places of obstinate and
backward-looking minds their beloved errors, their cher-
ished ignorances, and their pleasant selfishnesses. With-
out some such an explanation, it is otherwise 'difficult to
account for the bitterness, the misrepresentation, the amaz-
ing celerity with which any club is grabbed, and the blind
fury with which it is wielded. A too passionate partizan-
ship argues the existence of unconfessed motives. If pure
pity of suffering animals were the sole sentiment inspiring
some of these pamphlets, it could hardly be so unmindful
of the awful suffering endured elsewhere than in labora-
tories. But this is an unpleasant and gruesome aspect ;
let us pass on to consider the other side of the question.
The Truth and Strength of the Vivisectionist Cause,
as all scientific men know, lies in the application of induc-
tive methods of research to the solution of the mysteries
of normal and morbid physiology. To those who are
untroubled by these mysteries, to those careless of the
awful burden of disease, its expense to biologic evolution
and civilization, to those also who are either ignorant of or
opposed to the inductive method of research, to all such,
of course, all experimental investigation is valueless. But
every mind which has once realized the tremendous im-
portance of science to humanity, recognizes with ever-
growing gladness, the profound usefulness of induction in
bringing light into the intolerable mystery of our life here.
Induction, as we all know, is reasoning from facts to prin-
ciples and laws. For thousands of years the sense of the
mystery surrounding us, in us, and of us, has with the com-
" VIVISECTION." 23
mon people found satisfaction in faith or religion, which,
scientifically speaking, is often the voice of despair, and is
always the cry of renunciation of intellectual solution. Dur-
ing the same cycles the educated or more original minds
sought the solution of the mystery of being in deduction,
i. e., metaphysics and speculation. They never looked in-
quiringly at the causes and realities of the motions of the
planets, sun, and stars. They never observed the stratified
rocks on which they walked. They never asked the cause
of glandular action, never sought the origin of disease.
The awful pageantry of the biologic process swept on be-
fore their eyes like a dream, and they were utterly obliv-
ious of the strange mystery of themselves, of their bodies,
instincts, sensations, and minds. They spent their lives
in vain quibbles as to matter, mind, free-will, God, angels,
nominalism, realism, in everlasting delving and in dis-
cussion about things in the abstract. Finally, one man
after another appeared who said: Let us for once observe
things in the concrete, let us observe facts closely and
accurately and by linked logic proceed from single facts to
groups, and to ever-inclusive groupings and classifications,
until finally in this way law gleamed upon the eyes of
mankind, order arose out of chaos, and with her splendid
certainties and clearness was born Modern Science !
Almost any single page of a recent text-book on chemistry,
physiology, or therapeutics, is worth to humanity the entire
inclusive product of metaphysics, and theology, and philo-
sophy, from Plato to Hegel.
It will, I think, appear, that I am by no means blind to
the errors and hypertrophies and limitations of the method
of induction, but in the minds of all awakened men, that it
is the most potent instrument in the discovery of truth,
there is no sort of doubt whatever. Now so far as physi-
ology and medicine are concerned, the inductive method
based in part on vivisection is one of the more, mind I do
24 " VIVISECTION."
not even say the most but one of the more important con-
ditions of scientific accuracy and progress. Reasoning
from facts is impossible until the facts are known, and in
the exceptional difficulty of learning the facts of normal
and morbid bodily function, vivisection constitutes an im-
portant method of procedure. There is no blinking this
truth, and the opponents of justifiable or proper vivisection
must either acknowledge it or else take their places as
opponents of science and of humanitarian progress. Every
person who without prejudice has looked into the matter
must well know that without vivisection a large part of the
great body of physiologic and therapeutic truth of which
we are now in possession would not have existed, the death-
rate would have been far higher than it now is, and our
civilization would not have been nearly so far advanced as
it is. It is useless for me to catalogue the facts upon which
this assertion rests. They who deny either the assertion
or the facts do not know whereof they speak, or they do
not wish to know.
Just here, parenthetically, is suggested a strong con-
demnatory criticism of the prohibitional antivivisectionist,
a criticism that shows him (or her !) to be de facto, a de-
ductionist, and not an inductionist. Not one of them has
ever spent ten hours in a laboratory, not one has made a
scientific discovery. In other words, he (or she) has
opinions of a very pronounced sort, about matters without
inquiry and study and without first-hand observation of the
facts. Like the Scotch judge, having heard one side, he
has made up his mind, and does not wish to become pre-
judiced by hearing the defendant's attorney. No more con-
vincing proof is necessary of the vice of deductive reason-
ing!
I could enumerate a number of other, facts to the credit
of the experimental school of medicine, but the single one
mentioned is sufficient to place it infallibly upon the right
VIVISECTION." 25
side in humanity's long warfare against ignorance and dis-
ease. It will be more instructive therefore if we proceed
at once to note :
The Limitations and Errors of the Vivisectionists.
The first that strikes one is an exaggeration of the impor-
tance and extent of the vivisection-method. As valuable
an aid as it is, it is not the only, and perhaps it is not the
chief method of ascertaining medical truth. It has with-
out doubt, often been used when other methods would
have been productive of more certain results. This has
arisen from what a large and broad culture of the human
mind perceives to flow from a recent and rather silly hyper-
trophy of the scientific method, and a limitation of that
method to altogether too material or physical aspects of
the problem. It may be true that so far as we see every
mental or biologic fact has its material counterpart. More
than this may be admitted: It is the especial province of
Science, to make sure of this physical aspect. But over
against these admissions must be placed the unscientific
bigotry, the unwarrantable dogmatism of the prejudice,
nay of the untruth, that the life or psyche is wholly and ab-
solutely explainable in terms of matter and mechanics.*
Truly scientific men have not been guilty of this wretched
travesty of truth, but certain plebificators of science who
* An Argument for Human Vivisection. A writer in a Western journal
makes a vigorous plea that criminals condemned to death should be first used
for vivisection purposes, and especially in the study of cerebral localization
and function. One argument adduced is exquisitely humorous, the humor be-
ing heightened by the innocent unconsciousness of the quality. The earnest
writer thus argues :
" Those who would be unfavorably impressed with this method of investiga-
tion should take kindly to the information that experiments of this kind on the
brain are no more unpleasant to the subject than like impressions aroused dur-
ing the sojourn of perfect liberty. There is every reason to believe that the
stimulus in a large number of instances would be highly pleasing. If, for ex-
ample, our subject experimented upon was a person who had been repeatedly
animated by the ludicrous, upon touching the seat of such impressions the
3
26 < VIVISECTION."
have caught the public ear have harped upon it until they
have almost made the judge of us all enlightened public
opinion believe this is the genuine attitude of Science.
It is a fatuous and a bitter error, and the best scientific minds,
having suffered by the misrepresentation are making haste
to disallow the impertinents, and to set the world right as
to the true status of the matter. It has been the habit of
some to sneer at the so-called " vitalists," asserting with
reckless derision that thought is a secretion of the brain,
and life a property of matter. Except from a few we have
probably heard the last of such teaching. It may be a
truth, but until it is so proved scientific minds will not
assert it. So long as spontaneous generation is a foolish
untruth, so long as omne vivum ex vivo is disproved by no
single fact in the world, so long must the ranters and
dogmatists at least keep silence in the presence of logical
and educated minds.
But, as I have said, the influence of the dogmatists has
been too much in evidence in science and especially in
vivisection-practice. " It is," says Professor Mosso, the
biographer of the great Ludwig, "an error, to believe that
experiments can be performed upon an animal that feels.
The perturbation induced by pain in the functions of the
organism is so profound as to render useless the experi-
menter's study. It was Ludwig who uttered the celebrated
mot, that some physiologists, to study the nervous system
whole circumstance would be reproduced, attended with the same vivacity as
the original experience. Painful sensations would not be reproduced unless a
certain nucleus of cells was stimulated, and this could be avoided after its exact
location was ascertained. To secure cooperation and carry out the operation
successfully the condemned would be instructed with the nature of the work."
The childlike conviction that " the ludicrous " and that " pain" have de-
finitely localizable centers, and that all one would have to do in order to spend
a life in laughter would be to tickle the ludicrous-center with a galvanic needle,
is itself one of the most painfully ludicrous conceptions of pseudo-science that
we have ever met. Med. News, December 16, 1893.
" VIVISECTION." 27
act like one who fires a pistol into a watch to see how the
chronometer works. Suffering should be entirely elimin-
ated from physiologic experiment, because the instruments
we employ to-day are so delicate that they become inser-
vicable the moment the animal is agitated or moves."
This admirable quotation perhaps leaves out of the count
certain experiments that require more or less long-contin-
ued suffering, and in which anesthesia would be impossible,
but in the main it is a truth that has been too much ne-
glected on the part of vivisectors.
I need not weary you with other similar errors, but pass
to another exaggeration, the over-emphasis of vivisection-
experiment and the neglect of clinical and pathologic re-
sults. The pathologic fact is a vivisection-experiment of
the very best kind and admirably conducted by nature.
We should trust it whenever possible, and not only the far
more bunglesome and uncertain one of artifice. Among
very many examples that might be cited, I shall give but
one. Dr. Seguin, of New York, it will hardly be disputed,
is a competent judge in the matter alluded to in the follow-
ing quotation :
" Horsley appears to assume that our progress in cerebral lo-
calization has been mainly dependent upon experimentation.
Here again we must differ from him. Clinical observation and
pathologic data come first (Broca for speech-center, Hughlings-
Jackson for a hand-center and general doctrine), the animal
experiments with detailed proofs by Hitzig, Ferrier, and others
long after ; .and the solid facts upon which we make our daily
localization diagnoses have been patiently accumulated by
pathologists, and would stand to-day supporting the doctrine of
cerebral localization if not one animal's brain had been touched.
Besides, in the case of the visual half-center, human pathologic
facts have overthrown the result of experimentation (Ferrier's
angular gyrus center), and have made us, for practical purposes,
indifferent to the contradictory results of Munk and Goltz. It
28 " VIVISECTION."
is safe to say that every one of the so-called ' centers ' in the
human brain have been determined empirically by postmortem
proofs, independently of experimental data. What animal ex-
periments would have led us, for example, to locate the half-
center for ordinary vision in the cuneus, the center for the leg in
the paracentral lobule, and that for audited language in the left
first temporal gyrus? In this department of pathology medical
science has been strictly inductive and sufficient unto itself,
though receiving confirmatory evidence from the physiologist.
The first (speech) and the last (visual) centers have been discov-
ered by clinical and pathologic studies.*
Almost every point over which the controversy has raged
most fiercely has been in relation to one or all of the three
or four questions :
1. What is a vivisection experiment?
2. By whom should it be performed ?
* That this is not a solitary opinion may be gathered from the following
(unverified) quotations I have found. I do not assent to them either as true
or complete statements of the facts, and especially of later and properly-con-
ducted experimentation. I quote only to show that there are two sides to the
question, and the doubtful value of improperly-chosen or improperly-conducted
experimentation :
" In surgery I am not aware of any of these experiments on the lower ani-
mals having led to the mitigation of pain or to improvement as regards surgical
details." (Sir William Fergusson.)
" No single operation in surgery has been initiated by the performance of
something like it on the lower animals." (Sir William Fergusson.)
" All systems based on vivisection are false and ' illusory.' " (Nelaton.)
" Vivisection has done more to perpetuate error than to enforce the just
views taken from anatomy and the natural sciences." (Sir Charles Bell.)
" Vivisection has not only not helped the surgeon one bit, but has often led
him astray." (Lawson Tail.)
" The teachings of vivisection on the functions of the brain are a tissue of
error, and can only be corrected by clinical observations." (Brown-S6quard.)
" Confusion is the scourge of science, and it is the most striking result of
vivisection." (Sir Charles Bell.)
Majendie said " No physician would think of calling to his bedside a doctor
who derived his knowledge from a source so liable to error as vivisection."
"VIVISECTION." 29
3. For what purpose should it be performed ?
4. By what method should it be carried out ?
In reference to all of these questions, scientific men
should unite and establish a common set of principles or
answers. In my judgment their failure to do so at all, and
besides this, their frequent exaggeration of logical limits
and just claims, has been one of the unfortunate causes of
useless and wasteful wrangling.
1. They have not taught their opponents or the com-
munity : I. What a vivisection-experiment is ; 2. How very
little of such experimentation there is ; 3. How little pain
or suffering there is attendant upon properly chosen and
properly conducted experimentation. They have, for
example, allowed the roar of controversial anger to go un-
rebuked that confuses death and vivisection. Dissection of
dead animals is not vivisection, of course, and at that one
stroke there falls to the ground at least three-fourths of the
present antagonism and prejudice. The vast majority of
all animals now used in experimental study are dead
animals. Again, if death at once follow experimentation
that has been painless, another large cause of unjust censure
falls pointless. Once more, if anesthesia prevents all the
pain of what would otherwise be painful experiment, sensi-
ble people cannot object to that, and thus another large ex-
cision is taken from the few remaining cases. As we all
know, but little painfulness or suffering attends the vastly
great majority of so-called vivisections. When experiment
upon a dead animal is meant do not let us permit the word
vivisection to be used. It is simply dissection or mortisec-
tion, if you please. If butchers are not to be prosecuted
or martyrized, certainly scientific men may be permitted to
carry out studies upon the dead animal. For the rest, why
not adopt Professor Wilder's words : callisection when pain-
less vivisection is meant, and sentisection, when it is painful?
2. I believe scientific men have made a grave mistake in
30 VIVISECTION."
opposing the limitation of vivisection (not mortisection)
experimentation to those fitted by education and position
to properly choose, and properly execute such experiments.
No harm can come, and I believe much good would come
from our perfect readiness to accede to, nay, to advocate
the antivivisection desire to limit all experimentation to
chartered institutions, or to such private investigators as
might be selected by a properly chosen authority. This
limitation of course should be conditioned upon the ab-
solute freedom of (comparatively) painless killing by who-
ever may please to kill, or else the hunters, fishers,
slaughter-house men, and a hundred other killers of bed-
bugs, grasshoppers, etc., would have to be included, and
then the world would roar its laughter ! Mayn't we vivi-
sect tapeworms and pediculi?
At present the greatest harm is done true science by
men who conduct experiments without preliminary know-
ledge to choose, without judgment to carry out, without
true scientific training or method, and only in the interest
of vanity. It takes a deal of true science and patience to
neutralize with good and to wash out of the memory the
sickening, goading sense of shame that follows the know-
ledge that in the name of science a man could from a height
of 25 feet drop 125 dogs upon the nates (the spine forming
a perpendicular line to this point), and for from 41 to 100
days observe the results until slow death ended the animals'
misery. While we have such things to answer for, our
withers are surely not unwrung, and in the interest ot
science, if not from other motives, we have a right to
decide who shall be privileged to do them.
I have adduced this single American experiment, but
purposely refrain from even mentioning the horrors of
European laboratories. This is not because I would avoid
putting blame where it belongs, but because such things are
peculiarly prone to arouse violent language and passion,
"VIVISECTION." 31
clouding the intellect and making almost impossible a de-
sirable judicial attitude of mind. The Teutonic race is to
be congratulated that it is guilty of at least but few
examples of the atrocities that have stained the history of
Latin vivisection, and before which, as before the records of
Roman Conquest and Slavery, or of the " Holy Inquisi-
tion," one shudders at the possibilities of mental action, in
beings that bore the human form and feature. Shaler con-
tends that it was the domestication of animals that enabled
the Aryan and Teuton to conquer his adversary, and that
has since civilized the conqueror. Thus long friendship
with animals has given us a freedom from guilt that is fortu-
nate for Teutonic peoples and science.
Vivisection is out of place in the public schools. In the
interests of pedagogy, as well for the benefit of the pupil's
morality as for the promotion of true science, scientific men
should oppose with a common voice any such caricature
and subversion of their aims and methods. Children should
not, of all things in the world, " be familiarized with the
sight of blood, etc., etc." *
* Antivivisection for Children. It strikes us that of all men physicians
should be foremost and most emphatic in their denunciation of vivisection in
the public schools or in any schools except those for adults and those especially
devoting themselves to medical or biologic science. The matter would hardly
seem to need argumentation. Every right-minded person must know, and doubt-
less must painfully remember in his own case, how callous children are to suffer-
ing and even how verily diabolic they often are as tormentors of animals over
which they have power. It would also seem perfectly plain that the practice of
vivisection before or by such highly imitative beings would have one certain
effect : to increase enormously the already thoughtlessly or consciously cruel ten-
dencies of their natures. " Appetite grows by eating." In medieval times the
great gala days were the days si auto daft. Gay cavaliers and gay ladies flirted
and laughed for hours before men slowly being burned to death. They were
no more intentionally or really cruel than boys to-day who pour coal-oil over
dogs and burn them to death.
Would vivisection in public schools have other effects more than compensa-
tory for the evil ? Clearly and decidedly not. In the first place, dissection
32 "VIVISECTION."
3. The true object, the principal if not the only one, of
vivisection, should be the eliciting of new truth. To this
end also, any one may sacrifice by painless death as many
animals as he pleases, so long a most remote possibility
as the extermination of no species is threatened. Shall
it not be as right to kill rabbits for scientific purposes,
as for sport, or to rid the harassed Australian farmer of the
pests? We must ever insist on this distinction between
use of the dead animal and true vivisection. One may
painlessly kill animals also in order by further experiment
to acquire manipulative or surgical skill, and for didactic
purposes, in medical or scientific schools. Death of plente-
ous and prolific animals, is per se no evil, and cannot be
legislated against or morally forbidden ; and the same rule
will hold as regards all callisection, or painless vivisection.
But I believe that the most enlightened judgment and feel-
ing of the world will not justify much or any severe senti-
section (painful vivisection) for didactic purposes or for the
acquirement of operative technic. In the interests of
science, again, as well as of morality, scientific men should
set their faces sternly against such things.
and anatomy and the advanced physiology to be gained by vivisection are not
fit studies for the child-mind, but are plainly adapted and adaptable only to a
maturer age, and for those preparing to become physicians or specialists. The
child-mind by its very nature is not analytic, and any attempt to force it into
anlaytic studies before a riper season, is squarely contrary to pedagogic science.
It is not only against the child's nature and bound to prove unsuccessful, but,
if possible, it would not be desirable. We need to teach the young mind the
beauty of life, not the analysis of death. In educational methods we are at
last fairly emerging from the barbarism of the study of dead things by dead
methods and by dead-alive teachers. Do not let us encourage any such rever-
sion to the barbarism of medievalism, as turning the kindergarten, that divine
promise of a future civilization, into a miniature dissection-room or laboratory
for experimental physiology. Moreover, in the interests of physiology, of
medicine, and of science itself, we should protest against such physiology as
would be taught in the public schools by the present day (or promised) school-
teacher. Med. News, August 77,
" VIVISECTION." 33
4. The proper method of using animals for experimental
purposes should combine scientific seriousness and rigor
with the tenderest kindness to the animals. There is a
subtle and beautiful law of psychology that only the unity
of right object and careful method is productive of good
results. Matter and manner must go hand in hand. Mor-
ality is a part of intellect, and a large part. When you see
a vivisector pretending to be scientific, but whose every act
and word indicates brutality to his fellow men, the politi-
cian, the selfish schemer, vulgarity of mind and banality
of manner, rest assured his laboratory-experiment is
vitiated with falsehood and error, and scientifically is
utterly valueless. To jeer at and deride " sentimentality "
while pretending to be working for the good of humanity
(a sentiment, if ever there was one !) is hypocritic and
flagrant self-contradiction. This attitude of mind on the
part of a few men does more to arouse the indignation of
opponents than any cruelty itself. Scientific men should
root out of their ranks such poor representatives. They
are enemies in the scientific household. Dr. Klein, a phy-
siologist, before the Royal Commission testified that he
had no regard at all for the sufferings of the animals he
used, and never used anesthetics except for didactic pur-
poses, unless necessary for his own convenience, and that
he had no time for thinking what the animal would feel or
suffer. It may be denied, but I am certain a few American
experimenters feel the same way and act in accordance with
their feelings. But they are not by any means the majority,
and they must not only be silenced, but their useless and
unscientific work should be stopped. They are a disgrace
both to science and humanity. Over against Klein and
those of his way of feeling let us set the example of the
great Ludwig, he who has done more for physiology than
a thousand Kleins, he whose influence for scientific truth
has been the greatest of any physiologist in Europe.
4
34 "VIVISECTION."
" No physiologist," says his biographer, " has ever
sought with greater frankness than Ludwig to impose just
limits on vivisection. The gates of his institute were ever
open to all who wished to assure themselves that he, in
the midst of his experiments, knew how to spare suffering.
The vivisector's art attained such perfection in his hands
that, having to sacrifice an animal, he did not let it feel
that it was even being tied. He would apply the muzzle
and instantly proceed to the exhibition of ether or chloro-
form, which, in a few seconds, in a dog, for example, made
it insensible."
In America we have one great anatomist the circles of
whose scientific beneficence are ever widening and deepen-
ing, who acts as did Ludwig. No man ever had a more
sympathetic and tender regard for all lower life than he.
His cat-home is a marvel of ingenuity and kind carefulness,
over which hangs the motto
" Snugly housed and fully fed,
Happy living and useful dead."
By this man not a single painful experiment is found
necessary to illustrate his physiologic teachings, although
some five hundred or more animals are annually killed
with perfect painlessness. His laboratories and homes of
animals are always open to inspection, gladly, proudly
exhibited, and if you want a pet he will give you your
choice out of an extensive collection.
And this brings me to what I can but conceive as a
grave and profound mistake on the part of the experi-
mentalists, their secrecy. I well know that bigotry and
prejudice may misrepresent. The whole history of the
cycle-long struggle of the medical profession to obtain
human dissection-material in the study of anatomy shows
that the public mind has been hard to win over from its
repugnance to the use of the dead human body for educa-
"VIVISECTION." 35
tion in anatomy. But that day is now nearly or quite past,
and the policy of secrecy is to be replaced by one of the
most complete frankness and openness. In his recent
presidential address, Dr. Thomas Dwight of the Harvard
Medical School said :
" From careful observation I am convinced that the policy
which will lead to the most satisfactory results is one of complete
openness ; that above all, we should avoid a timidity which shirks
discussion of this topic. When we shall show so clearly as to
carry conviction, that we have nothing to conceal, a great step
will have been taken. I like to boast that the anatomical depart-
ment of the Harvard Medical School is ready to give an account
of every body it receives. If there be aught in the management
of dissecting rooms that calls for criticism, I would not have re-
form forced upon us from without. Let us be the first to antici-
pate every reasonable demand."
It is precisely in this spirit that the experimental school
of medicine should meet the antivivisectionists and the
world. A truly scientific man is necessarily a humane
man, and there will be nothing to conceal from the public
gaze of anything that goes on in his laboratory. It is a
mistake to think our work cannot bear the criticism of such
enlightened public sentiment as exists here and now; if
there is necessary secrecy there is wrong. People gener-
ally are not such poor judges as all that. The openness
will at one stroke eliminate the pseudoscientists and
greatly calm the overwrought and erroneous public appre-
hension. I would even go further: Every laboratory
should publish an annual statement setting forth plainly the
number and kind of experiments, the objects aimed at, and
most definitely the methods of conducting them. At
present the public somewhat ludicrously but sincerely
enough grossly exaggerates the amount and the char-
acter of this work, and by our foolish secrecy we feed
the flame of their passionate error. An organized syste-
36 " VIVISECTION."
matic and absolute frankness, besides self-benefit, would at
once, as it were, take the wind out of our opponents' sails.
Do not also let us have " reform forced upon us from with-
out," in this contention, but by going more than half way
to meet them, by the sincerest publicity, show that as well
as scientists and lovers of men we are also genuine lovers
of animals. Faith, hope, and love, these three ! To faith
in knowledge, to hope of lessening human evil, we add
love love of men, and of the beautiful living mechanisms
of animal-bodies placed in our care. He who unnecessarily
hurts one of these, is a disgrace to science and to humanity.
As it appears to me this most unfortunate controversy,
filled with bitterness, misrepresentation, and exaggeration,
is utterly unnecessary. Both of the sharply-divided hate-
filled parties are at heart, if they but knew it, agreed upon
essentials, and furiously warring over nonessentials and
errors. I frankly confess that one side is about as much
at fault as the other, and that the whole wretched business
is a sad commentary upon the poverty of common charity
and good sense. There have been far more passion, shriek-
ing, grunting, and growling than becomes rational beings.
The only comforting thing in it all is the righteous convic-
tion of everybody concerned that at heart it is an awfully
serious and important concern. But this hardly justifies
either hysteric falsetto or leonine roaring. When good
women call good men devils, and good men retort Liars !
it commences to get disgusting or ludicrously opera
bouffe. Cannot we ignore the ranters and extremists of
both parties, behave like decent folk, get together, strike a
balance sheet of our common follies and common excellen-
cies, and find that at last we are very much alike, and in-
deed, have no real quarrel ? Of course scientists can have
nothing to do with those who cry no quarter ! But the
advocate of the total prohibition of vivisection can be
brought to see the error of his (or her) ways, or can be
" VIVISECTION." 37
cheerfully allowed to go those ways with the amused pity
of all sensible people. For the rest there is by no means
an infinite and unbridgeable chasm separating the two
parties. Every good scientist is as much interested in pro-
moting kindness to animals as the most devoted member
of S. P. C. A., and I would add that it is his duty to join
such organizations and help to carry on their proper work.
Possibly he may serve to intellectualize that work some-
what and make it more effective. Pardon me for again allud-
ing to Ludwig, the great scientist, the greatest of vivisectors,
and one of the greatest lovers of animals. It will doubt-
less surprise some extremists to be told that a vivisector
can be as great a protector of animals from cruelty as the
best of them, and the sting of the surprise and incredulity
comes from the sad confession that it is much of it our
own fault. But " Ludwig was President of the Leipsic
Society for the Protection of Animals, and remained to
the last one of its most active members. Germany owes
it to him that her horses and beasts of burden are now
humanely treated. To him is due that awakening of the
true humanitarian spirit toward the brute creation that cul-
minated in the ' Verband der Thierschutz-vereine des
Deutschen Reichs ' (Union of German Societies for the
Protection of Animals). It was mainly from her sense of
the gentler attitude to be encouraged toward animals on
the part of the rising generation that Leipsic made him an
honorary citizen on the fiftieth anniversary of his gradua-
tion in medicine." Can we not, shall we not, rise to the
easily- attained height of a similar dignity and magnanimity ?
Let us have peace !
Perhaps it may not be possible to unite the two parties
in a common cause. The earlier sins and mistakes of a
good man are likely to cling to him like a Nessus-shirt,
and bar his later progress. Most men would rather be
consistent than to be right. If it is really impossible to get
281.173
38 " VIVISECTION."
the experimentalists and the antivivisectionists to cancel
their mutual errors and exaggerations the things wherein
they disagree and unite in a common propagandism of
their mutual truths and beliefs, if this desirable and right
ideal is impossible, then it is time to form a new order or
society aiming to correct the errors of both parties, gen-
eralize and systematize the essential purposes of both, and
more important still to extend its field of labor beyond
the present narrow confines and limited range.
I wish there might be an International Biologic League
formed for the general protection and safeguarding of
animals and plants from cruelty and destruction. Human
progress and civilization have united at last to put into our
hands the care and destiny of all lower forms of life upon
the globe. The ingenuity, prolificity, and restlessness of
humanity have at last brought man into destructive con-
tact with every order of lower life, and with a more than
savage stupidity he has begun a suicidal and impious ex-
termination of many types. Once gone these are forever
gone, and a large culture can only feel genuine anguish at
such a terrible end as seems threatened. It is time some
such organization of biologists should undertake to extend
the egis of human care over the fate of our cosmic life,
and secure from all governments such laws as shall pre-
vent the ruinous destruction of infinitely beautiful and
valuable types. Already many species of birds have dis-
appeared in historic times, and our barbaric milliners and
their thoughtless customers are still furiously at their
frightful work. One dealer last year sold 2,000,000 bird-
skins. The world's most wonderful and intelligent animal,
the elephant, is doomed, 100,000 a year being slaughtered
to provide billiard balls, every pound of ivory costing also a
human life. Our buffaloes and moose are about gone, and
the seals are soon to go, with many wonderful inhabitants
of the earth's waters. Future scientists will look back at us
" VIVISECTION." 39
of to-day aghast at our blindness and heedlessness. Some
gleams and hints of prudence exist, as for example, the
forbidding of hunting in our national parks, our Govern-
ment Fish Commission, etc., but how far is all triis from
a generalized and international system, that should prepare
universal laws and plans for biologic Retreats or Sanctu-
aries, that should protect the head-waters of our rivers
from deforestation, and prevent them from being made
foul sewers, that should guard against upsetting the deli-
cate balance between animal and vegetable life, immin-
ently threatened by the thoughtlessness, brutality, and
avarice of destructive man. Before such an ideal how con-
temptibly petty seem the unseemly bickerings of the
whole vivisection controversy !
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.*
One of the most amusing inconsistencies of a small class
of minds otherwise progressive, scientific and rational, is
their unreasoning conservatism concerning the spelling and
use of certain words. In any other subject, for instance
therapeutics or surgery, they will welcome investigation, and
further it, admitting the duty of improving upon the old,
and of pushing on toward a more simple and perfect
science. But when you suggest that language, the tool of
thought, deserves consideration, is very clumsy and archaic,
is capable of being improved, at once they shrink and are
shocked at your temerity.
This attitude of hatred of innovation in one single field
of human activity, while admitting the law of progress in
all other departments, is also coupled with a second incon-
sistency; a dogmatism of conviction that the change or
modification of language urged is barbarous, almost
sacrilegious, that you are a sort of ill-bred upstart and
ignoramus in advocating it, and that the old form you
desire to supplant is the correct one, while your new-
fangled thing is absurd and is born of ignorance. The
bigotry of the average Englishman in these matters is a
charming exhibition of medieval-mindedness translated to
an age of civilization and progress. He actually thinks
that the spelling-reformer, however infinitesimal and micro-
scopic the spelling-change advocated, is the product of
" Americanism," and of American ignorance of how to
* Delivered at the Meeting of the American Medical Editors' Association,
held at Atlanta, May, 1896.
40
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 41
spell. The American inheritor of the English dogmatism
tries to hide his feeling, shrinks from such laughable
exposure of his own ignorance, and even covers the sheep-
skin of his ignorance with the lion-skin of erudition.
I shall not soon forget a contributor whose English was
equal in barbarity to that of our average senator, whose
spelling by any standard was atrocious, and whose medical
ideas were of course on a par with their means of expres-
sion ; but he was certain of one thing, that he wanted
hemorrhage " spelled rightly, with a." This to him was
the symbol of scholarship, his nose was safely in the
sand of erudition, but his whole body was delightfully
visible.
I have had the pleasure of replying to but three or four
critics of a few tiny philologic reforms or changes that
seemed to me wise. Besides these four the world seems
content either to accept or to reject in silence. I was
struck by the fact that in all four of the speaking objectors
their objections were solely based upon two foundations :
their personal dislike of change, and their complete
ignorance of philology. Concerning the argument, de gus-
tibus, there is surely no discussion, because taste, proverb-
ially, is simply a subjective affair. But dogmatic opinion
upon a subject in dispute, the deeply-rooted dogmatism
upon things without a single minute's study of them or of
their history, this in a supposably scientific man is,
well ! let us call it, deplorable. It is amusing, even instruc-
tively amusing, but it is, once more, deplorable. Such a
person, if a surgeon, would be shocked if you asked him
to pronounce dogmatically upon an unstudied question of
therapeutics or of mental disease, or if a diagnostician he
would not express the least judgment as to cataract-extrac-
tion, etc., but without an instant's study of philology he
settles a philologic dispute off-hand and forever. Five
minutes of glancing through any one of the hundreds of
42 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
books on the subject would have closed his lips, but that
does not give him pause. He is sustained by the fact that
" the English language as now written is good enough for
me," and there floats through his mind hazy ideas that
etymology demands the present method, and that at best
you are a very bothersome and conceited person.
To one who has pondered the subject, however little, it
must be painfully apparent that every other product uncon-
sciously developed in the evolution of the race, whether
plows, guns, matches, or books, has been found capable
of betterment, and all civilization consists in improvement
of or improvement upon the crude devices of early awk-
wardness. Why should language then be an exception to
the rule ? Those who have examined carefully aver that
our language is a sorry instrument of thought, and bears
about the same likeness to an ideal language that a hand-
sickle does to the best reaping and binding machine of
our day. It is plain, therefore, that the obstinate prejudice
against any change whatsoever in it is most ill-advised and
unreasonable.
We do not advise radical changes. The proper attitude
of mind is one that welcomes slow and slight changes to-
ward shortening and thus lessening the severe burden of
education, and the expense of printing. Reform has a
double motive here, psychologic and commercial. It has
been estimated that our outrageous spelling costs one year
of school-life of every child. The financial saving by les-
sening every printed page one line would probably pay the
expenses of our government, and perhaps also retire on a
life-pension the Senate besides. This line could be saved,
and at least a day or two of the wasted school-life spared
by abolishing ce and ce, by lopping off a few redundant tails
of words, and by observing a half-dozen little rules, all of
which are not only advisable but philologically necessary,
not only not improper but genuinely proper.
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 43
As to e, and 02, these diphthongs are difficult to write, and
they are against the genius of the language. They have
already been sloughed in a large number of words, and
those who oppose what they are pleased to call " the mu-
tilation of our beloved language," must answer our demand
for a rule. Shall we reinsert the e, and 02, in words at
present spelled with e, and which were derived from older
words spelled with the darling diphthongs ? And if you
spell h&morrhage, will you, as you should, pronounce it
he'-mor-aj ? It seems to me the etymologic sticklers are
false to the old love, however true they may be to the new.
Most of our words, for example, beginning with pre are
derived from the Latin pre. There are possibly a thousand
of these words, such as prescription, prepuce, pretend, pre-
ference, etc. Shall we spell them all prescription, prepuce,
etc ? Shall we also be (etymologically) correct and write
heresy, heretic, anapest, poeony, phenomenon, meander,
hematite, ether, demon, esthetic, apharesis, dieresis, arche-
ology, paleography, gangrene, pedobaptist, cenobite, ceme-
tery, celestial, ceconomy, epicene, cesophagus, phaznix, solec-
ism, and hundreds of derivatives and similar words as they
are here written ? Will you spell diocese, dicecese f Will
you spell f ancy , frantic , and frenzy with a very etymologic-
ally proper ph, instead of an incorrect f?- If so, your
phancy will make your readers phrenzied, and you phrantic,
I fear. Will you write tansy, treacle and treasure with a
th ? If so, lay up your threasure in heaven, and drink much
threacle and thansy while your days do last.
Etymologic spelling is a long-exploded absurdity. It has
led many a poor word-grubber into the quagmires of absurd-
ity. It was, says the great English etymologist, a sort of
mania in the sixteenth century, and has thrown confusion
and ridicule into the study of language. " Its ignorant
meddlesomeness introduced many false forms," so that
hardly any word now tells its genesis or history by its
44 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
written form. Every word must be examined separately,
its changes both of form and sound must be studied his-
torically, before we can know much about it. The final
dictum of Skeat is as follows :
" The shortest description of modern spelling is to say
that, speaking generally, it represents a Victorian pronun-
ciation of ' popular ' words by means of symbols imper-
fectly adapted to an Elizabethan pronunciation, the sym-
bols themselves being mainly due to the Anglo-French
scribes of the Plantagenet period, whose system was meant
to be phonetic. It also aims at suggesting to the eye the
original forms of ' learned ' words. It is thus governed by
two conflicting principles, neither of which, even in its own
domain, is consistently carried out."
It may be said that as many of our medical terms are
not derived from the Greek or Latin by a real and historical
process, but are de novo creations, using the ancient roots
and stems as convenient materials of coinage, the objection
does not hold, and that our words do therefore show their
originals by their form. Alas ! not even this poor excuse
bears scrutiny. The centuries have infected the modern
word-minter, and the inevitable hurry and destiny of evo-
lution will not let the need of condensation rest. Even
while we look at our printed dictionary the Zeitgeist is tele-
scoping our words. Who now says thyreoid and choreoid?
These forms are perfectly proper, and your dictionary-man
with the awful sword of " etymology " and conservatism
held across his path, may be forced to write them so, but
he smiles sadly as he does it and shakes his head despond-
ently. Every one of the hundreds of words ending in -old
is derived (supposably) from the Greek etfo?. Why, then,
is it -oid and not -eid? Bulb and Bulbar should be bolb and
bolbar, as they come from /Jo/l/So?. Croup is from A. S. kro-
pan. How can an etymology-lover write hyoid? What re-
semblance is there to the Greek word ? Ourconvenient com-
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 45
pound word should etymologically be spelled thyreo-hyoeid,
instead of thyro-hyoid. Why is one who forbids one literal
iota of change in present words so utterly indifferent about
the changes that have already crept in in the past? There
are thousands of words in which Greek i has been changed
to English e, as, e.g., all the words ending in rhcea. He is
wrathful because one wants to change them to rhca ; why
not so to those who changed the original i to e? He is as
idolatrous of his beloved thousand hams, but the Greek
was hai and not hce. One of the most ludicrous instances
of this imaginable is the very new coinage which its author
spells cceliotomy. The anger of enraged Jupiter was as
nothing to that aroused by the suggestion to shorten this
to celiotomy. But in that word as given out, there is, " once
you trip on it," perhaps not " twenty-nine," but at least two
or three " distinct damnations, one sure if another fails."
Why in the name of holy etymology, if derived from Greek
xoj/U'a do we have c instead of k, and why cce instead of coi-t
If the ccelia is derived from the Latin, then why the hybrid ?
Surely one who pretends passionate devotion to pretty
Ettie Mollie G., must not at the same time be paying
court to her hated rival, the little illegit Miss Hybrida.*
Every page of the dictionaries proves the absurdity of
trying to make spelling teach etymology ; and it is a fact
that not anybody, certainly not spelling-reformers, more cer-
tainly not the conservatives, cares two beans for the ety-
mology. If we did not have the printed word to stamp
the coin it would be a different matter, but with diction-
aries everywhere to give the origins and histories of all
words, what imaginable service or usefulness is there in
the attempt to load each down with its biography ? In
* Another sorry neoplasm is uranalysis, " analysis of ur" to replace an
equally absurd word, urinalysis, " alysis of urin." We have looked in vain
for the words alysis, and ur.
46 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
reading or speaking no one can think or wishes to think of
the roots thousands of years old. As well demand that
your bouquet of roses shall have their roots and soil. The
investigating botanist may do so, and may know all about
the root and branch and stem, but workaday folk are not
botanists or radical philologists. If one in reading had to
know or keep in mind a half- conscious recognition of the
etymology of each word, he would be able to read about
one book a year, civilization and science would stagnate,
and we might, could, would, or should all become congress-
men, millionaires, or jingoes.
The only proper and sensible purpose of spelling is its
phonetic purpose. All the philologic tories of all christian-
dom or heathendom combined cannot prevent the inevita-
ble modifications even entire changes of the spoken
sound. In that witches' cauldron of modern English, es-
pecially the medical variety, we have from every source
cooked a most remarkable hodgepodge of illogic and incon-
sequential conglomeration. Our ancestors have com-
manded us to eat of it, but do not let us choke it down,
hiding our tears of disgust, and vowing it is incomparably
toothsome. We assuredly should not with glee add more
of the worst to the olla podrida, and when we have a justi-
fiable opportunity to make it a millionth part better, we
should not set up a cry of revolt, and cry, sacrilege ! In
an African forest the trail or pathway has constantly recur-
ring detours, angles and curves, so that one walks about
twice as far as necessary to reach landsend. No object
prevents following a straight line. Why is this ? It is
because once a tree blew down here across the path, there
a limb broke off, there a stone rolled down. So the savage
went around these objects, forming a new and crooked
path. When the termites devoured the tree the new trail
was more worn than the old one, and with thoughtless
imitation the men kept on laboriously winding and twist-
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 47
ing their way instead of going straight on and across. It
is the barbarian's habit of mind to keep on the unreasoning
way his predecessor traveled. It is the essence of civiliza-
tion to make straight the way. The incongruities of medi-
cal nomenclature and the stock-still standing of irrational
conservatism lead one to wonder if we are ever to awaken to
the need of philologic civilization. No judicious reformer
asks for revolution, but for evolution ; we need be in no
hurry ; we should not make profound and radical changes,
because (and only because) it is impossible to bring them
about ; but when men oppose every jot and tittle of change,
when they fight against one single conscious change of
precisely the same kind as has already been a thousand
times unconsciously wrought, then surely one must with
open-eyed astonishment ask, Really, now, were you not
born in Africa ?
I wish again to emphasize the limitation that we do
not advise one clean straight jump into phonetic spelling,
simply because it is impossible. We seem like some
mothers, the uglier and sicklier our orthographic child
the more we love and cherish it. The maternal love is
wise, but the other is mania. Turn to Germany and what
do we find? So far as phonetic writing is concerned their
language was already marvelously perfect, but because it
was not entirely perfect the Germans within a few past
years have made it so. With us, whose spelling is the butt
of the world's ridicule, with us we shriek our parrot-anger
or growl our ursine bigotry if one suggest lopping off a
supernumerary finger from our hideous teratologic thing.
What kind of a nation is this Germany ? Well, for one
thing, she delights to pay her debts with value-received,
while another nation we know of, from the hollows of lost
manhood and politic poltroonery, squeaks and squizzles its
senatorial sixteen to one. Another thing about this foolish
Germany is that when a foolish nation attacks her, at once
48 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
her edict of blood and iron goes forth, and in a hurricane
of heroic energy her legions sweep resistless over a con-
quered land into the capital city of the world, and crown
her Emperor there in the coronation-halls of dead Bour-
bonism. How is it with another nation ? To show our
braggart boorishness we intermeddle in another nation's
rebellion, or we espouse the cause of a half-barbaric folk
thousands of miles away, for whom we do not care a fig,
against the world's one great civilizing and colonizing
nation, and with a corporal's guard of 25,000 soldiers cry,
War, War, War! How is it with Germany as to science
generally, and education, and especially as to medical
science ? The thousands of our young men sent to her
laboratories is sufficient answer. Well, this nation, as I
have said, in a few years, and at one sweep, has cut the
Gordian knot of spelling, simplified and shortened education
thereby, and while we are squirming and making wry
mouths over a few paltry and insignificant changes, she has
wholly reformed the language that Goethe and Lessing
wrote.
One of my four kind critics once wrote me remonstrat-
ing, solely on the ground of euphony, against cutting the
-al off the tail end of many adjectives ; " he didn't like it,"
he said, " it didn't sound well." He seemed wholly
forgetful that the overlong tail of a thousand such words
had already been lopped off, or perhaps had never grown
out. In some countries the sheeps' tails are so long that'
they hitch a tiny wagon to each animal, so that it hauls its
caudal extremity instead of dragging it on the ground.
Now the difference between these sheep and our medical
Bo Peep tf/-pacas, is that the words grow no valuable wool
on their tails, and that we trawl them on the ground
behind us as the ladies do their dress-trails. Sheep and
words and ladies are alike in the one important respect
that, in the poet's immortal lines, we let them alone and
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 49
they surely come home, dragging their tails (and much
else also) behind them.
To my genial critic who wished his words and sheep (his
ladies, too, I wonder ?) to have tails and trails twice too
long, I sent the following skit, to illustrate the already
recognized fact of the redundancy of many word-tails,
and to suggest that we either retail all the short-tailed
curs, or that we curtail all the long-tailed puppies. Either
one thing or the other ; if you refuse to say chemic and
theoretic, then you must not say scientific and hydrochloric.
If you make us say chemical and theoretical, then, like a
sucking dove we will roar you for consistency and ask
that you be scientifical, or else we will prescribe nitrical
and hydrochlorical acid for your alarming gastrical torpor
and obstinacy. My strabismic letter to my friend was as
follows :
Some Scientifical Difficulties. The patient was at the
Polyclinical Hospital a very sick woman ; she was ascitical and
cyanotical ; she had an anemical (dicrotical or anacrotical)
murmur; splanchnical and splenical dulness was pronounced.
Neither the allopathical nor the homeopathical consultants could
determine whether the affection was of extrinsical or intrinsical
origin, whether anabolical, katabolical, atrophical, septicemical,
lithemical, luetical, hemical, hemolytical, thermical, tabetical,
hepatical, or encephalical. The specialists were called in, and
laryngoscopical, ophthalmoscopical, gynecological and otoscop-
ical examinations were made. The laryngoscopical man said a
diphtheritical membrane was forming, and the phrenical nerve
was pressed upon. The next averred the difficulty was eso-
phorical or exophorical, that a blennorrhagical inflammation,
perhaps a rheumatical iritis existed. After an endoscopical ex-
amination the gynecological expert said pelvical (or pubical)
disorder was present and a bad cystical and chorionical state of
affairs. The ear-man claimed that the disease was specifical,
that the otical ganglion was syphilitical and its condition
5
50 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
pathognomonical. The diagnostical and prognostical difficulties
were certes becoming most prolifical !
As to therapeutical measures, one advised cardiacal and tonical
treatment, another hypodermical ; one thought hydriatical
methods good, another antiphlogistical, while still another sug-
gested hypnotical and soporifical agents. Galvanical and
faradical electricity, as well as statical and franklinical, were
advised. The surgeon after a diagnostical incision (under
anesthetical precautions) spoke of a plastical operation. Caus-
tical applications to the throat were considered good, and the
exhibition of prussical, or of borical, nitrical and hydrochlorical
acids, perhaps also carbolical with malical and acetical acid
drinks. The general physician thought antineuralgical and
antirheumatical prescriptions sufficient, but the obstetrician
would have added oxytocical ones.
The patient died of a/-coholical paretical dementia, super-
induced, it is thought, by despair at the orthographical and
phonetical conservatism of progressive Americans.
To make short work of it, the essence of the matter
concerning -ic and -ical is this : Both of the suffixes, -ic
and -ical are terminals, the significance of which is to give
an adjectival meaning to a word. To add them both to
one word is to contend that dogs and sheep should either
have two tails, or that one tail should be twice as long as
normal. If the suffix, -ic, gives the adjectival meaning,
why add a second ? The French, from whom we get
many of the -ic terminations find it unnecessary to add an
-al. If a word is an adjective can you make it more so by
tautologic caudalizations ? (There are a few words whose
stems end in -ic such as vesical, clinical, logical, finical, etc.,
and these require the -al to make them adjectives, but these
are provings of the rule, and the query why you don't say
vesic, logic, and clinic, is the prompting of thoughtlessness.
I would not object however, in the least, to clipping these
also.) If a word needs two adjectival tails why should we not
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 51
say bestialic, linealic, etc. ? If these were admitted of course
the -al lovers would have to add their pet to the word, and
we should have bestialical, linealical, etc., each sheep
would then require two toy-wagons. This reminds one of
the wonderful word, pockethandkerchief. The primary
good word was kerchief, a head-covering. We now call a
piece of lace or linen a pocket-hand-head-covering : I am
not unmindful of the hyperfinical distinction that some
hyperfinical folk have sought to establish as regards -ic and
-ical, -ac, and -acal, that the -ics and -acs denote primary
objective attributes of or pertaining to the things, whilst
the -icals and the -acals denote secondary qualities of the
nature of or connected with the attribute in -ic or -ac, i. e.,
more remotely and subjectively relating to the thing. For
example, a cardiac valve, the cardiacal qualities of a drug ;
a historic answer ; a historical treatise ; a comic paper ; a
comical idea. But this contention is impossible of realiza-
tion, i. Because hundreds of words by custom have
become absolutely limited to either form singly and alone ;
2. Because not even the best writers observe the distinc-
tion ; 3. It is altogether too fine a distinction to be made
by the ordinary workaday humanity ; 4. It would not
satisfy the -^/ophites, who want the -al on the end of some
of their words, without question, forever, and ever, world
without end, Amen ! Think of saying Arabtcal, Teutonical,
Celtical, etc. ! We should of course have to adopt bestialic
and bestialical (or bestic and bestical), clinic and clinical,
syphilitic and syphilitical, and so on to the end. It is quite
plain this system-mongering and analogy-craze leads us
into sorry plights. In fact, it should be apparent upon a
minute's reflection that in a language so utterly composite,
illogical and non-systemic as ours, the argument from or
for analogy is absurdity itself. In one respect this is an
advantage, because when we can succeed in battering
down the dead wall of ancient prejudice, and explode the
52 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
arsenal of etymological spelling, then we may bring some
order and sanity in the rebellious mob of English words.
Of one thing we may rest assured : All the tory immo-
bility of all the world cannot prevent change. It is as useless
to attempt it as to try to stop the rising tide, or to stay the
resistless and silent forces of evolution itself. It is the part
of wisdom to guide evolution, not to fight it to the death,
to guide language-evolution in the interests of brevity
and perspicacity, not to cling irrationally to the old ways
which clear vision may clearly see are doomed. The
language of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare, as shown in
the original forms, is an utterly different language from that
we speak to-day. The ordinary American, if he could hear
Chaucer speaking, or if he could listen to a phonographic
repetition of his actual speech, could not understand a
sentence, hardly a word of it. The printed form cannot
bind the ever-fluctuating pronunciation. The province or
function of the printed (or written) word is to stand as a
symbol or visible analogue of the spoken word. Etymol-
ogy to the dogs ! Printing makes certain a record of the
etymology, but to seek to clog the word itself with it is
the worst of delusions. Our duty scientifically, socio-
logically, and philologically is to keep the printed form
plastic. The crystallized language is a dead language,
and when there is no plasticity of language there is none
of the minds and civilization of those who speak that
language. There is a subtle, but all-powerful reaction and
retroaction of language upon mind. Men progressive in
science and sociology must be progressive in language and
the use of language. Prick a German word and it bleeds.
There is the pulsing heart of meaning behind it, flooding
it with sanguine significance. French words, and the
Greek-derived or Latin-derived words of our own tongue
are as bloodless, dead and meaningless as are to us Chinese
pictographs. The comparison of the large, plastic, ener-
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 53
getic, capable German with the narrow, crystalline, station-
ary, incapable Frenchman must at once spring into view,
and the prophecy is clear as to which one is to inherit the
future. The French birth-rate is about equal to the death-
rate ; that of the Teuton is far in excess. Do you believe
in progressive Teutonism, and Anglo-Saxonism, or in
reactionism, toryism, and ultramontism ? Choose your
partners, gentlemen. Your choice in so little a matter as
the use of words will tell the plain story of mental bias,
quite as well as the choice of religion or of political party.
Specifically, the microscopic modifications I have urged
here are as follows :
1. Abolish in English words the archaic, unnecessary,
bothersome ce and oe, supplanting it by e.
2. Cease adding the tautologic -al to adjectives having
already one adjectival suffix, -ic. It is already done in
thousands of words ; finish the job.
3. Drop the useless hyphen in words whose parts are
derived from classic languages. In ten thousand words
you have already done so ; finish with the rest. But retain
the hyphen in such compound terms as express a single
idea by two semifused English words, especially when both
are nouns. E. g., say antitoxin (not anti-toxin), culdesac,
(not cul-de-sac), postmortem, (not post-mortem) ventrofixa-
tion, (not ventro-fixation), etc. Keep the hyphen, because
it is necessary to avoid confusion and doubtfulness of mean-
ing, in curet-spoon, heart-murmur, skin-disease, sleeping-
sickness, etc.
4. Drop the useless -te from curet, brunet,fourchet, etiquet,
cigaret, etc. You have already lopped it off from cutlet,
doublet, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, racket, minuet, fillet,
corset, stylet, tourniquet, bouquet, etc. Finish the job.
In the same way cut off the useless -me from many words,
writing program, gram, centigram, etc., j ust as already we do
telegram, anagram, diagram, epigram; let's make an end of it.
54 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
5. Use figures instead of spelling out numbers, at least
those above ten.
6. Anglicise foreign terms when a goodly proportion of
your readers will not understand them in the originals.
Use italics as little as possible ; use as few foreign words
and terms as possible, because the vast majority of your
audience cannot understand them (even if you do) : and
because there's a deal of silly conceit in airing exotics of
speech.
7. As to the spelling of chemic terms, accept the recom-
mendations of the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science, which after years of dispassionate investi-
gation advised that we drop the final e in bromid, iodid, etc.,
and in bromin, iodin, atropin, quinin, etc. Say phenol instead
of carbolic acid, glycerol instead of glycerin, etc.
8. Abolish all diereses and accents. They cannot teach
pronunciation, and they are useless luggage. Let us write
oophorectomy , cooperation, ptomain, leucomain, etc., without
the diereses. When a foreign word is Anglicised let us
do it completely, and not drag over into our domain the
exotics of foreign habit, leaving it, e. g., neither English nor
French. Leave to the poets the acute, the grave, and the
circumflex accents, that are foreign to the spirit of our own
tongue.
9. Do not bother about hybrid terms. A mule is a
better animal than either its father or its mother. It is only
finicky sticklers that are horrified by hybrid words. There
are many, many thousands of them in our language, good
words too, that have been used for centuries, and that
always will be used. There is no earthly objection to
them, and indeed we should rather welcome them if they
are good words, expressive and short. More than any
other language ours is adapted to receive them and use
them, and there are more of them in it than in any other
language. Instead of being ashamed of the fact we should
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 55
be proud of it, as it shows our receptivity and plasticity.
If we are bound to have the defects of our virtues, let us
not be ashamed of the virtues of our defects.
Finally, I would beg that you carefully consider the
source and secret reasons that exist for opposition to the
foregoing recommendations. Ignorance, colossal, imper-
turbable, impertinent ignorance is characteristic of much
of it. Read, for example, the letters in the British Medical
Journal from correspondents (not editorial utterances, be-
cause the editors know better, and have publicly advised
dropping <z and d), and you will see these objectors havn't
studied philology five minutes in their lives, and are living
in an antediluvian world.
But, again consider the source, I beg of you, and you
will very often find that it is the secret influence of the
commercial medical publisher that is at work. He pub-
lishes a dictionary committed to the old ways, and hence
prints his medical journals and books in the archaic lan-
guage of his dictionary. It means expense and loss of
money to him in very many ways to have his " authorities "
supplanted. The astute editor of the Journal of the Ameri-
can Medical Association has caught this aspect of the matter,
and an editorial in one of the issues of Jan uary, 1 896, happily
sets it forth. It becomes an important concern of the pro-
fession whether it has any scientific and literary rights, and
if it shall govern itself or be governed by its publishing
servants, very accommodating editors, and self-interest
generally. What an instructive fact it is to see a journal
that has once been taught how to spell go back under the
domination of commercialism to the " flesh-pots of Egypt."
In this connection it is worthy of note that the two con-
siderable journals of the United States not controlled by
the commercial publisher, the Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal (representing the best literary and scientific culture
of the eastern states) and the Journal of the Association,
56 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
(representing also the enterprise and freedom of the western
and of all states) have long ago adopted and do now use
the more progressive methods of spelling. The same
practice on the part of many other reputable journals, and
the unanimous acceptance of it by the American Medical
Editor's Association three years ago,* these and more,
* From The Medical News, June 17, 1893, I reproduce from the paper
read at the meeting of the American Medical Editors' Association in Mil-
waukee, June 5, 1893, the following sentences :
1. Of all the languages of the civilized world there is none that in the
most distant manner can rival the English in the ludicrous illogicality and
wretched lawlessness of its orthography. In other languages there is a
manifest philologic sanity that evidently seeks to hold the written (or printed)
word in some sort of relationship with the spoken word. But in our language
the reverse seems to be the case ; the more methods in which a single sound
can be spelled the better it seemed to please the fathers of the language.
As Professor Lounsbury says : " There is nothing more contemptible than
our present spelling, unless it be the reasons usually given for clinging to it."
2. The labor which this fact imposes upon the child's mind, and upon all
minds that, so far as language- learning goes, persist in the prepubertic stage,
is a labor that conceived in its entirety is literally appalling. The German
child learns in one year, and well, what the English child learns in three,
and poorly. -f It is so tremendous a labor that even few educated men reach
unconsciousness and ease of orthography, and for the great mass of people
it is a constant source of worry or chagrin. To a vast number of people the
secret consciousness of their orthographic failing keeps them from the pleasure
of writing and composition, or prevents them from profitable employment.
To every person that writes, the excess of labor required by our barbaric
spelling is a huge waste of time and a heightener of the friction of life.
With the correlated barbarism of pronunciation, it is the greatest obstacle to
the spread of English as the world's great, sole tongue.
3. The foregoing facts are so incontrovertible that no one who has even
cursorily looked into philology and pedagogics has any tendency to deny
them. Equally certain is it that all of our great students and masters of
philology are entirely agreed as to the tremendous importance of lessening
the burdensome labor of education, and the friction of life, by some approach,
f Professor March says that " it has been computed that we throw away
$15,000,000 a year paying teachers for addling the brains of our children
with bad spelling, and at least $100,000,000 more paying printers and pub-
lishers for sprinkling our books and papers with silent letters."
CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE. 57
are most encouraging proofs of our freedom from prejudice
and dogmatism, and that we are alive to the demands of
literary as well as scientific progress. The suggestion need
hardly be added that as without payment we give our arti-
cles, the product of our laborious lives and of our devo-
tion, to nonmedical men, out of which they make fortunes,
great or little, toward the phonetic spelling of English words. As succinctly
stated in his preface by the learned editor of the great Century Dictionary :
" The language is struggling toward a more consistent and phonetic spelling,
and it is proper in disputed and doubtful cases to cast the influence of the
dictionary in favor of this movement, both by its own usage in the body
of the text, and at the head of articles by the order of forms, or the selection
of the form under which the word shall be treated."
Never has more capital been invested in similar enterprises, and never has
more philologic erudition been gathered to the service than in the editing
and publishing of those splendid lexicographic monuments of American
scholarship, the New Webster, the Century, and the Standard dictionaries.
It is equally true that in each case the most earnest desire of the men in
charge of these works has been to go to the furthest admissible limit dared
in recommending the shortening and rationalizing of the spelling of English
words. They have only stopped when and where they thought further
advance would result in a baulking, and a refusal of the people to follow.
Words fail me to express my amazement to hear men object to all change
in the customary spelling. To be sure, they are but few, and those who have
never given the matter an hour's thought or study, who thus blindly cling to
the fetich of custom, stolidly resisting any change whatsoever. The changes
that have been made, and that have become the rule these they willingly
accept. They have grown used to spelling music and public without a final k,
and are willing to leave off this useless second tail. (The English even now
stick to the final k in almanac.) But their mental forefathers as stoutly
resisted the curtailing process, and their similarly-minded children will finally
accept the changes that progressive minds are now forcing on their fathers.
The stupidest, most disgusting thing in the world, is the brute conservatism
that refuses all change, good or not good, from stolid, unreasoning desire
for things as they are. Better chorea, ay, better epilepsy than absolute
paralysis. Conservatism is the sham coyness of linguistic old-maidism, the
crinolin fig-leaf of philologic prudery, a fig-leaf, too, not the result of too
much, but of too little knowledge indeed, of an abysmal ignorance of the
history of the language.
And most strange of all is such a dead-blank wall of prejudice on the part
of medical men. Their science is a progressive onej their life is harassed
6
58 CONCERNING MEDICAL LANGUAGE.
it hardly becomes them to dictate to us as to literary and
scientific matters. If you contribute to these journals you
have a perfect right to demand that your ideas of language
shall be followed in their printing. Accompany your arti-
cle or book with the condition that your choice of spelling-
methods, etc., be carried out.
and hurried with the crush of duties and opportunities. Every hour's experi-
ence teaches them to ignore precedent and to cut by the shortest route to the
desired end. No body of men is more hampered, and in no calling is labor
so much thwarted as in theirs, by popular inherited prejudices, and the old
unsloughed snake-skins of quackery, of myth, and of mummery.
The vast majority of medical words have not grown out of the old
languages, either of the ancient living Greek or of the medievally preserved
dead Greek. When a word is desired the modern minter snaps out his
Liddell and Scott, gets some words that best suit his purpose, and shakes
them together in his etymologic basket until they cohere into some sort of
unity, not infrequently a very ludicrous one.
The argument most relied on by the obstructionists is the etymologic one.
But even this poor scarecrow cannot be set up in our medical cornfields.
I do not think the etymologic argument of much force, even in the general
literary language, because already the form in a large portion of our words is
altogether misleading, changed, or lost, and because the vast majority of
people will and can never know anything of the etymologic rootings of their
language. But, far more important still is the fact that with printing came
the impossibility of a coinage ever being lost, its history unrecorded, or its
tiniest rootlet unpreserved.
But far and away over all is the fact that the needs and the help of the
living millions of bodies and minds present and to come outweigh linguistic
and philologic considerations. Language was made for man, not man for
language.
Moreover, and this note well, despite all the literary coxcombs and philo-
logic old maids of Christendom, reform is inevitable. The people, with
unerring instinct, are determined to mold their language into some better
conformity to their needs. Slang is riotously rampant, and slang is language
in the making. Some reform in spelling is as certain to come as future men
and women are certain to come, and wisdom on our part is to accept the
inevitable, and to make that inevitable as sensible as we can. As another has
said : " The grammarian, the purist, the pernicketty stickler for trifles is the
deadly foe of good English, rich in idioms and racy of the soil."
THE ROLE OF MATERNAL LOVE IN OR-
GANIC EVOLUTION.*
In his address before the British Association Lord Salis-
bury recapitulated the three great mysteries to the solution
of which science has in vain directed her attention. The
origins of atoms, of ether, and of life, are to-day the most
utter mysteries. To account for them no human mind has
framed even- the faintest concept worthy of consideration.
We have only the merest hints of the possibility of explana-
tion of gravitation ; concerning electricity we are getting
only a little better idea ; but as to physiologic chemistry
our little knowledge serves only to make our great ignor-
ance more frightful. All origins of things are shrouded in
impenetrable mystery, and our philosophies are but weak
and sorry attempts to widen the light a wee little bit about
us. No philosophy and no religion explains finalities, and
all efforts end only in resolving many lesser mysteries into
fewer great mysteries. The conception of Biologos, incom-
ing light and love, entering inorganic worlds and matter as
a great incarnation-principle and spiritualizing force, electri-
fies and quickens the mental, imaginative, and moral man
as none other ; but, of course, it too ends only in a little
broadening of the light-way about our darkness-encircled
lives.
But it seems to me that so far as concerns the individual
manifestations of life, we may and we must differentiate
clearly between the love of one's own life and the love of
* Read before the Wistar Biological Association, Philadelphia, Dec. 14,
1894; The Philadelphia Association of Kindergartners, April 7, 1896, etc.
59
60 f MATERNAL LOVE.
the life of one's descendants. The cuckoo bird has not
enough strength of the maternal instinct to build a nest and
incubate her own eggs. In pigeons the male has a far
stronger maternal instinct than the female, and in some
other birds the male has resolutely to fight for and defend
the eggs from the destructive habits of the female. Some
animals will expose themselves to danger, even die most
heroically in defending their young, whilst the kangaroo
mother, it is said, will, when hotly pursued, drop one or
more of her little ones to lighten her load. In human life,
also, as we well know, some people care little for children,
even for those of their own flesh and blood, whilst others
will sacrifice their own lives with most pathetic heroism for
the education and up-bringing of their young.
It therefore appears to me plain that we should distinguish
sharply between self-love and child-love. Fundamentally,
I doubt not, they proceed from one ultimate unity, but in
biologic manifestation they may be considered as two dis-
tinct exhibitions or phases of the life-force. One is devoted
to the saving of the individual life, the other to the per-
petuation of life in new individuals. It is perhaps easy to
recognize the one as a blind, purposeless force, but the in-
coming of maternal love is not thus to be accounted for.
I have been forced to use the term maternal love in
default of a better one to express an unnamed fact or
generalization of facts much larger than that of simple
maternity. In many animals we find the father taking
upon himself many of the duties usually fulfilled by the
mother, and at all times the purposes and results of the
genesial instinct are carried out by an intrinsically-inter-
woven and correspondent series of duties of both parents.
Moreover, if we descend to the vegetable world the eye
that is trained to observe facts rather than the accepted
wordings and ideas of facts, sees everywhere that the phe-
nomena of reproduction, whether in anemophilous, ento-
MATERNAL LOVE. 61
mophilous, or cryptogamic orders, are really asexual, and
the plants or trees themselves have no fundamental mor-
phologic differences of structure due to sexualism. Indeed,
the so-called " male " and " female " organs are often pro-
duced by the same plant, and even by the same twig and
the same flower.
I have racked my brain to find or invent a term that
should indicate the large biologic instinct that prepares the
organs for reproduction, that begets, and that cares for the
new being after it is begotten, whether it be in the plant,
the animal, or the human world. We have observation of
a profound and unitary force that directly or indirectly
dominates all organic life during almost every hour of
adult existence. In the plant-world every function per-
tains to or ends in seed-production, and just as a father
horn-bill bird reduces himself to a skeleton and utter ex-
haustion in getting and carrying food to his mate and
nestlings, just as a human parent wears life out in heroic
sacrifice for beloved children, just exactly so will a tree
under like disadvantageous conditions of nutriment com-
mit suicide in the production of seeds. An Indian mother,
in order to rescue her baby a few feet away, crawls from
behind the rock protecting her from the guns of United
States soldiers. She knows the act may bring a bullet in
her brain, but she saves the baby and dies. A hen in a
burning barn gathers her chickens beneath her and is
burned to a statuesque cinder, but the singed chicks are
saved by the dead mother-body. Is it not the same divine
love that filled both hearts ? Is there anything else in the
world like that that unites and holds in one all living
things ? I pity one who does not see in such things the
living God instantly present and profoundly interested in
carrying on his biologic world.
There is one silent, subtle, palpitant pang and power
of love that thrills through all organic life, that murmurs
62 MATERNAL LOVE.
in all living things, and swells and sings its unheard song
in the inmost hearts of grass, rose, or tree ; of cow, tiger,
or bird ; of man, maid, or mother, all straining eye and
hope toward the renewed young world to come. It is this
great supernatural force for which I would find a name
applicable to all kinds of life and all phases of its function.
In its purest and sweetest quality it is mother-love, and so
in order to give it a naming we may call it that. But I
would wish that the connotation may not be forgotten that
it is also father-love as well, and that it is one and identical
with that beautiful power that makes the pigeon turn the
eggs upon which she sits, that makes the grass bloom, and
the bee to seek the bloom.
Possibly some of the more " scientific " of you were a
little startled when I used the word " supernatural." It
has been quite the fashion among a certain class of good
folk to think that anything named scientific must not have
aught to do with such foolish old used-up words. Indeed,
it is supposed that science is wholly given to explaining
things by the agency of physical strains and stresses, by
reactions and reflexes, mechanic laws and natural selections,
struggles for existence, and all that. It positively makes
some people purple with rage if one dares to suggest that
there may be such a thing as "vital force," or " soul," and
a hint as to the possible existence of divinity, either in
man or above him, elicits a pitying contempt of you that
freezes the very circumambient air. Well, well ! These
are very wise people indeed, but the birds will sing and
build nests after these brethren are gone to their agnostic
heaven. Even they have their uses in a world of incon-
gruous and changeful conditions !
Science, I take it, is, chiefest of all things, the unpreju-
diced, open-eyed observation and systematization of facts ;
the construction to be put upon them, the meaning of facts,
is another matter, and differs somewhat according to the
MATERNAL LOVE. 63
person who philosophizes. Facts are very patient, un-
complaining things ; very pliant and compliant, at least for
a time ; they bear a deal of strange philosophizing over and
about them, very meekly. Some people have been known
to ignore them entirely, and yet the patient facts did not
worry or stop existing. And those who thus falsely con-
strue, or who thus ignore, are quite happy also. All things
have their compensations, and it would be a great pity if
dogmatism and atheism were denied the compensation at
least of self-satisfaction.
The criticism of much that passes under the name of
science, and the fault of many so-called scientists, is the
lack of sympathy. It is only a keen sense of love, inter-
est, and fellow-feeling, that gives that alert use of the
imagination that leads to a knowledge of the truth. The
collator of facts with the light only of cold reason and
intellect will never find lots of facts in the world.
It begins slowly to break, even upon the most dry-as-
dust scientist, that there are some things not dreamed
of in the evolution-philosophy, and the suggestion may
not bring danger to the suggester that the fight to
death for the supremacy of the deer herd is not an un-
qualified necessity from the axioms of the " struggle for
existence," nor from the "law of the reaction of the organ-
ism to the environment." If the " environment " of
maidenly beauty in Juliet begets "the reaction" in
Romeo's fancy of springtime love, whence, it may be asked,
whence Julia and her beauty ? Or, to put the question in
another form : Does not the stupidest intelligence catch
hint from the universality, the self-sacrifice, and the power
of the maternal instinct in every living organism, weed,
insect, or human, that there is purpose and significance
poured down into these beings from above, not growing
out of them from any need or logic of present circumstance,
or from any demands of their organisms, considered as
64 MATERNAL LOVE.
single and self-sufficient mechanisms ? Does the " environ-
ment," or any so-called " law," or any so-called explanation
of science, show why these billions of ever renascent beings
should spend every energy of their lives in producing and
caring for new beings to take their places ? Why should
we, animals and men, care a fig whether our places are
taken or not? The sexual and maternal instinct holds
masterly reign and control of the soul of every biologic
thing, and gives the instant and incontrovertible lie to the
libellous chatter that all is selfishness, all is mechanic,
adamantine law and purposeless change in our life below.
Without the supernatant ocean of divine life and love behind
it, the miraculous tide of maternal love could not infill
and inthrill the tendrils and hearts of all living things, any
more than, on a thousand miles of shore without the
throbbing gush of ocean-tide, would a million little bays
and inlets be filled and bathed with flashing wave and
liquid life. When not thus full-flooded with the tide of
love, the little empty estuaries of our individual lives are
occupied in panting for its future coming, in mourning that
it does not come, or in pensive memories of its past
blessedness.
But possibly the hard-eyed is disgustedly muttering that
this is all poetry and nonsense. Give us, he is probably
saying, give us something scientific, something about
"nature red with tooth and claw;" about bones; about
protoplasm ; dying planets ; the pump-like action of the
heart ; and reflexes, and natural selection, and the survival
of the fittest. And to the hard-eyed I might make answer
that the truth of poetry is truer than the truth of science ;
that teeth and claws are very beautiful structures and serve
glorious purposes ; that bones were made by Biologos, and
when dead are excellent objects of study for the hard-eyed
ones ; that none of us know anything about protoplasm
except that it is living and mysterious ; that neither of us
MATERNAL LOVE. 65
know anything about dead planets ; that natural selection
is half-lie, half-truth, and that the survival of the " unfit " is
a wonderful fact.
In all seriousness, and with the most sober scientific reso-
lution, I contend that among the philosophies and sciences
of the universe, whether idealistic or materialistic, the role
of maternal love is either unrecognized entirely, or held in
too light estimation. The term, " struggle for existence,"
for example, has been much talked about, and has been
supposed to be the fundamental explanation of the phe-
nomena of organic life, and, with natural selection, to fur-
nish the solution of the riddles of organic evolution. But
in most prosaic literalness, can any one not see that the
distinguishing and determining characteristics, both in mor-
phology and physiology have been more dominated by the
instant and ceaseless influence of the instincts pertaining to
reproduction ? Can any one doubt that the progress of
evolution, that the possibility and actuality of civilization
have been instigated by the upworking and the outworking
of the sexual passion, and the desire to find houses and
food and place for the little ones? It is maternal love
alone that has produced all the ideals and actualities of
Beauty and Esthetics that we have ; and so art, novel,
drama, society, and ambition are the creations of this
mysterious power.
In the plant-world every phase of form or function ex-
ists as a product of the strain toward inflorescence and
seed-production. The trunks of the forest monarchs are
the props of the flower to raise it high in air where the
sun may reach and ripen, and where the winds may catch
the pollen and carry it to waiting mates. Every form of
leaf, every shape of growth, every coloration and build of
flower pertain to the one end and aim of existence. Think
of the inexhaustible ingenuity, the millionfold device for
scattering seeds. Every sort of balloon conceivable has
66 MATERNAL LOVE.
been made by the cunning mother-trees for wafting their
babes to far-away nourishing resting-places. My friend,
Lafcadio Hearn, tells me of the ceiba tree in the West
Indies, which bursting its pod like a gun, floats its white-
winged seeds like a snow-storm over a city, and when they
settle, quickly must the natives clear every one off the
roofs, for if a single one lodges it will wreck and crush the
house with its prolific roots. The natives think the tree
has personality, like animals or men, and if you wish one
of the trees cut down you must make your wood-cutter
drunk in order to get him to do it.
Some of these tree-mothers surround their little ones
with such impervious shells that they float and drift with
tides and currents for weeks and months, and yet retain
their life and growth-power till washed ashore. There are
hairs, spines, and hard shells to protect; acid juices and
poisons to sting and harrow; husks and hooks and spears
to cut and hurt; and a thousandfold devices for getting
the better of the curious or the hungry. Some make
hooks and claws that catch any passing animal, and who,
most tormented, as all boys and dogs well know, must
carry them far and wide. But the birds, too, are great
helpers. Darwin found that a clump of dried mud weigh-
ing nine grains, from the leg of a partridge, and which had
been kept for three years, contained seeds from which he
raised eighty-two distinct plants. Especially in eating the
seeds for the sake of the fruit, the seeds preserving their
vitality, the birds, as also animals, are great helpers in the
distribution of the flora of the world. If you think that in
nest-building a swallow probably travels about 400 miles
a day, and in migration (also for love's sake) birds travel
straight away from 500 to IOOO miles a day, we see how
great must have been the influence of birds in plant-distri-
bution. A curious and purely accidental function of the
birds is the chance stocking of lakes and rivers above high
MATERNAL LOVE. .67
falls with fish, which, caught below, escape from claws or
bill as the birds seek their nests, and dropping into these
high, remote waters, people them with their kind ; the life
within and about the water in such localities is often thus
entirely readjusted.
But I wish to call attention to a fact, our familiarity with
which leads, as usual, to a forgetfulness of its far-reaching
importance and significance. There are few people, even
those who know better, who do not mistake a seed's stored-
up supply for the seed itself. The seed may or may not
be nutritious, but even if it is so, the true seed constitutes
the infinitesimal part of what we roughly call the seed.
The great bulk of every grain or seed is composed of a
stored-up stock of concentrated nutriment clustered about
the true seed, and upon which it feeds whilst springing its
rootlets downward and its leaflets upward. Thus the
bread, the potato, the apple we eat, is the food that has
been cunningly prepared by the mother-plant for its off-
spring to use whilst it is getting its own organs of food-
supply ready for their work. The yolk-sac of the fish or
the egg of the bird is exactly the same sort of a contriv-
ance.
But a remarkable deduction is to be made from all this,
a deduction that is perfectly evident when we think of it
and realize it, but it is a deduction that many of us seldom
or never make. It is this : It is of course, self-evident, that
the entire animal world, including the human, is wholly
dependent upon the vegetable for food, and for the means
of continuing its existence. Without the nutrient material
furnished by the vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom
would at once die of starvation. But now consider well
the implication of the fact, that it is entirely by means of
nutriment stored up by plants to nourish their young, that,
as it were, stolen by the animal world enables it to live.
In other words, it is that great cosmic, regenerative force,
68 MATERNAL LOVE.
biologic maternal love, that has been ingenious enough to
manufacture concentrated food with the necessary " keep-
ing" qualities, and capable of supporting the life of plants
and of animals. Their food is our food ; what nourishes the
vegetable children nourishes the animal children. (Thus
we understand, in passing, why chloroform and other drugs
affect plants exactly as they affect us.) Driven by the spur
of solicitousness and love for its young, the plant has found
out the great secret of food-formation. In this connection
is it necessary to add a word as to the food of man derived
from the animal ? The flesh of animals is derived directly
from grass and fruits and seeds, and this muscular tissue is
thus itself the very product of the subtile, silent weaver of
life we have called maternal love. The most perfect foods
of man, milk and eggs, products of double distillation in
the cellular alembic of maternal life, this wonderful strained
white blood and living flesh, what can we say of these
works of the divine physiologic chemist? If we have
grateful hearts and seeing minds, we can only thank and
recognize the hand that fashioned and that reaches them
to us, as the hand of God, who keeps up the repeopling
of the world, and hence, who sees well to it that his little
ones should be fed.
Although perhaps logically, and you will say also rhe-
torically out of place, I cannot forbear at this point to
interject a word as to our care and treatment of hens and
cows. Please do not smile at the sudden transition. When
seen with the eyes of science, or with those of pure sym-
pathy, there is nothing about living things that is not beau-
tiful and winning and dignified. This great question of the
willing obedience, loyalty, and service of the animal world
to the human world, constantly arouses in sensitive hearts
a multitude of painful thoughts. From every prolific grain
or fruit, from dog and horse, especially from every maternal
organism there run back to the divine center reins of guid-
MATERNAL LOVE. 69
ance and control which ensure loyalty, obedience, and ser-
vice to a common " dim, far-off, unseen event." Else why
the continued giving of milk when the calf has gone,
why the continuous egg-production by the nonincubating
mother ? Animals are not so stupid as that ! Dairy-
folk well know the difficulty of getting cows to " give
down " when they are maltreated, when the food is not
good, or when deprived of their calves. Livingstone
speaks of the African cows as especially " bad " in this
respect, and that only " milk-fever " will compel them to
give their milk. The milkers in the Scottish highlands
used to have peculiar songs which made their cows
generous. The hen and the cow are the most loyal of
man's helpers and purveyors, and yet it is grievously
shocking how ungrateful we are to them. We are only
beginning to learn that our self-interest commands us to
care for cows better, but even now their suffering from
cold, the carelessness of farmers as to their food and water,
the filth in which they live, is a disgrace both to our selfish-
ness and to our humanity. If human mothers would only
think of what these other mothers endure and how they
are abused, there would be some hope that the milk given
human babes would soon be purer, freer from disease, and
yielded by a healthier and happier animal. It is known
that violent emotion poisons human milk, why also may
not the beatings and abuse of the cow change her milk
harmfully? Babies, human and canine, have died in con-
vulsions just after nursing when the mother had just been
furious with anger or emotion. It may be confidently
stated that, fed, housed and treated, as cows should be, and
the milk cared for as it should be, there would be little
enough profit to the dairyman if milk were furnished by
him at twenty cents a quart. But it will probably require
the scourges of tuberculosis and various diseases to teach
us the little lesson that the commonest human sympathy
70 MATERNAL LOVE.
should long ago have taught. The same thought runs out
as regards our egg-supply.
Let me extend my parenthesis by a word or two of ad-
vice as to teaching children sympathy for and fellow-feel-
ing with animals. Enlist every child's interest in domestic
pets and make young naturalists of them as soon as possi-
ble. But guard against making them mere collectors of
dead animals. It is living not dead biology that quickens
the sensibilities and deepens the child's conception of the
world. Let him learn physiology rather than anatomy,
psychology rather than neurology. What is needed is the
lightning-like glance of intellectualized sympathy (at least
the sympathy) flashed among the play and functions and
relations of all palpitant life. Trained scientists are better
museum-makers than children. Don't let the child kill
and delude himself that that is science or biology. So
soon as a child understands anything it can understand the
pretty story of Mohammed cutting off the flaps of his coat
in order not to disturb his kitten sleeping upon it. The
animal child and the human child have a vast deal in
common. There is nothing humanity needs more than to
learn the duty of kindness and sympathy for all animal life.
Have a multiplicity of domestic pets. Let children almost
live in the Zoological Gardens. Beware of a person who
doesn't like animals ; something is deeply wrong with such
a person. There are a dozen or two books all children
should read as early as they can understand them. Such
are Oswald's Summerland and Zoological Sketches ; Mrs.
Martin's Life on an Ostrich Farm ; Nicols' Zoological Notes ;
Taylor's The Sagacity and Morality of Plants ; Olive Thorne
Miller's books, and those of Burroughs, perhaps ; Hudson's
splendid The Naturalist in La Plata ; Wilson's Studies in
Life and Sense ; and, above all, the great work of Kipling,
Beast and Man in India; and the great work of the greater
son, Rudyard, The Jungle Book, superb and beyond praise.
MATERNAL LOVE. 71
Let Lubbock and Romanes wait for older heads. It is a
strange family that do not think their cat and dog the most
remarkable and lovable cat and dog in the world. Every
pet will show animal spirit struggling toward the human,
dumbly begging for human sympathy and help ; and, too,
there frequently occur phenomena that make us shiver
as if we should look into the sky and see great divine eyes
beckoning ; facts that point to the unity of all life, infallible
signs of the dependence of the body upon spirit, soul and
sentiment penetrating sense and flesh like hidden elec-
tricity. The anesthetics we use in surgery paralyze plant-
metabolism and action, as, e.g., in the sensitive plant; and
snake poison retards the germination of seeds. A friend
of mine was kept awake nearly all night by some strange
noise at the window. A dead cuckoo told the story of an
endeavor to reach the supposed mate of the " cuckoo
clock." I went once a long distance to see a motherless
hen which had driven the old cat away and was brooding
over a lot of kittens, very watchful, very happy, and very
proud. Mrs. Martin tells a similar story of the great
Chakar playing the role of a most excellent foster-mother
to a half hundred tiny puff-balls of incubator chicks,
guarding, watching, careful not to put his great feet on
them, etc. A childless dog tried to steal some little
puppies, but failing, took a toy dog made of rubber and
tried to nurse it, licked and coddled it tenderly for a long
time. An English physician describes the mother-zeal of
a Maltese cat, a strict monogamist, faithful even in widow-
hood. But if any of the other cats had kittens she would
manage to get some of them, and in a few hours she had
an abundant supply of milk for them. The dependence of
this milk-secretion upon pure mother-love began in this
wise : At seven years of age she witnessed an accident to
a little kitten just weaned, to which she had previously had
a great aversion. This kitten fell, and hurting itself, cried
72 MATERNAL LOVE.
piteously. At once dislike disappeared ; "Zettie" ran to
it, caressed it, and carried it upstairs. At this time she had
been a widow for fourteen months, but she now began
nursing the little orphan and continued to do so for two
months. I have elsewhere related an exactly similar fact,
except that it was a little dog, long childless, or puppyless
if you please, that nursed a lost kitten. Numerous instances
are on record of men having an ample milk-secretion and
nursing babes. Wagtails use the backs of friendly stronger
birds upon which they ride in long migrations. Elephants
and men are the only animals that shed tears in weeping.
Cows have been known to be so severely homesick that to
save their lives they had to be returned to the old home.
Dogs have returned home over 800 miles of unknown
country ; even when chloroformed it makes no difference
in their return. A crow with clipped wings left his thiev-
ing new master and walked four miles through the snow to
the old master. Dogs, monkeys, birds, and ducks have
been known to die of a "broken heart," from loss of young,
loss of their masters, etc. Ruskin tells the story of a race-
horse that took sick and only got well when his pet kitten
was telegraphed for and put in his stall. He then won the
race ! A mother monkey, the elder Kipling says, will
carry with her for weeks the dried and dead body of her
little one, fondling and petting it as if alive. It is said that
if the male bird of Paradise is killed the female will continue
to sit upon her eggs until she starves to death.
I have said that sympathy with the whole world of living
things is the prime requisite of learning truth. This is true
whether the truth be scientific, philosophic, or religious.
It is especially so with children. The recognition of the
maternal instinct in all other living things tells the young
the nature of the world in which we live more than all the
books and laboratories in the world. Take up the ques-
tion of the growth and relative degrees of intelligence in
MATERNAL LOVE. 73
animals. Guided by sympathy and a careful observation
of facts we can show the child clearly on what biologic
intelligence depends. Careful scrutiny shows that all vege-
tables and animals have an infinite wealth of what may be
called unconscious intelligence struggling for outlet.
Every living thing, in its form, color, and function, is a
palimpsest, behind the later bolder writing of which we see
dimly the deeper, richer characters and messages of a more
ancient truth. The intelligent energy that constitutes the
essential being of all things is the same in all, but is pre-
vented from coming to individual expression by the peculi-
arities of organization and the necessities of life. The
greater, the infinitely greater part of the intelligence of our
being, exists unconsciously, as cellular or physiologic in-
telligence. Out of this great mine of unconscious wisdom
we quarry rich gems of our individual, willed, or conscious
intelligence, and the progress of all personality as of all
civilization consists in adopting the intelligence of the
unconscious as that of our personal wills. The work of
all true life and evolution is to transform cellular or physio-
logic wisdom and morality into conscious willed intelli-
gence and morality.
Look sharply at the plant-world. Plants are prevented
from showing individual intelligence by the fact that they
have no powers of locomotion, and therefore do not need
a centralized nervous system that is the agent of bringing
cellular consciousness to personal consciousness. But they
choose, they show emotions, likes and dislikes, and they
have evident joys and sorrows. If you don't think so it is
not the fault of the plant. It sees more without eyes than
you do with them !
In the animal world the conditions permitting the devel-
opment and showing of intelligence depend upon
i. The Sensitiveness and Amplitude of Sensitive
Surface Exposed to the External World. This is a
7
74 MATERNAL LOVE.
great and beautiful law, a key that unlocks thousands of
mysteries for us. The interposition of hoofs between the
feet and the ground is the most noticeable illustration.
The hard hoof prevents knowledge of the ground, and the
perceptions are not sharpened. All hard-footed animals
are, as a rule, less intelligent than soft-footed animals. The
possession of other sharpened senses may help to compen-
sate, however. The mobile lip of the horse helps him, and
the knowledge of his own body gained by the sensitive tail
also aids, as well as his association with man. The hog's
nose and rooting propensities account for its relative intelli-
gence over the sheep and other hard-footed brothers. The
soft feet of birds is supplemented by the bill and the tongue,
and especially by the wings. The mobile lips of the dog,
his tongue, his expressive tail, together with his associa-
tion with man have aided his soft sensitive feet to develop
his intelligence greatly. The same may be said of the cat.
But, it is the trunk of the elephant, one of the most re-
markable physiologic structures in the world, that has
made this wonderful animal the most intelligent of all,
except the monkey, who has learned to use his front feet as
hands, and thus (the prehensile tail and mode of life aid-
ing), of all animals he has been put in the most intimate
connection with the world.
The second great condition of expression of animal in-
telligence relates to the extent of the external world thus
known. The lowest degree, life in one element alone,
will give very limited knowledge, as, e. g., of the earth
alone, as in animals that live in the ground deprived of the
light. But even here the contact of the whole body with
the earth greatly enhances the possibilities of sensitive-
ness and recompenses the mole, for instance, for his little
range of media. Fish are relatively stupid because of the
single medium they know, but they have a large and sen-
sitive surface in the fin and tail and mouth, to compensate.
MATERNAL LOVE. 75
They have also good eyes. They have, however, no hear-
ing as we know it, though they have a perception of vibra-
tions and jars.
The space even in one medium over which locomotion ex-
tends also conditions the intelligence. Wide- roaming, easily-
moving animals are smarter than stay-at-homes. Locomo-
tion calls for vision, and vision is the very sine qua non of
conscious intelligence, or that under the control of the will.
Some animals that move about freely when young, with
eyes and other important organs, lose their eyes and senses
when they attach themselves to one spot and become plant-
like in habits.
Those animals which know the air alone are also handi-
capped. But the bat has developed such a sensitiveness
of his interdigital membranes that he detects the relative
density of the air near objects by this means alone, and is
thus able, though blind or in the dark, to avoid objects
perfectly.
Most air-livers have soft, sensitive feet, as well as the
wonderful wings, so that they know two media, the air, and
such solid objects as trees, the ground, etc. The greater
number of these media known, the greater the intelligence,
other things being equal. So that amphibious birds, those
also that swim as well as fly, are relatively nobler than
those that fly alone. If they have good walking powers
on land, this also helps.
3. The Development of Intellect also Depends on
the Relative Development of the Senses. Fishes are
put to a disadvantage by a lack of the senses of hearing
and of smell. Snakes are also without the sense of hear-
ing, but their long, lithe, soft bodies help them to know the
ground, and by a peculiar structure of the ribs and scales
each scale becomes almost afoot, so that getting a hundred
little leverages on inequalities, e. g., of bark, some of
them can crawl slowly up an almost perpendicular surface.
76 MATERNAL LOVE.
Deer and dogs have an astounding development of the
sense of smell which helps them greatly, as a hundred
hunters' stories tell us.
4. Length of Life is also a noteworthy condition of
mental development. The elephant with its hundred years
of life, has a great advantage in learning and remembering
experiences over his less long-living relatives. Things
that live but for an hour or a day know but one instinct.
5. Association with Man is lastly a powerful helper of
intelligence. Our domestic animals imitate and learn of
us with avidity. Some dogs have learned to under-
stand ordinary conversation. Chickens are slow in this
respect, because their feet are hard, they have lost the
power of flying, etc.
Thus, what an understanding of the world we get by
sympathetic observation of life ! Universal cellular intel-
ligence is aided in becoming specifically manifest, or in
becoming the instrument of the individual will, by the sen-
sitiveness and amplitude of the bodily exposure to contact
with the world thus sensed ; by the relative development
of other senses; by length of life; and by association with
man.
But it is especially the Strength and Exercise of the
Maternal Instinct, which besides governing the uncon-
scious development, and being one of the most fundamental
of the conditions of intelligence, is specifically a powerful
factor in the production of the intelligence of the genus
and of the individual. One of the stupidest of animals,
whose feet are hard, whose lips and tail are in this respect
useless, the sheep, may be spurred to ingenuity by love, as
by no other thing. A patient told me of a mother sheep
which had no milk for her little one. It only needed one
experience to teach her, when her lamb bleated with hun-
ger, to run with the little one headlong to the house, a long
distance away, where it was fed " by hand " by the kind-
MATERNAL LOVE. 77
hearted human sisters. Tropical cats know all about artifi-
cial respiration. A friend saw a cat take its drowned
kitten and roll it up hill, the fore-paws alternately squeez-
ing the lungs at every step; in about half an hour of almost
frenzied labor the kitten was resuscitated.
Literature is filled with the devices and marvelous
proofs of ingenuity of animal parents in raising and defend-
ing their young. The feigning of death of opossums,
snakes, and birds; the simulation of wounds, the trailing of
wings, the building of nest over nest by the summer yellow
bird to prevent the incubation of the egg of the shameless
cuckoo, the hiding of snakes under the mother's coils or
down her throat, the thousand protective devices and in-
genuities all show how strong a force is maternal love in
the development of the intelligence. Opossums leave the
marsupial pouch early, and clinging to the mother learn
many things of the world very early. Nicols tells a comi-
cal story of a young kaola which was taken by a cat to
nurse with her own kittens. But the kaola had inherited
the habit of riding about on its mother's back, a habit that
the pussy foster-mother didn't like at all. But she was very
patient about it all. A writer in Science, some time ago,
tells of the curiosity of a monkey, which in hunting
other game on an opossum in his cage, discovered the
wonderful pouch full of opossum babies, and examined
them with tenderness but profound curiosity. Nicols tells
of the laughable attempt of a little kangaroo to find the
pouch of its dog foster-mother.
It is frightful to think of the evil that results from the
dissociation and alienation of humanity from animals, or,
what is worse, from the nasty habit of considering them as
soulless slaves to be used, or as targets to be shot at.
When I see some savage human female riding about the
streets behind horses whose necks are suffering from infer-
nal check-reins, and whose eyes are rubbed sore by stupid
78 MATERNAL LOVE.
blinders, driven by a fool who knows nothing of horse-
character, I feel very much like wishing to pull that crea-
ture out of her cushions, cut off her hair, stick a bit in her
mouth, and yank her head back in the same way as she
has done with her horses. What else but having been
brought up with animals and thus learning how lovable
they are, will ever eradicate out of fiendish humans the
idea that when they have an hour or a 'day to spare from
their work of plundering their fellow-men they must spend
it in murdering some animal. Let's go out and kill some-
thing ! That is sport ! And, of course, woman will never
permit men to be worse than she can be, and so goes on
the insane and awful destruction of our birds, of beautiful
winged life all over the globe. Beware of a woman with a
bird on her hat !
What genuine and delightful happiness these little beings
give us ! I shall always look back to the days when my
dog and I played hide-and-seek in the woods for hours
together, and I regret nothing more than the fact that I
was unjust or harsh to him once or twice. Knowledge and
sympathetic study of animals teaches one more and truer
psychology than all the books can do, because in their
artlessness they show the secret springs of motive, and of
evolution, and form a mirror wherein one may see himself
reflected.
Just one glimpse of the " one touch of nature which
makes the whole world kin." Does this anecdote by Kip-
ling Sr., not recall the relations of some human couples we
have known ?
" One morning there came a monkey chieftain, weak and limp-
ing, having evidently been worsted in a severe fight with another
of his own kind. One hand hung powerless, his face and eyes
bore terrible traces of battle, and he hirpled slowly along with a
pathetic air of suffering, supporting himself on the shoulder of a
MATERNAL LOVE. 79
female, a wife, the only member of his clan who had remained
faithful to him after his defeat. We threw them bread and
raisins, and the wounded warrior carefully stowed the greater
part away in his cheek-pouch. The faithful wife, seeing her
opportunity, sprang on him, holding fast his one sound hand,
and opening his mouth she deftly scooped out the store of raisins ;
then she sat and ate them very calmly at a safe distance, while
he mowed and chattered in impotent rage. He knew that with-
out her help he could not reach home, and was fain to wait with
what patience he might till the raisins were finished. It was a
sad sight, but, like more sad sights, touched with the light of
comedy. This was probably her first chance of disobedience or
of self-assertion in her whole life, and I am afraid she thoroughly
enjoyed it. Then she led him away, possibly to teach him more
salutary lessons of this modern and ' advanced ' sort, so that at
the last he would go to another life with a meek and chastened
soul."
We have seen that the absolute condition of the existence
of the human and animal world depends instantly and con-
tinuously upon the secret of the fabrication and storing of
food about her seed-children, by the Chemist-Mother of the
plant-world. The existence of the living world depends
then upon mother-love and upon mother-foresight for food,
the primal condition of life-perpetuation.
But not only for food, but for the feeding itself. The
lambent flame of limpid love that burns in the startled
wondrous mother-eye of cow, or dog, or human mother, as
she gazes down upon her little nursling, is perhaps the most
revelatory thing in the world. All the world loves a
mother, and all mothers, human or animal, are sisters. A
common passion links and unifies them all and makes them
alike holy, all commissioned by another mother-heart to be
sharers in a divine duty. Step into a pigeon loft. There
is one bird which a few hours ago was liberated 250 miles
out at sea. He was taken there in a closed basket. He
8o MATERNAL LOVE.
knew nothing of compasses, of astronomy, or of steamers
and oceans, but when the basket-cover was raised, by the
guidance of an " instinct " the nature or mechanism of
which we know utterly nothing, he darted toward home,
toward the place of his duties as monogamous husband and
as caretaker of the young. Without indecision or varying
he came straight to his home over hundreds of miles of
water, where no landmarks existed. At once he begins his
domestic duty of driving and tormenting his wife toward
the nest. The imperious fellow will brook no shilly-shally-
ing. Eggs must be laid! Voila tout! When there are
enough of them they must be hatched, which on occasion
he will help to do, turning the eggs regularly, bringing the
outside ones toward the center, etc., so that all the children
shall be born together. When the young are there he has
an abundance of " soft food " macerated, in his crop, a kind
of bird-milk, ready to feed them until their digestive
powers are ready for common food. The mother may now
go about her business of getting ready for more eggs, and
the mother-father attends to the babies, teaching them by
and by where to go for food, etc., etc. Who taught the
mother to stand over the already laid eggs instead of sitting
on them, before the time of incubation of the whole lot
should begin ? Who formed each wondrous egg with such
provisions that the " white " or food of the young unhatched
chick should surround the yolk, and again the yolk about
the germinal vesicle, and about all the encasing, protecting
shell, with pores or breathing spaces through it for the
chick's supply of air ?
" The section of an egg proceeding from the outside to the
center, shows, first, an outer layer of calcareous matter con-
taining the coloring pigment, then the inner layer, both being
oenetrated by minute canals for the admission of air when the
shell is dry. Next within lies the shell membrane, which is
MATERNAL LOVE. 81
separated at the larger end of the egg into a double layer, and
includes a small air-space, which increases in size as the egg
grows stale and becomes unfit for incubation. Immediately in
contact with the shell membrane is the albumen, or white
viscous fluid, and again within that the vitellus, or yolk, con-
taining the germ enclosed in its own membrane, and lighter
than the albumen. The difference in specific gravity between
the yolk and white is made, by a singular contrivance, to pro-
mote the development of the germ most effectually. From
each side of the yolk in the direction of the long axis of the
egg, proceeds a cord of condensed albumen extending towards,
but not meeting, the end of the egg, and vulgarly called ' the
tread,' under the erroneous impression that it represents the
influence of the male. Between those cords, one passing
toward the large and the other toward the small end of the
egg the yolk is, as it were, slung in the albumen. Thus while
the germinal vesicle on the outside of the yolk is prevented
from coming into actual contact with the interior of the shell
by its ' moorings ' in the denser substance of the albumen,
the lightness of the yolk determines it to float toward the
surface, and the cords allow it to go just so far as is sufficient
to keep the germ spot always nearer the upper side of the egg,
whichever way it may be turned on its axis. Consequently,
that part of the yolk where the most vital part is situated
remains, in all circumstances, nearest the source of heat, the
mother's body."
Let me also sketch for you the cares of another mother.
This mother, though a vertebrate, has had to develop the
hind legs and arches of the pelvic bones in such a way that
the young have to be born very early, so early indeed that
there is no placental connection with the mother, no blood-
feeding of the kangaroo baby before its birth. When born,
indeed, it is merely an egg, without a shell, an inch long, a
helpless bit of fragile protoplasm. Only a kangaroo mother
could care for such a baby. This she does by sticking it in
a wonderful pouch of skin beneath her body, and how this
82 MATERNAL LOVE.
is done, and how the nipple is got into the mouth and clear
down the throat into the stomach of the unformed, muscle-
less, motionless bundle, are mysteries of kangaroo mother-
hood. What is still more wonderful is, however, under-
stood. Without formed muscles there can be no suckling,
but nature is, as always, equal to the emergency. The
muscles are in the mother's breasts, and she can extrude the
milk at will. Another bit of " special design " is required
by the fact that as the kangaroo babies grow (the mother
moving by jumps, as all know) their weight would burst the
marsupial pouch if it were not braced and supported by
the marsupial bones which grow out beneath it, and are
thought to be ossified tendons of the external oblique
muscles.
The pursuit of food for mate and little ones is, as we
have seen, a more subtile but active cause of mental growth.
The swifts in building their nests (the edible birds' nests of
the Chinese) out of inspissated mucus from the large sali-
vary glands, thus transform a weight of material much
greater than that of their own body into this gelatinous
substance. This drain on the system is so great that if the
nest is stolen the second one is not, as was the first, white
and pure, free from foreign substances, but is made up
largely of feathers, hair, etc. Gould took from the lining
of the nest of a long-tailed titmouse some 2000 feathers.
The body of the nest was made up of lichen, moss, hair,
etc. The weight of the eggs of one sitting is much more
than that of her own body, and this expenditure of energy
in nest-building and egg-bearing is in all birds relatively
enormous. Doubtless to feed the nurselings a bird ordi-
narily flies from 300 to 500 miles a day with how many
wing-strokes to the mile ? To illustrate the cooperation
of the purely physiologic or unconscious processes of the
body with the birds' willed or conscious work, it may be
noted that during incubation the temperature of the mother's
MATERNAL LOVE. 83
body rises several degrees. God helps mothers ! In this
connection also it may be noted that the hornbill feeds his
wife and young ones (whom he has securely walled in their
nest) through a little hole, with the prepared and regurgit-
ated food, in a bag or pellicle, derived of course from the
lining membrane of his own stomach.
The genesial instinct is more plainly the origin of edu-
cational ingenuity in birds than in other animals. No two
species of birds build nests exactly alike, and the mechanic
and artistic ability of some is astonishing. That mother-
love in birds begins and carries on the education and ele-
vation of mentality there can be no doubt. It is certainly
at the bottom of that astounding fact, bird-migration, a
phenomenon of wonderful significance in the distribution
of the flora, and even of the fauna of the whole world.
But the same dominant desire also, I judge, governs the
entire habits, distribution, and character of all animals. To
find a lair or place of safety for mother and young, and to
secure food for those at home, must dictate the place of
living, and thus, finally, the type morphologically and
psychologically of every species of animals. The ability
to elude enemies by a thousand devices must form mental
habits according to the peculiarities and the length of time
of those habits. Volumes might be and have been written
describing the myriad means of securing safety and food,
and for starting the youngsters in life so that they shall be
able to do the same thing again. Pigeons leave the nuts
abundant in a thousand trees where they are raising their
young, and fly hundreds of miles to get their food, so that
when hatched the weak-winged youngsters shall have food
in plenty where they are. To illustrate this fact let me
describe one thing I have not seen in print, and which
shows the instant and incessant government by the repro-
ductive instinct : A patient from Mexico tells me he has
about 1000 brood mares on his ranch. Each stallion
84 MATERNAL LOVE.
defends and commands from 15 to 30 mares, according to
his fighting ability. He keeps his family always distinct
from every other, and this segregation is so rigid that
when the whole thousand are " rounded up " and driven
pell-mell into a corral it takes the stallions perhaps hours
of intense running, neighing, whinnying, fighting, and
hunting, before each has his flock separated by winding but
clearly-defined alley-like spaces between each group. Then
the men may enter ! When running loose, if one group
comes near another, one leader may try to drive or woo a
mare of another family, at once resulting in a pitched
battle between the two leaders. The fighting is done
largely on the hind feet, the fore legs little used, the aim
being to seize the other's neck with the mouth. If one
gets a good " hold " in this way the result of the battle and
the possession of the object of battle is soon settled.
The period of gestation of the horse is eleven months.
My informant knows that it several times occurred in one
family that colts born nine or ten months after a mare had
been placed in the family were at once kicked to death by
the jealously-wise head of the family, who had not been
consulted in regard to the matter.
A number of amphibious animals have the trick of living
long beneath the water, and of keeping the submerged
body entirely out of sight while exposing the tips of the
nostrils to breathe. To find a home and security for his
family the beaver has developed a marvelous degree of
reason and architectural genius that has long been the
admiration of man, and is superior to that of the bee. The
platypus burrows in the bank of a stream, one tunnel
entering below the surface of the water, another above it,
and both leading to the nest. Thus he can use either and
escape all observant enemies.
It seems at present impossible to estimate the due pro-
portion of influence this necessity of nest-making, cave-
MATERNAL LOVE. 85
homing, and lair-devising, all for the young, has had in
developing ingenuity and mentality in animals, but I can-
not doubt it has been the preponderating influence, direct
and indirect, in spurring one species of animal into the
human. Archeology and anthropology teem with hints
and proofs of this fact. Home-making lies at the basis of
all progress out of animality into humanity, and of all
advances out of savagery into civilization. And is it not
plain that the family-relation is the direct product and
machinery of maternal love in its large sense ? Every ele-
ment of the most complex civilization springs from or is
vitally related with the home-making industry. Mere food,
until a high degree of civilization is reached, is perishable
almost in an hour, and therefore is the object of the hour's
need ; but possession of one place of meeting, or of seclu-
sion, begets the fact of ownership. Tools, investments,
houses, all things manufactured or durable, become pos-
sessions, and hence arises the conception of property, and
the entire legal aspect of human relationship is thus seen
to spring out of the family relation and flows inevitably
from that relation.
One of the most sympathetic and open-eyed observers of
animal life, Hudson, says that most all wild animals have
their games, dances, plays, or amusements, and especially
all birds. What an influence love exercises in the forma-
tion of plumage, coloration, forms and habits, of all ani-
mals is now known of all biologists, indeed, of all intelli-
gent people. Certain it is, therefore, that most all beauty
in the animal world (and of course in the world of flowers
it is wholly true) springs from some phase of maternal
love. An oriental proverb says that " even the young of
the ass is beautiful ! " Childhood, either of plant, of animal,
or of man, is the one superlative exhibition of beauty. A
glimpse, a perfume, a flashing and gleaming of something
superhumanly, supernaturally beautiful, lingers long and
86 MATERNAL LOVE.
caressingly about all young things. The greatest picture,
the ever-painted model, the never-realized ideal of art-
excellence, is the mother and her child. Whatever power
for good or evil from Troy-times to present-times womanly
beauty and charm has had in human life, surely the whole
of it can be credited or debited to but one thing. Art,
whether in poesy, drama, novel, sculpture, or painting, is
simply myriad-phased love. Back through all forms of
life, clear to the protozoa, the beautiful is linked with the
maternal in indissoluble unity. Estheticism, art, all that
charms and delights, is the reward and benediction of the
divine Father and his pleasure in the renewal of living
forms.
Now, exactly the same truth applies to morality, or the
emotion of altruism ! In all family life when the sexual or
family relation is not in action, there is selfishness, utter
indifference, or positive enmity always manifest. The prin-
ciples of individuation, the struggle for existence, the pre-
servation of self, called the first law of life (but wrongly so-
called), have unlimited and absolutely exclusive sway of all
beings and functions, except when love and the care of the
young come in to contradict and overrule them. Maternal
love is the miracle of all biologic existence. It cannot be
conceived as arising by any action of " environment " or
from the necessities of the organism standing nakedly
there. Into every life, nay, into every fiber, bone, and cell
of every living thing, the great God, Love, stoops down
and permeates, nay, He clutches and masters each for a
purpose beyond and after. From the standpoint of pres-
ent-day science, from the standpoint of determinism, fate
or chance, from the standpoint of the agnostic, or of his
twin-brother, the atheist, this maternal-paternal love, this
all-powerful, all-forming, and all-transforming energy is the
most illogical, most uncaused, most utterly unaccountable
thing conceivable. We can explain all things else in some
MATERNAL LOVE. 87
half-blundering, half-satisfactory way, but for this exotic
wonder there is no scientific accounting that would not
make a mummy laugh. It is, it comes to us from without,
and that is all we can say. It is the one patent, convincing,
unanswerable proof of the divine, or the supernatural, enter-
ing and grasping the organic mechanism for ends beyond
that organism itself. And its first, last, continuous, and
increasing effect is to make every organism value and
cherish a being that is not self. It is therefore the very
basis and essence of all that is ethical and religious. Every
animal is put in training by it for humanization, and be-
comes through it a faultless illustration for us of the super-
naturalism and the glory of ethics and of other-love. To
the childless a hundred animal stories teach that there are
orphans we should make our own children. Alas ! The
heart-broken sadness, the pathos beyond tears of the
motherless. Read Kipling's Baa, Baa, Black Sheep, and
then think of what is going on in the breasts of thousands
of children in the " barrack-schools " of England, and in
the orphan asylums of America.
The limits within which the role of the maternal instinct
is confined are more rigid in the animal world than in the
human. I doubt if any one knows anything about the old
bachelors and old maids there. Of course, there are but
few such, but these few must occupy strange positions in
life. After the productive age has passed, one wonders if
wild animals keep up the relics of family life. Probably
not, I fear. At least, one species of birds, the cuckoos, are
sharp little scoundrels. They build no nests, and carrying
their eggs in their mouths, slip them into the nests of other
birds, where they are hatched some days in advance of the
eggs of the rightful owners. Then with characteristic in-
humanity, or unbirdity, they proceed to gobble up all the
food and kick out of the nest the rightful children. Male
birds often arrive in migration from their thousands of miles
88 MATERNAL LOVE.
of flight before their mates, but the same mates do come,
and they come year after year to the same locality and
rebuild their nests in the same identical spot. This home-
attachment has numerous illustrations. A water-wagtail
once built her nest on the framework beneath a railway
passenger car, which later was put into local service, run-
ning four times a day between Cosham and Havant, in
England, in all about forty miles. At this time there were
four young birds in the nest, and the little father, while his
family were away promenaded the turntable, etc., awaiting
the shunting of the car bringing back his wife and babies.
A pair of tomtits for three years built their nest in a letter
box. All the letters posted fell upon the sitting bird, and
the splendid postman gathered the letters and left the
birdies.
Among animals the limits of the control of the maternal
feeling are rigidly confined to simple necessity. Love seems
to disappear as soon as the young can possibly fly and get
their food another proof of its supernatural quality and
origin. I have oftened wondered, too, at the general
indifference of the father to the young. In many, per-
haps most animals, the father seems to care no more for
his children than if they were moving bushes. Cer-
tainly, he cares no more for his own than for those of
another, and the idea of any love toward grandchildren is
absurd. Not even the mother shows this.
But it is of the greatest interest to note that with the ap-
pearance of humanity and with its ideas of home and of
property (both products of maternal love) there arises a
natural extension of the scope and control of the family
instinct, and the interest of the parents continues into or
through adult life. Support and protection of the mother
continues beyond the child-bearing period, grandchildren
are beloved (sometimes I have noticed, even more than the
children themselves were), more distant relatives are held
MATERNAL LOVE. 89
within the family affection, and the patriarchal type of
society is established. When the higher ideals of society
and civilization are permitted to arise, the egis of love is
extended over the nation, and patriotism with its great in-
fluence in war and history appears. Finally, the highest
development of humanity arises, and, still an actual out-
growth and extension of maternal love, ethics and love of
humanity, and of the divine Father-Mother of humanity,
and of all life, takes possession of the loyal being, whether
he be social reformer, philosopher, pietist, or religionist.
I fear that I have wearied you : Let me then epitomize
the principles about which I have gathered my much-wan-
dering and perhaps incoherent thoughts :
1. Among the factors of evolution there is one of which
scientists have made too little or no account. This com-
prises the entire grouping as one, of all the instincts
variously denominated genesic, sexual, or reproductive, the
whole series of the various functions, necessities, and results,
going to the begetting, gestation, nourishment, and train-
ing of the young. Conceived thus in its entirety we may,
for want of a better name, denominate it maternal love.
2. In the vegetable this energy largely and entirely dic-
tates the morphology and physiology of all types and
species of plants, and is the sole factor in their flowering,
seed-forming, and in the phenomenon of growth.
3. The stored food, fashioned by the cunning and secret
chemistry of the plant, and provided by maternal love for
the first nourishment of its young in the seed, is the ulti-
mate source of nourishment of the entire animal world,
humanity, of course, included.
4. In the animal world the maternal sentiment more
largely than any other or all other causes, leads directly
or indirectly to the development of ingenuity, nest-build-
ing, and other forms of home-making, and hence to mental
evolution and progress to higher types.
90 MATERNAL LOVE.
5. It is doubtless in this special way the prepotent factor
in the humanization of the one genus or species of animal
from which we have sprung.
6. In the human race it has been the dominant influence
in the formation and progressive growth of society through
its effects in the creation of property and private rights,
and in the founding of homes, of families, etc.
7. In both the animal and the human race it has been
almost the sole source of the appreciation, ideals, and facts
of esthetics, all forms of art drawing their inspiration and
data primarily or at second hand from its exhibition and
function.
8. Religion and the belief in the supernatural apart,
there is not, so far as we can see, any other cause that has
been in the least operative in producing, throughout all
biologic history, any ethical or altruistic fact or function
whatsoever. To this great instinct is entirely due all the
practices operative in plant or animal for the welfare of
any other than self. And in the highest society of to-
day every ethical act derives, directly or indirectly, from it.
9. Almost all other evolutionary factors may be more
or less satisfactorily accounted for on theories of " na-
tural " causes, such as " natural selection," the persistence
and correlation of energy, the " sensitiveness of proto-
plasm," etc., etc., but viewed in its singleness or in its en-
tirety, this instinct, so far as our intelligence can judge, is
plainly uncaused and inexplicable, and, to put it boldly, is
a miracle, thrust among all other natural forces, and domi-
nating all for its half-hidden, half-revealed purposes.
May I relate a dream ?
I thought that maternal love and all pertaining thereto
ceased appearing in our world because mankind did not
appreciate the beautiful and gratuitous gift, and were so
ungrateful, even abusive of it, that God grew tired thrust-
MATERNAL LOVE. 91
ing it upon us. Men and women had grown so callous
that they took upon themselves the awful duties of parent-
hood, and then neglected their children. They made
orphans by thousands and then left them to be cared for
in horrible asylums, their tender, unpracticed, unguided
longings bruised, or like cellar-plants, left groping for hid-
den light. They ruthlessly killed and destroyed all things
for selfishness and amusement.
And so, in my dream, all that related to maternal love
silently ceased to be, and I wandered among strange-seem-
ing people and profoundly changed scenes. The whole
animal world became other ; ornament, color, gay feather
and lightsome song gave place to sad makeshifts of utili-
tarian hair, bristles, splotches, screeches, and grunts. Even
in the eyes and faces of my best friends all became different,
hopelessly pitying or inhumanly hard ; deep-seated selfish-
ness gleamed upon one everywhere from snake-like eyes.
Smiles one never met, but an occasional risus diaboli; cac-
chinations of derision or ridicule were heard, for men and
all things were painfully grotesque and altered in appear-
ance. Men jeered at each other because all beards had
disappeared ; the glory of woman's hair had also gone.
Worse than this, the beauty faded out of woman's form and
feature, and instead of the divine charm of laughing eyes
and radiant winsomeness, they all became half or wholly
repulsive, coarse, much like men, and yet without the dig-
nity or strength of men. The men had likewise become
womanish without becoming in the least degree womanly.
The beautiful, except perhaps the flash of moon on wave
or sun on mountain-top, had gone out of the world.
No children were born, and those that existed were
thrust out to die or live neglected, or were fed out of illogic
pity. There was not a flower in the world. Almost all
human social gatherings ceased ; why should people meet
together now, when they had no pleasure in each other,
92 MATERNAL LOVE.
and when each looked on the other thinking only how his
money could be gotten away from him ? Men left their
homes and were never heard of again, and in all places
strangers, uncouth, ill-clothed, brutal, and cruel, came and
went in objectless ebb and flow. Who had wealth turned
it into gold or portable goods. All commercial credit
ceased ; banks closed their doors ; every one barricaded
his house, and went about " armed to the teeth." The
iron-mills and rolling-mills went on, and many manufacto-
ries, but everywhere was harshness, and grind, and ugli-
ness. Despair and idiocy, and crime and insanity instantly
increased a hundred-fold. An awful shudder, a cosmic
horror crept like cold snakes through the arteries ; the
blood curdled in all hearts. Women whispered to men an
awful message, and men moaned it to each other ; hungry-
eyed dogs divined it in their masters' eyes ; it ran like
doom along the branches of the leafless trees, down to the
roots, and there every mole and insect was frozen with
terror of it. God is dead ! were the agonizing words that
palsied thought and emotion, and that clutched at the life-
springs of every bosom.
Slowly the prices of everything commenced rising and
famine began. It was found during the second year that
the stock of grain was nearly or quite exhausted. Seed
sowed in the ground came up, but there was no new seed
formed. The cattle had died off in great numbers during
the first and second winters because the owners kept the
little corn that was left to still their own personal hunger.
No calves or lambs were born, no chickens hatched, and
the older animals could not get enough grass, leaves, or
roots during the summer to carry them into the next
winter, the third, when death would surely come. But
they were not allowed to live that long; and during this
second year every animal all over the world and of what-
soever kind that could be reached by the ingenuity of
MATERNAL LOVE. 93
man's hunger had been sacrificed. Then began universal
famine, cannibalism, and unutterable horror. Everywhere
was death, and death was everywhere. Within two years
from the death of love there was naught but death. Rocks
and sand and waters there were, a desert-world just like
that before the angel of maternal love came among the
rocks and sands and waters, and made out of them the
world we know, the world of grain and fruit, the world of
sweet, cool grass, the world of rustling leaves, the world
of beautiful, wonderful animal forms, the world of friends,
the world of baby- faces, the world of God!
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.*
In a letter from a famous thinker and writer lately re-
ceived, commenting upon some statement concerning a
physiologic function, my correspondent writes : " I am, as
a physiologist, quite opposed to regarding life as an entity
instead of a function." With this bit of unscientific dog-
matism a popular plebifactor of science is well satisfied and
proceeds in this way : " Chemistry has now told us that
' Life ' as an entity has no more existence than the phlog-
iston of the earlier chemists, and that the series of phe-
nomena to which we give the name of life are changes
undergone by complex compounds of carbon composing
very large and unstable compounds." The only proper
answer to this is a choice example of curbstone slang,
more forcible than polite. It is itself a compound, "very
large and unstable," but of simple construction, being made
up of about equal parts of lie, ignorance, and impertinence,
in mechanical mixture, not chemical union, f Such things
are to be regretted because they harm the advance of true
science, a matter in which we all have the most vital and
vivid interest. But the unscientific prejudice of many like
my correspondent, who think they find in physiologic and
biologic studies confirmation of a materialistic creed, is
* A paper read before several societies.
j- In the best, most recent and most scientific text-book on the subject I
know of, I find these words : " The chemical operations performed by the
living cell cannot be imitated in the laboratory, or explained by any known
chemical laws." (Halliburton, Handbook of Chemical Physiology and Path-
ology, p. 2IO.)
94
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 95
chiefly to be regretted for their personal sakes ; they miss so
much and narrow their minds quite unnecessarily. No man
ever saw anything that in the remotest degree could logically
suggest that life is a function of matter ; there is not a
biologic fact that does not demonstrate the contrary ; and
yet these unscientific philosophers pretend that they are
pupils in a school that at matriculation demands freedom
from dogma, and induction only after patient study of facts.
To the student of the history of thought these dogmatists
are seen to be simply the dupes of a psychologic Zeitgeist
of reaction from past theologic dogma. Scientific dogma-
tism has the advantage over the religious variety in being
sooner exposed and shorter-lived, but it is altogether more
inexcusable.
I would be glad in the interests of a monistic faith to
see any means of escape from the dualism of life and
matter, but frankly observing the facts I do not see the
least loop-hole of any such possible escape. In addi-
tion to the chemic elements and their compounds, we in-
clude under the term matter, the ether with its functions
of light, heat, electricity and magnetism. These, with the
chemic elements and their compounds, are all governed
absolutely by the laws of the physical or mechanic forces,
and compose the material universe. This material uni-
verse gives me no hint of design or designer. Frantic at-
tempts have been made to argue its derived existence from
the fact, first of its orderliness. But in the first place what
order exists is generally more apparent than real, and it is
easily forgotten that there exists the most astonishing
jumble and disorder as characteristics of great parts if not
the most of the physical universe, in the oceans, in the
facts of meteorology, in the Arctic regions, in the configura-
tion and structure of the earth's crust, in the meteors and
other examples of disorder in the solar or stellar systems.
In the second place, the order observable is always the
96 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
result of the law of gravity ; the stratification of the earth's
crust, the flow of rivers, the revolutions of the planets, the
very formation of planets and systems, lastly and of most
importance, the formation of the molecule and of all chemic
combinations and laws, seem all to be simple instances of the
results of gravity. Now if one finds evidence of a creator in
gravity and gravity-produced order, his mind is differently
formed from mine. Another argument that has been relied
on is a supposed logical necessity to ascribe to a cause what-
ever exists ; " matter must have been created because it could
not have created itself." All the logic in this lies in the
equally true paradox, God must have been created because
He could not have created Himself. It is only when
design and purpose and nonmechanical reactions distin-
guish a thing that logic requires its reference to a designer.
We do not dream of attempting to fathom the origin of
life, but when nonliving matter shows living forces and
mentality, we must ascribe these to something extra-
material. " The final and strongest defense of the argu-
ment for a derived origin of matter consists in the uni-
formity of size and nature of all the atoms of one element.
Identity requires explanation. All the atoms of hydrogen
are identical. If the result of chance, they would have
been of infinite variety of size and qualities." In answer to
this it might be said that in the infinite attritions of an in-
finite universe in infinite time, like atoms would necessarily
be produced and be gathered together. In a shot tower
the simple fact of descent sorts the different sized shot with
mathematical exactness. The heavier fall the faster.
Space is infinite an endless shot tower and gravity almost
alone would sort varieties of atoms into classes. The sixty
or seventy varieties of elements are possibly the chance-
groupings or gravity-sortings, and classes, of the atoms.
The mechanic law of " Natural selection " would apply
here in a way it cannot apply elsewhere. The atoms that
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 97
vary from the greater average would fall of themselves to
another class, or would quickly be ground to uniformity
by the attrition of their fellows.
It is life alone that gives incontrovertible evidence of
divinity not of an omnipotent or omniscient one but of
one that by the very fact that he is finite and working
under difficulties brings him all the nearer to our hearts
and makes love and veneration the spontaneous offering of
all sane minds and sympathetic hearts. Untouched by
life the universe would be in the condition of the moon,
without a vestige of any living thing. The trans-
cendent metamorphosis worked by life is hardly to be
realized by one who has not stood in the awful desolation
of some wholly lifeless region. The vegetable world, and
it alone is able to evolve from inorganic materials a true
but probably a comparatively simple protoplasm. The
higher animal is utterly dependent upon this power of the
plant, relying for its food upon the formed protoplasm
robbed from the vegetable kingdom. The fact shows the
essential unity of the plant and animal worlds, and
emphasizes the fundamental difference of the world of life
over against the world of dead matter. The two are
entirely uncorrelated phases of being, no monistic faith or
philosophy offering a hint of any hidden unity or identity
of the two. The ingenuous perception and conviction of
their utter disparity is the faith of mankind. To assert the
nonexistence or the derived nature of either is philosophic
moonshine. There is no dexterity of mental gymnastics
that renders thinkable the creation or annihilation of
matter, or the generation out of it of life or mentality. All
sane thinking must at the outset posit as axiomatic these
two independent and underived forms of Being.
The Chemic Molecule. The most striking character-
istic of an inorganic molecule is that it is a rigidly
mechanical system. It has no spontaneous movement, and
9
98 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
no adaptive reactions, except such as are mechanically pre-
dictable ; under given circumstances, thermic and mechanic,
its component elements being present, it will always 'form;
under a definite impact of heat it will always break up
into its elements. As a matter of convenience we speak of
it as reacting, but it rightly has no reaction, being only
acted upon ; it is dead, movable only from without. In
forming, a definite and invariable amount of heat is ab-
sorbed, and the same amount being again given it, it at
once breaks up into its constituent parts. Heat being the
indicator of atomic vibration, thermo-chemistry would be a
science, if perfected, of surpassing exactness, and would
indicate by a heat-equivalent, the precise constitution and
condition of every compound. It would be the record of
the exact number and extent of path of its atomic vibra-
tions all that we could desire to know about it. It would
constitute the astronomy of the molecule. Because, it
would appear that in a final analysis, gravity almost or quite
explains the intimate interactions of the molecule's parts,
as it does those of the elements of the solar system, the
vibrations of the atoms doubtless following the same laws
as the planets in their circuits. Every molecule, we know,
is a closed and unitary system, its elements never in con-
tact, but ever in ceaseless vibration, with varying rapidities
and extent of path. The vibrations of the ether penetrate
the densest bodies, showing that the atoms move wide
apart from each other like the planets. The moving planet
by displacing the circumambient ether, may possibly create
a slight ether-breeze, as, many miles per second, it darts
through space ; it may be likened to an almost frictionless-
net passing through water, or a zephyr through a leafless
tree. Hertz passed electric or ether-vibrations quite un-
changed through a solid stone wall several feet in thickness,
and light seems to escape the atoms of glass much as
supposed arrows would escape the planets if shot from a
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 99
star through our solar system. A molecule or a mass of
molecules is dense just in proportion to the extent of swing
of its atoms. Heat is the measure of these swingings or
revolutions. Absolute zero in temperature, a calculated
thermometric registration of 273 C. would correspond to
atomic immobility and absolutely impenetrable density.
This is only a reasoned or imagined condition, not only not
existing, but beyond experimental production. The num-
ber of miles per second traveled by a single atom of the
atmosphere of our room is calculated and the number of its
collisions with other atoms and the sides of the room.
The pressure of the gas in your gas pipe or against the
gasometer is simply the sum of the blows of its individual
atoms upon the containing sides. The blow of the black-
smith's hammer upon the anvil is the blow of one
mass of billions of vibrating atoms upon the mass of
billions of other vibrating atoms. The hardness of a body
is the common name for the lessened but not stopped
swingings of its constituent parts. The softness of a body
or its gaseous state is due to the increased vibration of its
elements. Give the atoms of a wall of cold steel more
" swing " than they already have, and you could walk
through the wall as through air. The disruption of a mole-
cule by an increment of heat is effected by a simple increase
of the centrifugal force of the atoms like that attending in-
crease of revolution in a body rotating about a fixed center.
Increase the speed of Neptune in his orbit and he would
be flung off beyond the control of the Sun's gravitation.
It is doubtless in this way that the impacts of ether-waves
effect chemic changes. If the vibratory period of the ether-
wave be identical with that of certain loosely-held elements
of the molecule, the disruption is instantaneous, as in the
photographer's sensitive plate. Chemic molecules are thus
seen to be physical microcosms, ruled by a rigid mechanic-
alism. Were our microscopes sufficiently powerful and our
ioo LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
vision sufficiently swift, we should find many varieties of
simple and complex systems of intervibrating elements of
which our solar system is but a single type, others hidden
by our want of a perfect telescope but whatever the
variety, all alike ruled by a simple physical law. The for-
mation of a complex chemic molecule, one composed of
numerous varieties of elements, illustrates the law in the
definite mathematic proportions of its constituent parts, the
relative feebleness or strength of the bonds of union, in the
preservation of compound radicals, etc., etc.
The Organic Molecule, or " Somacule." How does
the protoplasmic* or living molecule, or somacule, differ
from its inorganic analogue, the chemic molecule? Prim-
arily and profoundly, of course, in that it has life. The
materialist says it differs in no important respect. As the
sodium chlorid molecule has a property we call saltiness,
so the protoplasmic molecule has liveliness, both necessary
qualities of their molecular structure mere functions of
the peculiar combinations of the elements of each. It is
waste words to ask if the salinity can be taken from salt,
leaving the salt there, as the life can be taken from proto-
plasm, and leave the protoplasm present. It is quite use-
less to argue with such folk. It is simply a question of
perceiving, and when one is congenitally afflicted with this
sort of mental strabismus and amblyopia, it is absurd to
expect help, except as one says, from a surgical operation.
He cannot see that the difference between living matter
and dead matter is the greatest difference existing between
perceived things.
* The word protoplasm is an unfortunate and misused term. It has no
meaning whatever now, having been used to designate such a multitude of
differing things. In all probability the substance most commonly spoken of
as protoplasm is not living, but is stored nucleus-food. The nomenclature of
these things needs reorganization. Until this is done we are forced, for con-
venience's sake, to use the word as a synonym of living matter.
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 10!
To be more specific, the somacule differs from the mole-
cule in its amazing complexity of atomic construction.
No analysis is possible, the guessings as to the number
of constituent atoms differing by many hundreds, some
estimating the simplest system to be composed of from
three hundred to a thousand. Lieberkuhn's formula for
albumin is C 72 H 112 N 18 O 2 2S ; Harnack gives it as C^Hs^N^-
Og^ ; Schiitzenberger as C 2 ioH392N 65 O 75 S 3 . Inorganic forces
can build up no such a complex system as this. It requires
a hypermechanic power. If our planetary system were
suddenly enriched by one or two thousand dazzling
planets, moons, and comets, would not confusion and
collision certainly result? Mechanic products like atoms,
chemic substances, nails, etc., are characterized by likeness
or identity. But all organic products differ one from
another. Brothers differ in expression, physical organi-
zation, and characteristics. Not even twins are as like as
two atoms or two samples of the same chemic compound.
It is said that in transfusion of blood the assimilative
tissues of one person will not accept the formed corpuscles
of another. These have to be broken down and the
component materials, not the end-products, used or ex-
creted. All that is gained by transfusion is a sudden
supply of nutritive material in an emergency to tide over
a temporary and dangerous want. This points to what
must be admitted as a fact, that protoplasm is infinitely
variable. It is probably true that at no two moments of the
existence of a cell is its molecular condition and atomic
construction exactly the same. It is probably true that no
two cells are exactly of the same constitution. It is almost
certainly true that the cells of different organized tissues
must differ from each other, one organ requiring cells of
wholly different powers and hence of varying constitution,
from the cells of another organ. It is beyond question
that the general formula of molecular and atomic construe-
102 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
tion must differ in each and every individual. A dog can
distinguish the smell of the impress of his master's foot or
hand from that of every other person in the world. If the
volatile particles of cell-metamorphosis differ so contin-
uously and exactly, then the general chemic formula of
the cells must necessarily differ. In this way, within
limits, the protoplasmic formula of one family must differ
from that of another, of one nation or race from other
nations and races, etc. Every one recognizes the peculiar
body-odor of the African, the Chinese, of certain families
of animals, etc. All this is in striking contrast to mechanic
products, and it only finds its explanation in the infinite
adaptability of life to every material used as food, to every
peculiarity of the historic development, and to every change
in the enviroment. Alum, carbon dioxid, or quinin sulphate
are the same whether produced a thousand years ago, and
however produced, but a living cell, or a living organism,
is never duplicated by Nature, every being that has lived
on the earth being different from every other that has ever
lived or that ever will live.
Since Life works only by and through the individual
cell, creating and evermore remolding the cell according
to the peculiar work and circumstance, glimpses are caught
of purposive and progressive spontaneity and of cosmic
import. Mechanicalism has no place or application here.
In the bioplastic molecule, Life, the divine architect, builds
an exquisite order of bewildering complexity out of the
crude materials of simple mechanic vibrating systems, and
sits in its midst guiding and utilizing the physical in the
interests of the metaphysical. Purpose a quality un-
known in mechanical systems or molecules is the distinc-
tive characteristic of all living things. The molecule-
building power of the inorganic world is the fulcrum ot
Life, and the release of force by the breaking down of the
more complex molecule into the simpler (katabolism) is
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 103
the means whereby Life acts within the physical domain.
The purposive direction of energy is her one function, and
the energy is always derived from the reduction of more
complex to less complex compounds. To coin a couple
of needed terms biokinesigenesis (the production of vital
energy) is always the product of cytolysis (the disruption
of cell-substance), the unlocking of a chemic bond and the
release of subjugated atoms. It makes no difference what
the form of vital energy may be, whether it be a secreting,
contracting, a nervous, or a connective-tissue cell, its every
function subsists by reason of a reduction of its substance
to a simpler system, ending finally in a change in con-
struction of product, a metamorphosis of molecular into
molar motion, a transfer of energy, a support of weight,
etc. The analogue of this vital production of energy by
cytolysis is the condensation of the solar system, the pre-
servation of the sun's working energy, whilst his total
energy is being reduced. Unlike the somacule, the solar
system cannot be fed from without, and so its shrinkage
and decreasing energy will finally end in stagnation and
death. It is from the energy derived from the metabolism
of the somacule that life gains the power of preserving a
uniform temperature. This power is one of the most
striking proofs of nonmechanicalism, of supernaturalism
if you please, displayed in organic existence. All life's
forces are dependent upon such a condition of atomic
vibration, or heat, as will preserve the somacule in the
highest state of complexity or unstable equilibrium. So
delicately poised must be the molecular balance, that the
slightest breath of desire or stimulus can at once release
small, large, or continuous increments of energy.* To
* Of the total product of energy or heat evolved by the body, about seven
per cent, is used in external mechanical work ; of the remainder, four-fifths
are lost through the skin, the remaining fifth by the lungs and excreta.
104 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
preserve this wonderful equipoise and adjustment is an as-
tounding exhibition of overruling intelligence and watch-
fulness. Every mechanic system tends to stagnation and
death, and must be preserved by extrasystemic additions of
force. The physical system, clock, molecule, solar me-
chanism, or steam engine, cannot recoup itself, cannot
prevent the tendency to " run down." Protoplasm alone
has a self-preserving and self-regulating power.
Every physician knows the meaning and the danger of
fever. With fever, life is losing control of her atoms, the
most fundamental condition of her government of organic
processes. Centrifugalism is getting the better of centri-
petalism. With increased atomic vibration there is in-
creased dissipation of force, and dangerous dissolution of
the somacule. Katabolism gains upon anabolism. With
increased loss there must be increased supply, and this fact
gives everlasting warrant for the quaint epitaph of the old
physician, " He fed fevers." The preservation of an equa-
ble temperature of the body, is the instant, true and genuine
miracle continuously performed by life. But if fever is
dangerous, a subnormal temperature is far more so. It
means death, molecular and somatic. The somacule can-
not deliver force if the dance of its constituent atoms is
crowded and chilled and lessened. Though submerged
in food and water, it dies of starvation and thirst. These
things show us how narrow a range of choice and power
life has, and how jealously matter imposes upon life its
rigid conditions. A few degrees of temperature above the
normal is dangerous, a few below is death. If an automa-
tic mechanism governs the uniformity of temperature, its
device and perfection must have been a task of long and
subtle difficulty. If the materialist prefers to ascribe the
production of the wonderful mechanism to his new deity,
Natural Selection, one can only answer that the endow-
ment of a mechanic principle with divine powers explains
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 105
nothing, and seems no advance upon the elder nomencla-
ture.
The Cell. The cell may be described as an organized
multitude of somacules, corresponding to a universe of
solar systems. The atoms correspond to the planets, aste-
roids, etc., the somacule to the solar system, the cell to the
whole of the interrelated suns of one nebula or universe.
The harmonic law of stellar relations has not been dis-
covered and therefore the further comparison of the animal
body to the interrelations of different masses of nebulae, or
universes, if one may be pardoned the absurd expression,
becomes meaningless. The somacule is the biologic unit,
the cell the physiologic unit. It has been estimated that
the smallest living particle visible under the microscope
contains about two million molecules of living matter.
But this estimate needs two qualifications. The first is that
from 80 to 85 percent, of every protoplasmic mass consists
of water ; and the second is that a large, if not much the
larger part of the cell-mass is composed, not of true living
protoplasm but of dead food, not yet transformed into living
matter, and of dead waste-product, or excreta, both of
which are no part of the true organism. Thus the real
living, directing and modifying part of the cell is composed
of not more than 10 or 20 millions of somacules. It is this
fact that gives the swift beheading stroke to every material-
istic theory of heredity and descent. Suppose that every
somacule had an individuality and an identity peculiar to
itself; would any school-boy deny that the ancestral and
racial inheritance of the child from its parent does not in
the stupendous multitude of details, outnumber these paltry
20 millions by incalculable millions of millions ? The ab-
surdity becomes ludicrous when we further remember that
at an early stage of cell-development, these few millions of
elements give no evidence of structural difference. Then
again if a somacule is to carry from the parent the power
10
io6 LIKE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
to mold a special organ or tissue of the child, it must
learn its lesson in the like tissue of the parent, and having
so learned it, must pass thence to ovary or testicle and be
incorporated with millions of other cells which have learned
their lesson from every other tissue of the parent body.
Now every cell of every organ has a certain peculiarity of
function, of position, or of nature. Therefore, if we are
logical, a germ-cell (or sperm-cell) must serve as pupil
under all the tutor-cells of every organ and tissue of the
parent-body, and thence proceed to form and develop first
the ovum or spermatozoid, and then the child-body. But
if this is an absolute logical demand, the total mass of the
cells of the ovum must equal in number those of the
parent-body. That is, the ovum is as large as the adult
parent ! This reductio ad absurdum is but one of the in-
numerable logical quagmires in which one finds himself
wallowing who sets out to follow the Will-o-the-wisp of
materialism. If it be supposed that a speck of bioplasm
^5-3- of an inch in diameter as a physical mechanic system
contains the billionfold results of millions of years of past
ancestral experience, one can but ask as to the mechanism
of such preservation and transfer of ovogenetic gemmules.
Of what avail is it to endow the mechanic molecule with
a self-created omniscience, omnipotence, and infinite cun-
ning ? Does one think thereby to get rid of a hated tele-
ology? It is only evidence of inexpugnable obtuseness.
It would seem more sensible to call God by the old name
than to dub him Protoplasm.
Cell-Assimilation. The protoplasmic cell is a food-
seeking, food-digesting, and food-assimilating organism.
A very small part is really the seat and organ of life; the
bulk is dead food or dead excreta. It is a minute egg, the
living germ or dominating- part being a fractional part, the
rest a magazine of stored food for the use of the growing
and reproducing individual. In that universe of cells, the
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 107
animal body, it is much the same. The actually living
protoplasm is but a part of the total body weight. Just at
what instant in the process of assimilation the dead food
becomes the living protoplasm, it is impossible to say, but
it seems probable that true directive energy and life only
fully inhabit the formed but yet functional tissue. In that
amazing and subtle process beginning with the crude food
at the mouth, and ending with the most complex cell of
the acting, fixed tissue, there is a long, intricate series of
substances and metamorphoses of progressively ascending
complexity and unstable equilibrium into which life has
only a partial and progressive ability to enter and dominate
to her purposes. The methods of effecting this metamor-
phosis are towards the last of the most exquisite delicacy
and subtlety ; but from the first the handling is less and
less molar and mechanical, ever more chemical and vital.
Previous to the final cell-finishing and fitting, Life cannot
have her proper house-warming and full reception, but
must fashion, and furnish, and manipulate from without, by
tools and agents, as it were, until finally, by indwelling
agency, when the living pump, the heart and its adjuncts,
have brought the almost completed food-product to the
living cell of the fixed tissue, mechanics are at an end, and
the metabolism is thenceforward so far hidden from our
deepest scrutiny.
Cytogenesis. An important fact in reference to the
existence of protoplasm is that only life can produce it.
There has never, so far as we can find out, been a living
cell produced except from a preexistent living cell. It
requires protoplasm, and living protoplasm to beget its
like. Nothing is deader than the absurd theory of spon-
taneous generation. In the light of the complex vibratory
nature of all organic compounds, what theory could be
more ludicrous ? Even the most empty-headed of material-
ists now steer clear of the hypothesis an hypothesis by
io8 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
the way, absolutely foundational to their whole belief and
creed. To reduce by heat a lot of living matter, the
labyrinthine intricacy, and marvelous complexity of whose
vibrating systems no human mind can gain but the
faintest glimpses, to a jumble of indiscriminate atoms, and
then expect highly organized and living vibratory systems
to arise spontaneously, this is the limit of nonsense.
It were as absurd to pulverize a thousand watches in a
mortar and expect much shaking to again bring forth
watches. Since life is an independent force existing apart
from all matter, and since it creates protoplasm, it becomes
sure that, in a certain sense, spontaneous generation did
at one time, or first, occur. The absoluteness of the truth,
omne vivum ex vivo is simply a proof of the labor life has
had to get a foothold in matter, and the advantage in a
foothold once gained. However great, the miracle of
present assimilation is not so great as that of first impres-
sing inorganic vibrating systems into protoplasmic service.
The foothold once secured it is easier to draw in mechanic
systems and endow them with life than it is to create anew
the lowest type of living matter. Hence the fundamental
necessity and reason of the great scientific truth of Evolu-
tion. It is always easier for life to proceed from present
capacity and advantage than to originate new forms.
Reproduction, growth, and modification are easier than de
novo production. How life conquered the first tremendous
difficulty of once getting entrance to and control of a
simple physical vibrating system is at present beyond our
possibility of thought. But proof that life can convert
mechanic systems of vibrating atoms into protoplasm is
not needed : it is the ever-present miracle of the growth
of organic forms. An oak germ in its lifetime, from purely
inorganic materials, transforms into protoplasm tons of
inert matter, lifts thousands of tons a hundred feet high,
transforms other thousands into the semi-living tissue we
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 109
call wood, etc. The difficulty life has had in first gaining
entrance to a mechanic system /. e., the difficulty of
spontaneous generation has led two acute thinkers to
suppose living germs must first have been brought to our
planet from some other by a wandering meteor. But
whence came life to the other planet? The theory seems
to be no more probable than that the first and lowest
vegetable forms arose at life's touch, upon our earth in the
dim past. The true " missing link " would be between the
highest mechanic or inorganic molecule and the lowest
unicellular vegetable protoplasmic cell. All that follows is
willingly granted to evolution spiritually conceived. The
evolutionist easily " sees men as trees walking." The
primal difficulty lay in catching nascent vibratory changes
of the most complex and unstable inorganic geometric
molecules and utilizing them for domiciliation. We
cannot doubt that life was everywhere present and vividly
alert to grasp the opportunity, because we now stand in
dumb amazement at the tremendous stretch and strain
everywhere shown by imperfect and limited protoplasm to
grow and extend itself over, above, and through the world,
with little less than infinite pertinacity and divine ingenuity.
The Cell-nucleus. The father of the modern cell-
theory, Theodor Schwann, took his hint of the function of
the nucleus from the botanist, M. Schleiden, who had
observed that the nucleus is the primal source of changes
and of division of the vegetable cell. The preexistence
of the nucleus in the cell became thenceforth his funda-
mental principle in the study of the cells of animal life,
and he found that all the tissues of whatever kind and
variety of the animal body are nothing but transformed
cells. These truths are to-day incontrovertible. It is in
the nucleus of the cell that biologic interest and micro-
chemic investigation center. There can be little doubt that
the nucleus is the true living matter. Life has its seat
no LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
there. Changes proceed thence. It controls the nutritive
and metabolic changes of the cell, and whilst alive is
always undergoing these changes. In cell-division it is
the nucleus that first divides. " The cytasters and radiating
lines in the protoplasm around the poles of the spindle of
a dividing cell remind one forcibly of the effect produced
by placing a magnet in the midst of some iron filings, the
radiating position of the metallic fragments around the
poles of the magnet indicating the direction of the lines of
force." We know that the nucleus consists of a kind of
network or sponge-like cluster of fibrils about and through
which is the nuclear matrix of more liquid substance. The
nucleoli may be thickened portions of the fibrillae, or they
may float free in the matrix. The chemic construction of
the nucleus contains an indefinite number of highly complex
substances, such as nuclein, plastin, adenin, etc. As in all
such investigations, chemic analysis is here impossible.
Nuclein, the more important constituent, shows distinct
chemic differences when derived from different sources.
No definite chemic unit exists, and it seems probable that
the nucleins are members of the numerous class of organic
phosphorus-compounds.
Cell-nuclei are divided into two great classes, the resting
or nondividing, and the dividing. The term karyokinesis
is given to the series of changes taking place in the divid-
ing nucleus. These changes are too intricate and exten-
sive, too little understood, to be detailed here. The stages
are described by Waldeyer as : I. A resting nucleus; 2.
The skein or spirem stage ; 3. That of the appearance of the
achromatic spindle ; 4. The equatorial stage and formation
of the monaster; 5. Metakinesis ; 6. The dyaster or daugh-
ter-stage; 7. The dispirem or daughter-skein stage ; 8. The
resting daughter nuclei. All this is but a manifold naming
of some of the crude results of a millionfold, intimate and
mysterious series of changes, of whose nature and methods
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. ill
we are profoundly ignorant. But the central truth that
shines forth is that the nucleus of the cell is Life's castle
of domiciliation and throne of power. Precisely as an
earthly king seated at the center of government, by means
of his prime ministers and deputed authority, binds the
parts of his nation into a unitary government, and controls
all for the common good of all, so does Life rule the king-
dom of organic matter through the central seat of govern-
ment, the cell-nucleus. But one awfully-suggestive infer-
ence comes from this : though the lowliest living beings,
vegetable and animal, are unicellular, the bulk of organic
beings are multicellular, and an organism like the human
body is composed of billions of subjugated cells, of self-
forgetting, serving, tireless, cheerful slaves. If life can
only operate upon and through matter by the mechanism
of the cell-nucleus, then it follows that the life of the indi-
vidual cell is itself not individual. It is itself the appearing
of a life common and universal. The point to be empha-
sized is that in the creation of an organ and an organism,
each cell must be moved to its place, and perform its func-
tions as an unit, and by its self-motility. Mechanic force
is utterly out of the question. The organ is formed by each
cell's individual action. No cell can act upon another. In
the maneuver of a regiment of soldiers it is not an external
force, as a wind or a battering ram, that moves all to their
places. Each man is moved from within as a unit, domi-
nated by the command of the colonel. Exactly so life
dominates the nucleus of each separate cell. The harmo-
nizing, ordering intellect lies behind the individual cells in
the unity and mentality of Life.
A reaction from the doctrine of the individuality of cells
has lately arisen, consisting in the attempt to conceive and
prove the body to be not an aggregate of cells, but a single
cell-mass. It was felt that the doctrine of cell-individuality
was fatal to mechanicalism, because the body is a unit
112 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
dominated by a common interest that reduces individual
cells to the complete servitude of design and unity. But
this way of escape is closed by the developmental history
of the " cell-mass," and by the inexpugnable fact that struc-
ture proceeds by the harmonization and subjection of sep-
arate cells, each acting independently from within its own
nuclei. Cell-unity and independence, so far as other cells
are concerned, is an incontrovertible fact. The unity
sought in the conception of the organism as a single huge
cell is a vain delusion : it can only be found in the reins of
power and life reaching from each individual cell to the
hidden hand of the Master-Driver, Life. The cell is ser-
vant of Purpose and Design. Imperfection, death, disease,
sin, and wrong, are the products of imperfect mastery of the
cell, of the insubordination of matter; but progress, and
religion, and right, are the names for cheerful cell-subordi-
nation, for complete mastery by life, for the quickness of
cell-response to the tides and will of the great ocean-master,
thus seeking through innumerable bays, estuaries, canals,
and mechanisms, to reach into the inaccessible lands of
matter and flood them with its infinite fluid life. Upon the
mechanic theory, life as a function of matter, etc., there is
no explanation of the subordination of cells, their literal
enslavement as units of structure. What possible mechanic
force could make a billion cells shape themselves into a
tube here, a strand there, a sieve-like wall, a contractile
bundle, or a supporting structure?
The new-born cell, as we have seen, has all the powers
in greater or less perfection, shown by any perfected or
differentiated organ. It is only and simply by setting
a cell to do a special and limited work that we have
specialization of function and production of structure or
organs. What mechanic force or self-created necessity
would sort out and mold to particular use by specialization
and hypertrophy one set of cells to become contractors,
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 113
another membranes, others as containers, supporters, trans-
mitters, secreters, excreters, protectors, reproducers, and
the thousand other diversified functions performed by our
various tissues ? The marvelously intimate and subtle na-
ture of life's manner of working becomes truly awful when
we realize that all this unity in diversity is reached by the
purposive agency of one unseen mental power operating
alone through the nuclei of these countless billions of in-
dividual cells. The work indeed is never mechanical, never
by masses or ab extra, is unexceptionally nonmechanical,
always through units, and ab intra. Neither must we for-
get that not one cell of all in our whole organism can, as an
individual, have any self-satisfaction. It is evermore doing
something for some purpose it knows not of, evermore act-
ing for some other part. It points elsewhere for an ex-
planation of its function, having in its own work no " final
cause " as the theologians would say. It is again precisely
so as regards each organ and set of organs. The digestive
system is working for the circulatory system, this in turn
for all the fixed and functional tissues, the bones to uphold
the body, the muscles to move it, the nervous system to
bind all parts into unity, etc., etc. No cell, or organ or
tissue whatever can say that it exists even in the slightest
degree for itself. Its excuse for being is a reference else-
where. If logic be a science or logical inference a mental
necessity, this means that the final cause lies beyond the
body itself, qua body, and in that region of unseen life
which exists behind, in, and through all its objectifications.
The Parasitism of Animal Life and " the Knighting of
Matter." There seems to me to be something peculiarly
significant in the robbery of the means of its existence by
the animal from the vegetable world. There is in the first
place hardly an order of lowly animal forms that does not
get its food from the plant-world. The plant can form a
living protoplasm from inorganic materials. This the
H4 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
animal cannot do, and hence his universal appropriation
of vegetable protoplasm, ruthless and continuous, for his
own selfish needs. Beyond this kind of universal pillage
the animal world, below man, does not go. But with the
entrance of the human mind the wholesale system of rob-
bery is extended a thousand fold. In the first place, he, as
a meat-eater, adds to his own robbery of food directly from
the vegetable world, by a tremendous slaughtering of
inferior animal forms. These last by his purposive breeding
and systematic care, are increased in numbers a thousand
fold, and thus is organized and increased the great system
of attack upon the plant-world and reckless appropriation
of its labor and stored products. The flesh of animals is
concentrated, potentialized vegetable protoplasm. In the
second place, man, not content with food, descends with an
almost savage fury upon the world of plant life for other
means of self-gratification. Continents of forests are cut
down to furnish him wood, and the stored-up forests of
millions of past years are being exhausted for fuel ; a
large part of the cultivable land of the globe is used to
give him clothing, either directly, as cotton, linen, etc., or
indirectly, as wool, silk, etc. To enumerate the things
wrenched by man from the vegetable world mediately or
immediately, and from the original intent, would require a
cyclopedia, and would indicate the physical bases of most
of our civilization. The commerce of the world is the
almost unique result of this " plan of campaign."
All this seems at first sight to be so inherently wrong
and unjust that in view of the deep unity of all life, whether
plant or animal, one wonders if the world of plant-life will
submit forever. Is some long-stored revenge in waiting
for mankind ? Will not retribution overtake him for such
a world-wide million-year-long organized system of reckless
plunder? In the destruction of forests a retributive justice
is manifest in the havoc and devastation of waterways and
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 115
valleys through which the unstored rainfall rushes to the
ocean, leaving drouth and field-denudation as the aftermath.
In the conflagration of cities man is punished for building
with robbed wood instead of the more fitting inorganic
materials he would have used had he not been so furiously
greedy and hasty. The wars and bloodshed that make up
the subject matter of history* are all conditioned upon the
hell-driven determination to wrench some natural advantage
of climate, some form of natural or acquired wealth all,
at last, vegetable wealth from another robber-possessor.
Slavery, and its modern form, industrialism, are examples
of the same fact. Civilized wealth is masked slavery, the
toilers being the direct robbers, the millionaires being simply
the slave-drivers and captains of the bandits and caravans.
Royalty, official and social position, " protective " and
prohibitive tariffs, monopolies, trusts, et 'hoc genus omne,a.re.
schemes and labyrinthine deviltries whereby mankind
subjects itself to men, and all go a hunting to loot the
magazines of force created by grass and leaf by the
mysterious vegetable divinity, Chlorophyl. In the
diseases of civilization there lurks an evident retributive
justice. In prostitution, hysteria, drunkenness, vice, in
insanity, blindness, deaf-mutism, trampism, in the crowd-
diseases, in syphilis, in phthisis, etc., etc., the discerning
eye runs back along the lines of motive and causation
until the fundamental origin of all is found in the selfish
greed, laziness, and desire to enjoy without work, that have
caused men to prey upon the vegetable world, to congregate
in cities, to demand and not give, to scorn while using the
very sources of life. Lastly in the new knowledge of the
role more and progressively played by microorganisms in
* " History, from one end to the other relates simply of wars. But the
origin of all war is the desire to thieve; hence Voltaire justly says, ' Dans
toutes les guenes, il ne s'agit que de voler." This furnishes the material for the
world's history, and its heroic deeds." Schopenhauer.
116 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
the development of disease and their influence upon civilized
life we catch a truly awful glimpse of vegetable revenge.
Because the bacterium, bacillus, micrococcus, and spirillum,
the yeasts, molds and fungi, that in scores of families and
types, and in billions of ever-present numbers hover about
us, infesting the air, food, and water we drink, penetrating
every organ of the body, the causes direct or indirect of
most all deaths and mortal diseases these microbes are
little plants. The warning and retribution may be plainly
seen in these facts ; the punishment is the fitting and
natural consequence of the sin. Because of the fact that
all organic forms are incarnations of one unitary life-force,
there should not be a perpetual war of one great order
upon another. They who work lovingly in the fields and
forests are given ungrudgingly the wealth of the vegetable
world, and they are free from the above-mentioned diseases,
evils, vices, and punishments of the "civilized man." The
vegetable world says, " ask and ye shall receive " ; she gives
with a complement of love and health to those who live
with her; to those that plunder and ravish, she sends her
little warriors and allies, and lo ! consumption* and
zymotic diseases destroy her destroyers.f
* The bacillus tuberculosis only settles in lungs weakened or insufficiently
developed ; chest-expansion and exercise, proper lung-development is the
certain prophylaxis of pulmonary tuberculosis.
* The plainly- marked tendency of modern bacteriologic and patholog-
ic research is to prove that the microorganism of specific diseases is not
primarily causative, nor even necessary to the disease. It seems to be certain
that the cocci and bacilli would not have settled in the tissue had the tissue
not been previously diseased. The tissue was unfit for healthy life and gave
hostage to the little vegetable forms. The weakness of the victim invited the
assault. The chemico-physical conditions of the organism were tending to the
disorganization that the advent of the microorganism hastened. It is more
and more plain that the microbe is a kind of a ferment, innocent enough were
there not present substances in such unstable equilibrium that they were on the
point of dissolution. The pathogenic microbe is the exploding fuse ; the
powder or dynamite must preexist.
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 117
This systematic plundering by humanity is founded upon
a wonderful fact that I have ventured to call the Knighting
of Matter. According to medieval custom when a man
had once been made a knight he was by the ceremony
raised out of the common mass of mankind, and not even
by his own fault or will could he ever be again degraded
to the common level. A glory or grace had become his
forever. In the same, or in a far more real way, matter
crude chemic elements are caught up by life and, once
stamped with her seal, become ennobled with utility and
significance never possessed by matter not so knighted.
Not even the metals can become of any use to us without
some metamorphosis by life. And except the metals
there is nothing that makes the world enjoyable or useful
unless it have been knighted by life. The veriest rag or
bit of leather of the dust-heap is provocative of interest
and rich with significance to the eye that loves life's ways
and her faintest footprints, because the mind runs back
through all metamorphoses and modifications to the living
organism of which this was once a vital part and where it
gained all the quality that makes it precious and useful to
man. All our clothing, houses, furnishings, coal, foods and
true valuables, are useful to us because life once molded her
somacules and cells into structural forms and then endowed
them with a power and plasticity and utility and beauty, ot
which they can never be divested. Life's intellect is dis-
played in their wondrous order and ingenuity, her powers
in their durability, her goodness in their perfect service-
ableness, her love in the bounteousness of the gift, her
grace in the beauty and charm ever lingering about them.
The Significance of Structure or Organization.
There is, we have said, a class of pseudoscientists who
aver that life and mentality are the products of organiza-
tion. The sullenness and the conspiracy of silence with
which these wiseacres receive the repetitive demonstrations
Il8 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
of there illogicality is both pitiable and amusing. In all
the life-histories of every organic being that has lived on
the earth there was never an exception to the rule that
function precedes structure, and life antedates organization.
It is forgotten that numerous classes of living animals are
organless throughout their entire lives, and that these non-
structural masses of living jelly show every one of the six
great types of physiologic function. They possess I.
Contractibility ; 2. Irritability or response to stimulus; 3.
Respiration; 4. Assimilation, or anabolism ; 5. Excretion
or katabolism ; 6. Reproduction. All physiologic powers
and processes of the highest animal body are comprised
under these terms, and in no way go beyond them. Nay,
more the simple protoplasmic cell or the most primitive
individual living element also possesses these functions.
If it were not so, where would the organ or animal body
get these qualities ? The organ and body are simply com-
binations of the cells. " Nihil in molecule quid non prius in
atoma." A multitude cannot exhibit qualities not possessed
by the individuals. Evolution cannot produce what was
not first involuted. Development cannot bring out what
was not there to develop. * The sensitiveness of proto-
plasm is said to explain all. It certainly does when " sen-
sitiveness " is " explained," and when protoplasm is " ex-
plained," and when a world of other inexplainable things are
not slyly hidden under these terms, just as the old-fash-
* Merely to call the consciousness "nascent" will not serve our turn.
It is true that the word signifies not yet quite born, and so seems to form a
sort of bridge between existence and nonenity. But that is a verbal quibble.
The fact is that discontinuity comes in if a new nature comes in at all. The
quantity of the latter is quite immaterial. The girl in " Midshipman Easy "
could not excuse the illegitimacy of her child by saying " it was a very small
one." And consciousness, however small, is an illegitimate birth in any phil-
osophy that starts without it, and yet professes to explain all facts by continu-
ous evolution. If evolution is to work smoothly, consciousness in some shape
must have been present at the very origin of things. Professor James.
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 119
ioned piano tuners swept all the discords of the key-board
into one to-be-avoided octave. Instinct and the higher
functions of nerve-structures are glibly explained as exten-
sions of reflex action. But reflex action is itself a term for
a multitude of mysteries ; among which are the recipient
end-organ, the mechanism for transforming external into
neural force, the conducting nerve, the " reflecting " gang-
lion, or center, the reconduction of the message, the trans-
fer of the same to the muscle or receiving organ, the resul-
tant activity of the last, etc. Every organ is formed before
it is used, and many organs find no explanation until adult
life shows their use. Wherever purpose, there is mind.
What power could form an organ for use twenty years
after, except a power that foresaw and foreknew the after-
use ? I have a profound reverence for Darwin, and heartily
believe in Evolution, but the explanation of the modifica-
tions of organisms by so-called " natural selection " is
already outgrown, thoroughly unscientific and inadequate.*
An Indian pictograph represents the Great Spirit quite as
well. It is a clumsy, crude device of materialism to avoid
acknowledgment of an intelligent, seeing, and designing
life-force within an organism, that not only created the
organs but ever adapts them to each exigency and envir-
onmental change that arises. Life that precedes and
creates the organs must be wiser and more expert than the
instruments she creates. Organization cannot explain
mentality, but mentality explains the organs as tools and
helps. Such a tool is the brain, created by Life in the
womb, with mechanisms and preadaptations that do not
find their full functional fruition for many years. Was the
superb ingenuity and power that thus in the dark and long
in advance of need, made and located those million ganglia
* See e.g., Syme, on the Modification of Organisms, where some of the
arguments against Natural Selection are clearly stated.
120 LIKE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
and nuclei, interlacing them with many million insulated
commissural fibers, with astounding delicacy arranging,
forefeeling, planning, fixing so that when the infinitely
varying stimulus should come from without there should
be its correspondent receiving and answering mechanism,
was this power inferior in intellect and vision to the
machine it had created ?
Much is made by materialism of the dependence of men-
tal phenomena upon corporeal conditions, the mental in-
fluence of disease and drugs, the loss or change of mental
conditions by cerebral injury, etc., etc. The whole point is
poorly taken, and beside the mark. The criticism may be
freely admitted to carry so far as it goes, but it applies only
to the expression of thought, not to its generation, and
moreover, to its expression by a certain mechanism. Or-
ganization is differentiation of function ; just as in a highly
differentiated society, if all the watchmakers were per-
manently sick or injured, there would be no watches made
or repaired, so a disabled or diseased part of a nervous
system must affect the working of the whole nervous sys-
tem. But the work of the nervous system is not to " secrete
thought" but is (in part) to express it in a certain way, and
as the society can teach other members to become watch-
makers, so new nervous systems can be created by Life,
and in repair can teach other parts of cerebral substance
to learn to do the work of an injured part.
Then what shall be said from the materialistic stand-
point of this vis medicatrix nature? ? What a " stunning " fact
it is! To repair the injury of the "organ of thought"
is that not proof of thought and ingenuity beyond and be-
hind organization? The wisdom of the unconscious
exceeds by infinity the wisdom of the conscious.
All great thought comes unbidden, seems to be an in-
spiration born out of a Sea of Mind in filling and uphold-
ing the wavelet of our finite mind. The great mind
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. m
of Life created the little mind of our consciousness
creating first the instrument of the nervous system as an
aid to itself in its work. The brain may be the organ of
speech and action, but of thought No ! Its utterance is
comparable only to the babblings and lispings of child-
hood, the not-understood mimicries of words that the
parent taught and alone understands in full. Languages,
literatures, and philosophies, are the child's attempts to
learn the profound hieroglyphics of universal life, the
little Teachings out toward a conscious understanding of
the mighty thought of the silent and invisible Lord, who,
before he created, understood the mechanism of our little
understandings.
Imperfect Incarnation. Evidences of Life's inability
to adequately subjugate matter are everywhere manifest.
The will and desire are clearly patent but the inability is
also pathetically certain. Everywhere there is the heroic
struggle against the intractableness of the instrument.
Perhaps the most obvious example consists in the fact that
the material, the inorganic tools, serve only a temporary
use. As the old material is used, it loses its usefulness,
and new supplies have to be grasped. Life catches up bil-
lions of force-containing molecules, extracts their energy
and again throws them aside. The chemic elements of our
body are being changed every instant, new supplies being
brought in as ceaselessly. A great stream of materials is
thus passing through the organism. It is said five-million
red-blood corpuscles die with every breath we take. The
organism persists unchanged because it has a changeless
substratum of immateriality to confer continuity upon it.
But material forms having no permanency are in continual
flux. They will not be held beyond a passing second.
Hence the tremendous expenditure that hunger entails
hunger, the evidence of matter's fearful fickleness, and its
satisfaction, the evidence of Life's wonderful energy. In
ii
122 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
the whole organic world this imperious necessity must ab-
sorb nine-tenths of the attention and energy of life. Like
some terrible Louis the Fourteenth, matter will compound
with life only on the condition of demanding some 80 or
90 per cent, of the total income.
Secondly, consider what death means and how Life con-
quers or evades it. Death is plainly but another sacrifice to
the insatiable and mutinous servant. In youth Life has the
material " well in hand," but soon the jealousy of matter
grows and demands all. The bones grow brittle, the mus-
cles stiffen, weaken, wither ; the brain and nervous tissues
hold out best, Life having a more direct and firmer grasp
upon them, but even they become easily tired. Finally,
though usually happening if no disease arise, or special
organ be attacked, life seems literally choked or squeezed
out of its home and death is conqueror. But Life has been
cunning and active long before this : with the shrewdest
foresight and ingenuity the dread event has been fore-
fended. Far in advance, by the most intricate and strange
mechanism, Life has gathered to a focus a representative
bit of her best and most perfect physical material, and
uniting it to another bit of similar material elsewhere con-
tributed, to give it vigor, care, nourishment, time for
growth, etc., etc., the whole wonderful production of sex
and all thereto appertaining being one of the prerequisites
she soon has ready a new being, new in appearance but
yet a transfiguration and perpetuation of the old and
Death is thwarted ! Avaricious matter takes the old body,
there is a better already assumed. Le roi est mort, vive le
roi ! But the note of victory and the charm of ever-
renewed youth must not blind us to the fact of the tre-
mendous expensiveness of the process, and that at last it
is all a makeskift, an escape from a fatal calamity by super-
human exertion and ingenuity. It is a hairbreadth escape,
effected with shameful loss of dignity and even downright
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 123
trickiness. One of the steps of the device is such a paltry,
and filthy evidence of desperation that no better proof of
Life's finiteness is needed. It is at once the world's joke
and the world's tragedy, and must ever so remain. Each
of us is Sancho and the Don rolled in one; we can only jeer
at ourselves while weeping with self-pity, and in this mood
we know not whether to offer Life our admiration or com-
miseration. Sympathy for the hero in distress is embittered
by the plight he has put us in.
Yet another evidence of the power of the servant over
the master is a set of facts that always* delights the hearts
of the gentlemen who continuously repeat, " This will
never do ! " Nothing pleases a class of God's critics better
than a supposed proof of his incompetence or blundering.*
They gloat over the persistent reproduction of semiatro-
phied, disused, or functionless organs, the supposed poverty
of power or device, the stupidly-continued creation of the
useless. The pleasure which these folks have betrays the
animus too plainly : " The developmental history of the
kidneys" is much made of, and "the process of converting
an hermaphrodite worm into a warm-blooded animal."
" The six obsolete canals belonging to the alimentary canal
alone;" "the argument for design utterly put out of the
court by the awkwardness of the whole plan," " the blind
effort of nature," sentences like these make one wonder
where the critic got his power of criticism. He talks
as if he were not himself ex hypothesi a product of the
"awkwardness " " undesign," and " blind effort." Can the
stream rise higher than the source ? whence the power of a
mechanic evolutionary product to criticise and scorn the
evolutionary process ? The impertinence of fools is amus-
ing when it is not disgusting. There can be no doubt of
* One of the most unblushing of these upstart impertinents is, strange to say,
a woman. So far have we come ! Corruptio optima pessima.
124 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
the fact that matter has inherent necessities and laws, and
that Life has to adapt herself to them and use or evade
them as best she can. It is said that there is a disease of
the human prostate in which there occurs the secretion of
chalk-like substances the late resurrection of an inter-
rupted habit and a far-away memory of egg-shell days !
But in health there is no pathologic recurrence to the
habits of a million years ago, and the fact as a whole,
seems to me to be greatly to life's credit. When she has
control, that is, can keep health, she can, as it were, keep
down the old habit that seeks to arise. It is likewise to
her honor that there are not more thymus glands, atavisms,
functionless muscles, and survived relics of other times.
Life has much to do to create new organs in response to
new needs, to forefend new dangers, to look after her many,
many children a tirelessly busy mother ! Mayn't we ex-
cuse an occasional slip or doze ? Don't we love her all the
more, all the more vitally and really, that she is not omnis-
cient and omnipotent ?
The preservation of the delicate changelessness of the
body-temperature, of which we have spoken, is another
task imposed by matter, that keeps Life sleeplessly watch-
ing and alert. In fact, the history of Evolution is but
an enumeration of the difficulties Life has always been en-
countering in tl\e work of incarnation. In thinking how
terrible these have been we can but feel gratitude welling
in our hearts when we see victorious Life crowning success
with vital abundance, when play and laughter override
tragedy and tears, and when beauty tops utility.*
* " * * * a force sublime which moves to good,
Only its laws endure.
" This, is its touch upon the blossomed rose,
The fashion of its hand shaped lotus-leaves ;
In dark soil and silence of the seeds,
The rohe of spring it weaves.
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 125
Individuality and Personal Identity. It may be asked,
in view of the indwelling of a common life and its action
only through cell-nuclei, if this fact does not render doubt-
ful and finally destroy any belief in that hypothetically in-
destructible peculiarity of character we call Personality or
Identity, and in its unlimited continuance. Happily there
can be but one answer. The insane love of self, the hyper-
trophy of individuality which characterized the Romans,
and is now again attaining a furious exaggeration, is to be
looked upon as a sad accident of the struggle for existence.
The whole fact is once again a corollary of the difficulty
Life has had to get and to keep its foothold in matter. To
" That, is its painting on the glorious clouds,
And these its emeralds on the peacock's train ;
It hath its stations in the stars ; its slaves
In lightning, wind and rain.
" Out of the dark it wrought the heart of man,
Out of dull shells the pheasant's penciled neck ;
Ever at toil it brings to loveliness
All ancient wrath and wreck.
" The gray eggs in the golden sun-bird's nest
Its treasures are, the bee's six-sided cell
Its honey-pot; the ant wots of its ways,
The white dove knows them well.
" It spreadeth forth for flight the eagle's wings
What time she beareth home her prey ; it sends
The she-wolf to her cubs ; for unloved things
It findeth food and friends.
" It is not marred nor stayed in any use;
All liketh it ; the sweet, white milk it brings
To mother's breasts ; it bringeth the white drops too,
Wherewith the young snake stings.
" This is its work upon the things ye see ;
The unseen things are more ; men's hearts and minds,
The thoughts of people and their ways and wills,
Those, too, the great law binds."
126 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
preserve her forms against destructive tendencies and dan-
gers, to give each individual animal such vantage-ground
as would insure the preservation of self and the propaga-
tion of offspring, and so of her own incarnation in matter,
Life has had so to exaggerate the disease of individuality,
so to overfill each organism with the instinct of self-preser-
vation and ruthless appropriation of others' rights, that we
have the cosmically-wide facts of parasitism, the carnivora-
outfit of instincts and implements, Louis Fourteenth's,
modern millionaires, and the pathology of civilization. One
of these most curious of morbid products consists of the
fact of founding religions, with their systems of rewards
and punishments, upon this instinct of self-preservation.
The hunger for an everlasting continuance of existence, ot
a partial, narrow, undeveloped peculiarity of type personal
identity or immortality will some time come to be looked
upon as a strange atavistic hypertrophy and perversion of
a passing phase of Evolution. Our true welfare consists,
of course, in becoming unindividual, impersonal, in slough-
ing off the accidents of development, in eating our way
out of the pupa-stage of individual personality into the
psychic life of the universal personality. A rigid analysis
of the origin and qualities of the peculiarities we name
identity or individuality, shows that they are due solely to
the accidents of Life-incarnation. Individuality the path-
ologic variety of carnivora is a disagreeable consequence
of a great difficulty, the outcome of the stringent condi-
tions matter places upon Life. Corporeal beauty illustrates
the same law. A beautiful face is one free from marring
imperfections, and vividly expressive of life. " Homeliness "
results from individuality of feature, imbalance and insub-
ordination of parts, incoordinations and imperfections of
incarnation. Character and personality become beautiful
only in so far as they approach perfection that is, in so far
as they are unindividual. Individuality consists in selfish-
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 127
ness, peculiarity, and imperfections. The more one is
greedy for personal immortality the less he merits it, the
less he has worthy of eternal perpetuation. Great minds
and good hearts are not worried about their personal iden-
tity and after-death continuance. They know they cannot
help continuing not however as singing automatons or
bundles of imperfections and desires, but as the common
life that lives outside the laws of time and space. Love of
individuality is love of self, and of separateness from the
source of all life. The truest religion seeks freedom from
self and union with the overstanding life. One must lose his
life to find it. The common belief in immortality is the
voice of the impudence and control of matter. It is
the machine asserting superiority over the mechanic and
the engineer. The only permanency and enduring unity
of an animal organism consists in the life or logos-will that
made and upholds it, not in the stream of matter ever fly-
ing through it. Individuality inheres in and is begotten of
organization ; when organization ends individuality ends,
though the life that created organization by no means ends.
The Basis of Ethics and Religion consists simply in
this fact that I have been illustrating, the fact of Life's
purposes and will struggling against the difficulties of
incarnation. Right conduct consists in adopting Life's
plans as our own, and working with and for her. Most of
the sin and wrong and suffering come from the obstinacy,
the over-control of matter, the imperfect incarnation of Life,
and the sacrifices she has to make to succeed at all. If
we aid her we are good ; if we side with matter we sin.
The principle cleaves straight through all doubtful questions
of casuistry and conduct, and offers a touchstone of infalli-
ble certainty and clearness. Every ethical rule or the
judgment of any specific act brought to this tribunal is
settled with swift accuracy. It decides peremptorily,
smashing many a fond and cherished conventionalism and
128 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
legalized injustice, elevating to honor many quiet and
ignored sources and principles of right. A thousand
illustrations that must be passed by here, at once flash
before the eyes. The principle holds as true and unfailing
in questions of religion. No love was possible to a sup-
posed omniscient and omnipotent deity ; but with the
struggling Life of our life we can feel a kinship and
sympathy. If our adoption of Life's will as our own be
vivified by fervent love, the fulness of religion is ours, and
we are in veriest fact the Sons of God. Sonship, of course,
presupposes the brotherhood of all men nay more, of all
organic forms. The absorbing interest of the civilized
world in evolution and biologic study is but a forerunner
of the great recognition and atonement that must follow.
We are beginning to hear the whispering that is by and by
to become an ever-sounding voice, the faint, long-ignored
calling, swelling to command, of the Father of Life and of
forgotten brothers Tat twam asi! This art Thou !
Pessimism and Optimism. The acknowledgment of
the spirituality and fatherhood of life has been stifled by
the unscientific inference that any such admission carried
with it the sweeping belief in the omnipotence and omni-
science of God. It has been keenly felt that the very
brutal fact that " the creation groaneth and travaileth in
pain " was not to be blinked and not to be reconciled with
the belief in an omnipotent deity. As the old antithesis
put it, either God doesn't wish to stop evil and pain, or He
can't." In either case He is not God. There is absolutely
no escape from that logic. Hence men preferred to believe
in the nonspirituality of life rather than, accepting it, to
be forced also to accept the absurd dogma of the omnipo-
tent goodness of the father of life. Thus was born the
modern doctrine of materialism ; thus sane, educated men,
closing their eyelids that they may not see, pretend to
believe that " life is a function of matter," etc. Many now
LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS. 129
suppose it is the tradition of Science, and that to be a
" scientific " man is to be a materialist. Many a dupe of
this kind has, like Hannibal, bound himself by an oath
before its import could be understood, and goes blindly
forward, bravely devoting fine powers of mind to a hopeless
and doomful task. To them the Cato of a truer philosophy
must ever thunder in their ears the fateful fiat of a greater
Rome, Delenda Carthago! The whole position is the
simple result of what the logicians call a non sequitur. The
belief in the spirituality of life does not at all necessitate
any belief in its omniscience, its omnipotence, or even in
its absolute goodness. Even the most pious of men have
been forced to disbelieve in the omniscience a palpably
absurd dogma. To this may be willingly added the admis-
sion that boundless goodness and omniscience do not
exactly sautent aux yeux, when we contemplate the history
of past men and animals. Had Life been altogether
beneficent, poison-bags, tusks, bloodshed, and the degrad-
ing bestiality of the struggle for existence, would not have
been so conspicuous and characteristic features of past and
present life as is evident. Even had Life been omniscient
without omnipotence or goodness, it would seem that her
ingenuity might have avoided much of these as wasteful
and useless.
Thus the acknowledgment of the independence and im-
materiality of life argues nothing as to the goodness or
non-goodness of that life. Neither the Christian nor any
religious faith gains a jot or tittle thereby. The question
of optimism or pessimism yet remains. Rome may have
been worse than Carthage, but Rome was the conquering
fact. The final question at issue between Schopenhauer
and Hegel is in no wise touched. But the question be-
tween Plato and Biichner is eternally settled. Hegel's
optimism may be wrong, but the immaterial Aoyo? certainly
exists, and we are its creations and mouthpieces. Scho-
12
130 LIFE AND ITS PHYSICAL BASIS.
penhauer's pessimism may be unjustified, but der Wille is
the heart and soul of us. It might be better if materialism
were true, but it is not true. Science seeks to know what
is, not what ought to be. No profound mind would deny
the facts that pitying Buddha and pitiless Schopenhauer
have laid bare. The awful steel of Fate and suffering has
sunk deeply into our hearts and no divine Surgeon comes
to extract it. The divinest Surgeon that ever lived, in
uttering the saddest words ever spoken, acknowledged the
poisoned iron in his own breast. Eli, Eli, lamina sabachthani.
Like this great Healer, and his elder brother Buddha, the
pain must not cloud our intellect and turn it into a jug-
gling instrument of revengeful untruthfulness.
Following the light of reason, we may catch a gleam of
consolation. Perhaps there will yet be a perfect divine
physician. The certainty of a common, universal, -self-
existent, and supernatural life, functional as the heart and
essence of all organic beings, makes us secure in the pre-
servation of our true self. Individuality and personal
identity undesirable accidents of our organization and
materiality we are happily not doomed to inherit, but a
progressive immortality of soul seems more certain than
the fleeting mortality of sense, that for a day and as a
child's toy has pleased and deluded us.
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?*
The reproach that medicine has not kept step with the
general scientific progress of the age, is one so commonly
made that it has doubtless often been accepted as a truism
by many who in other matters exercise a more discriminat-
ing judgment. On the part of those who know the facts,
there is, of course, not the slightest question that medicine
is scientific in the best and highest meaning of the word.
How the query arises is easily explained when one con-
siders the erroneousness of the common conception of the
term science, the failure to provide the means of proper
physiologic knowledge in our plans of primary education,
the deplorable condition of medical education, and, lastly,
the ignorance of what modern scientific medicine has done
and is doing.
The last point seems the most important, and in consider-
ing it one must not forget that so fast as a more or less
clearly-circumscribed department of medicine has grown
precise and scientific, it has as a specialty taken a position
of semiindependence. The world thinks only of the
remaining undifferentiated part, called general or internal
medicine, as being distinctly medical ; and forgets that the
specialties, which have almost reached the limit of possible
scientific extension and accuracy, are very essential parts
of medicine, themselves the samples and pledges of coming
progress in all. Thus in surgery, ophthalmology, obstet-
rics, dentistry, otology, dermatology, etc., there is on the
* From The Forum of Dec., 1889.
132 IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
part of competent physicians no considerable difference as
to diagnosis and treatment in a given case ; and the reduc-
tion of the mortality from diseases belonging to these de-
partments is proof of that systematization and accuracy
which we call scientific.
*It is well known that the application of bacteriologic
study to surgery, obstetrics, etc., has in important respects
revolutionized them. Surgical, hospital, and puerperal
fevers are now almost things of the past. Twenty years
ago it was not uncommon for the mortality of puerperal
septicemia to mount as high as 30, and even 50 per cent.
It is to-day less than one per cent. The same explanation
is to be given as regards the successfulness of the modern
Cesarean section. The science of pelvimetry has also
saved the lives of many children and mothers. Ophthal-
mology is perhaps the most exact of the medical sciences,
and even if no prophylaxis of cataract be ever found, the
restoration of vision in 95 per cent, of cataract operations
is a decisive proof of excellent work. But perhaps a still
greater beneficence is to come from stifling the most fertile
source of reflex neuroses the headaches, dyspepsias,
choreas, etc., so often due to " eye-strain."
If one thoroughly conversant with the medical progress
of the last few years, take up even the best work on path-
ology or general medicine issued five or ten years ago, he
is astonished to find how much seems old and outgrown.
The stupendous discoveries and advances made from day to
day, cause the book before the last to seem like history
rather than present-day conclusions. Any attempt even at
the briefest resume of these wonderful labors, even if it did
not presuppose an encyclopedic erudition, would, in the
space allowed me, be impossible. To the general reader,
moreover, it would be very dry reading. There are but few
" choice souls " who find a book-catalogue interesting read-
ing, though every line may suggest the enthusiasms and
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE? 133
labors of years, and, in a way, be fraught with profound
import. All, therefore, that can be done, is to glance at a
few of the most salient points and aspects of modern scien-
tific medicine, which may serve as illustrations of that spirit
of science and progress which is working in and through
it all.
No other discovery has aroused so great hopes, and none
has so superbly satisfied many of them, as that of the ex-
istence and disease-producing influence of the minute
organisms called bacteria, microbes, or microorganisms.
Their pathogenic influence is now established beyond con-
troversy, and to this discovery is due the revolutionizing of
surgery, the extinction of surgical and puerperal fever, etc.
Indeed, every department of medicine has been electrified
by the partial success and perfect promise that it holds out.
I had prepared a table of the different orders of these
" disease-germs " that have been studied, showing their
methods of "cultivation," habitat, nature, peculiarities, and
pathogenic influences, but it is too extended to transcribe
here. A glimpse may be gained of the hordes of invisible
enemies that may live upon or within us, from the mere
numbers of the principal species. From the latest data that
I can find, my summary shows 76 distinct species of bacil-
lus, 50 of micrococcus, 20 of spirillum, 8 of sarcina, 6 of
beggiatoa, and one each of leuconostoc, astococcus, lepto-
thrix, cladothrix,and crenothrix 165 in all. Of this num-
ber especially frightful if we consider their tremendous
power of multiplication some are almost certainly harm-
less, while yet another portion is doubtfully pathogenic.
But some 43 varieties of micrococcus, 30 of bacillus, 4 of
spirillum, and one of leptothrix are certainly connected
directly or indirectly with human diseases. Among the
principal of these are the pyogenic or pus-forming bacteria,
with which the surgeon has chiefly to do, numbering 8
principal varieties. Other orders of micrococcus believed to
134 IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
be associated with disease, are the micrococcus of erysipelas,
Aleppo boil, pneumonia, mammitis, diphtheria, scarlatina,
smallpox, measles, yellow fever, gonorrhea, and possibly
of hydrophobia. Among the pathogenic bacilli, the more
noteworthy are those of anthrax, tuberculosis, green diar-
rhea of children, diphtheria, epidemic dysentery, leprosy,
glanders, and typhoid. The spirillum of cholera (or
comma bacillus) is the most important of the spirilla. I
have attempted no enumeration of the diseases that perhaps
over-enthusiastic discoverers believe due to microorgan-
isms. Even such unlikely types as cancer and tetanus are
confidently claimed. There is, of course, much indefinite-
ness, even doubt, as to the etiologic role they play. The
study is attended by extraordinary difficulties, and is
liable to induce confusion. Post hoc is doubtless frequently
mistaken for propter hoc, and much extravagance of claim
must be set over against the dead weight of an extreme
conservatism.
The investigation of the laws of these microbes gives
entrancing, though also tantalizing, glimpses into many
mysteries. One such is the theory of malarial or intermit-
tent fevers, to be described later. The immunity given by
one attack of an infectious disease, is explained as due to
the appearance, during the first attack, of certain products
that render the tissues and cells more hardy and resistant
to subsequent attacks we explain everything nowadays
by habit, or organic memory. This fact, coupled with its
complement, the attenuation of a virus, or modification of
its virulence, by passing through the system of another
animal, serves to make clear how, for example, one attack
of smallpox usually gives immunity from a second, and
how the attenuated virus, or cow pox, does the same.
Either calls out the resistance of the cells that have learned
skill in one encounter, and know their enemy by experience.
In a certain sense, the invasion of the organism by bacteria
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE? 135
is a sort of intimate traumatism or inner violence, whose
injury the inherent powers of the organism must resist or
heal. The bacterial origin of the infectious diseases reduces
at a stroke the catalogue of true idiopathic, autogenetic, or
self-produced diseases, and our conception of the dignity
and heroism of the organism at once rises. Its warfare
against innumerable invisible foes commands our sympa-
thetic respect. It would seem that all the body's foes
come from without. If such a disease as cancer be of
bacterial origin, it is probable that any other disease may
be, and the dream of an elixir of life would be realized if
we could keep all microbes outside and observe the laws
of hygiene.
The infective diseases are the principal disease-causers
and death-producers of the world, and all are quite certainly
bound up with the transfer of specific bacteria or poisons
from one organism to another. The profound, almost sole,
lesson of prophylaxis and preventive medicine, is the
avoidance of contamination. Phthisis, the most fatal of all
diseases, causing one death out of every eight, is now
proved to be contagious. Its inception depends upon the
passage of the living bacillus from one organism to
another. When this is prevented the dread affection will
no longer mow down its millions. Its prevention seems
easy, and by two feasible simple means : the devitalization
of the sputum of consumptive patients, as the desiccated
tubercle bacillus still maintains its vitality ; and the legal
control and inspection of all dairies and of the slaughtering
of animals, so that tuberculous meat or milk shall not be
sold. There is now no doubt that bovine and human
phthisis is the same disease, due to the same microorganism ;
and that the transfer of the latter to man, by the ingestion
of tuberculous meat and milk, is a common cause of
human phthisis. Dr. Behrens regards the exceptional
freedom of the Jewish people from phthisis, and its low
136 IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
mortality, as due to religious rules concerning the choice
and killing of cattle and the sale of meat.
Up to the present time, it must be confessed that bac-
teriologic studies have not brought out therapeutic meas-
ures to equal the etiologic importance ascribed to the
microorganism. To the patient attacked with infectious
disease, the thing of all importance is not prevention, but
cure. The enemy is intrenched. The great aim now is to
find some agent that will reach and kill the bacterium
without killing the organ or tissue in which it is secreted.
Many indications, and indeed many successes, foreshow
that we are upon the eve of brilliant victories, in this re-
spect, and the avid ingenuity of a thousand delvers is at
work upon the problem. What honor too great for the
discoverer of such an agent? All may end in disappoint-
ment, and the world be thrown back upon prevention alone.
But if this be effective, it is, of course, all that is desired.
To annihilate the ultimate causes that produce disease, or
to inhibit their action, is better than numberless cures to-
day, that must be repeated to-morrow.
Another new field of research that is at present most
industriously worked, is that of the substances called pto-
mains and leukomains, the first being chemic, alkaloidal
substances, formed by or during the putrefaction of nitro-
genous organic materials; the second, similar products
formed within the living body by tissue-metamorphosis or
bacterial agency. There have been isolated and studied
some 40 or more ptomains and unnamed bases, of which
about 25 have toxic or injurious effects ; and 16 leukomains
and unnamed bases. The nature and actions of the latter
remain largely hidden, owing to the evident fact that their
isolation is rendered almost impossible.
The unity of all true science is illustrated by the fact
that these substances, at first seemingly disconnected from
bacteriologic study and relationship, are now seen to be
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE? 137
most intimately bound up with bacterial life and action. It
is half-proved that the bacterium does its mischief, or much
of it, by the direct or indirect production of these alkaloidal
poisons. The method, and even the fact, is not sufficiently
definite to admit of a very clear exposition. The influence
of these products upon the tissues, together with the re-
action the habitual or acquired resistance of the tissues
to the same constitutes the immunity of which I have
spoken, acquired by the first attack of a contagious disease,
or by the inoculation of attenuated virus. A most promis-
ing outlook is also found in the discovery that immunity
is gained in some diseases, and perhaps in many, by the
inoculation of purely chemical, or artificial synthetic, sub-
stances. The thought, like so many, is brilliant with pos-
sibilities that make us wish to see what the next few years
may bring forth. A beautiful illustration of the possible
method of action and reaction between the bacterium and
leukomain, is the theory of malarial and intermittent fevers
a theory, indeed, that rests upon a pretty firm basis of
probability and justifiable inference. It is well known that
bacteria in culture media often develop some substance
that stops their growth, and that they die, as it were, in
their own poison. It is supposed that the malarial micro-
organism does the same in the blood, and that the remis-
sion, or intermission, stage of the disease corresponds to
the period when the circulating bacteria have been drowned
or paralyzed by their self-produced poison. The stage of
the return of the fever is synchronous with the revivifica-
tion of the microbes, or with a fresh invasion of new armies
from' the spleen and lymphatics.
Thus, again and again are we brought back to the con-
clusion that in aim and in fact medicine is becoming pre-
ventive. Every discovery, even in therapeutics, seems to
bear in its hand the motto, Prophylaxis is the best cure.
It is not that great and invaluable discoveries of healing
138 IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
agents are not constantly being made. The nobler aim
and the manifest destiny of a far-sighted prevention be-
come necessarily dominant ideals. The brilliant results of
vaccination are illustration and proof. Of all pitiable
bigots the antivaccinationists are assuredly the finest speci-
mens. In England, in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, the smallpox mortality was from 4,000 to 5,000 per
million deaths. In 1887 it was nine! The decline in the
death-rate during the gradual extension of vaccination,
whilst marked for all ages combined, has been almost ex-
clusively among children. Since 1847, in children below
five, it has fallen 80 per cent. The immunity conferred is,
therefore, in the earlier, and hence most valuable, period.
Taking the mortality at all ages, the death-rate from small-
pox has fallen 49 per cent., while that from other causes
has fallen seven per cent. In the London Smallpox Hos-
pital, in the past twenty- five years, out of 6,000 cases
occurring after vaccination, Mr. Marson finds that the per-
centage of those stated to have been vaccinated, but having
no cicatrix, was 21^ ; with one vaccine cicatrix, 7^ ; with
two, 4*^j ; with three, i^; with four or more, ^. For
comparison, the deaths of the unvaccinated were 35^ per
cent. Of 10,403 cases of smallpox treated in the metro-
politan hospitals, the deaths of the " vaccinated, with good
marks," were 3 per cent. ; of the " vaccinated, with imper-
fect marks," 9 per cent. ; of the " vaccinated, but with no
evidence of the same," 27 per cent.; of the " unvaccinated,"
43 per cent. In the face of such facts, even cranks and
fools should learn, or be most summarily taught, the les-
son of silence.
In the same, though possibly in a less striking, way, there
has been a noteworthy advance " all along the line," so
that there is now no subject of medical study that does not
bear witness to the spirit of accurate and exhaustive
research that characterizes our age. New drugs and thera-
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE? 139
peutic agents are sought with eagerness and found where
they would least be expected. The very refuse of coal- oil
refineries is wonderfully enriching our materia medica.
Every substance, whether organic or inorganic, that may
possibly influence the animal economy for good or ill, has
been repeatedly tested by manifold timed and guarded
experiments upon animals, and finally upon the human
being, until its powers are determined with the precision
required in the case of a new explosive, or the torsion
balance. Occasionally there is a sadly ludicrous side to
this feverish eagerness, and duped over-confidence finds
itself landed in the quagmire of an elixir dream. But the
trained intelligence and massive strength of the great body
of the profession smiles at such sorry delusions, and calmly
pushes forward to predestined victory.
Simply to enumerate the larger incidents of the ad-
vance would require a volume, not a page. The finally
convincing proof is the work done. By its fruits must
any work be judged. Let us, finally, glance at statis-
tics. Nothing is definitely known unless one method
of the knowledge be numerical. " The ' sometimes ' of
the cautious is the 'often' of the sanguine, the 'always'
of the empiric, and the ' never ' of the skeptic ; but the
numbers I, 10, 100, 10,000, have only one meaning for
all mankind." In 1861-70 the English death-rate from the
seven chief zymotic diseases smallpox, measles, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, fever (typhus, ty-
phoid, continued, etc.), and diarrheal diseases was 4.248
per IOOO living. In 1887 it was 2.385 very little more
than one half! Whether a science or not, it is plain that
medicine has, in this aspect, and in England alone, saved
over 67,000 lives. A remarkable instance is the class called
fevers, the number of deaths from which in twenty-five
years has been reduced from about 20,000 a year to 5,873.
Despite the general carelessness caused by the prevalent
140 IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
belief in the noncontagiousness of phthisis and by the use
of tuberculous milk and meat, in England from 1850 to
1880 there has been a reduction in the number of deaths
from this dread disease amounting to 327 per million. But
the death-rate for other respiratory diseases has remained
the same a fact that is in truth a cause for congratulation,
when it is remembered that the urbanization of all England
that has gone on during this period, together with the
unhealthy commercial and manufacturing slavery of the
masses, would doubtless have doubled the mortality, had not
Medicine and her handmaid, Sanitation, been everywhere
heriocally at work to forefend and to save. In the same
way is to be explained the increase in the death-rate for
diabetes, chronic renal affections, and nervous diseases, due
to the intensity of the mental strain and worry of modern
commercial and fashionable life. That the death-rate has
not been trebled, is to the credit of scientific medicine.
The decline of the entire English death-rate summarizes
the whole matter for us. Within one hundred years that
of all Europe has fallen from 34 per 1000 living to about 20,
and that of England to 18.5.* The death-rate of the
English army has been reduced by more than one-half
within the century. In the strict census-taking period, the
mortality of English males has been reduced 2.88 per cent,
and of females, 7.62 per cent. This adds about one and
one-half years to the average life of males and three to
that of females. Or, according to Dr. Ogle, a million
males will live 1,439,139 additional years, and a million
females, 2,777,584 years. Each year, there is thus placed
to the credit of each average million of the new-born a life
surplus of about two million years. Has the community,
then, no debt of gratitude to the medical profession ?
* The death-rate of Brooklyn and New York, which should be far lower
than that of London, is far higher. If it were only equal, there would be an
annual saving of 16,000 lives, and 32,000 years of sickness.
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
141
If we take the debit and credit of each disease, we get
the following table :
ANNUAL DEATHS PER MILLION LIVING IN TWO DECENNIA.
CAUSE OF DEATH.
1861-70.
1871-80.
ANNUAL
INCREASE OR
DECREASE IN
1871-80.
163
236
+ 73
Measles,
44
378
62
Scarlet fever,
972
716
256
185
121
64
Whooping cough,
527
512
15
Fever,
885
484
401
Diarrheal diseases,
1,076
935
141
Cancer,
387
47"?
+ 86
Phthisis,
2,475
2,116
T>9
Hydrocephalus,
347
317
3O
Other tubercular diseases, ....
Diseases of the nervous system,
" " circulatory system
and dropsy, . .
" " respiratory system,
" " digestive system, .
" " urinary system,
Puerperal fever, childbirth, . . .
Violence,
437
2,785
i,349
3.3 6 4
981
298
165
765
445
2,770
1,477
3,76o
978
392
167
733
+ 8
*5
+ 128
+396
3
+ 94
+ 2
32
All other and unstated causes, . .
4,8i5
4,262
553
All causes
22,416
21,272
Balance of decrease,
I 144.
The figures are not to be had for the past ten years, in
which a marvelous and continuous decline in the death-rate
is still in progress. If we estimate that 1,500 lives per
million are being saved the English people by medical
science and sanitary legislation, we get a grand total of
saved lives of over 50,000 a year, and therefore find this
single people richer in twenty years by more than a mil
lion people. As nowadays we estimate everything in terms
of money, we may apply that method to life itself; and
taking Dr. Farr's low estimate of the worth of an English
life, the mean net value of the phenomenon called an agri-
cultural laborer ($750), we should by this " buyer's appraise-
ment " have a saving of something less than a thousand
142 IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE?
millions of dollars. But what valuation could be made of
the lives of such men as Bessemer and Darwin, supposing
them not among the saved ? English statistics have been
made the basis of illustration, but scientific medicine has
penetrated into all civilized countries among six hundred
millions of people. Supposing that the saving of life and
sickness in other countries has been but one-half that in
England, we have yet to multiply all our figures by ten.
But the account is not yet closed. Dr. Farr estimates
that for every annual death, two persons are on an aver-
age suffering continuously from sickness. At the lowest
rating there are two years of severe illness to every death.
If therefore, according to the previous calculation, 1,500
English lives are saved each year, 3,000 years of sickness
are also annually saved. Even this tremendous saving
may be multiplied many times by including the number-
less and unknown, but certainly existing, cases where dis-
ease is aborted, cured, or prevented by the skill that gives
back to the healthy class persons who without treatment
might not have died, but who would have permanently
passed into the class of those maimed, crippled, or weak-
ened by chronic or partially-overcome disease. In such
regions as these, money considerations are as much out of
place as to talk of buying a sunset ; and though it might
be frankly admitted that as a business the medical profes-
sion would be pleased to take as a compensation ten per
cent, of what it saves society, it assuredly infinitely prefers
intelligent cooperation and esteem. That profession alone
at the present time offers the spectacle of a large, compact,
self-conscious body of men, driven by no bigotry or zeal-
otry or tempestuous Zeitgeist, working with eagerness,
determination, and almost the assurance of success, toward
its own undoing toward the annihilation of its means of
subsistence, and its very existence. It may be that disease
will never be eliminated from human life ; but none are
prouder than medical men of their partial success in this ;
IS MEDICINE A SCIENCE? 143
none more elated over the prospect that now seems almost
assured, of striking a final death-blow at the root of all
contagious diseases, or those which cause the vast major-
ity of all death and sickness. In this highest of all human
offices they ask only sympathetic help. They, too, are
certainly bearing their share of the present burden of the
world's unfortunate and overloaded. It is hardly an ex-
aggeration to say that for a full half of its present daily
service, it not only asks no pay, but is glad and proud of
its spontaneous charity. Every physician treats the poor
free of charge, and in nearly every square of all our cities
dispensatories and hospitals are found where the best and
highest medical service is at the disposal of all without
charge. Medicine is thus not only a science but it is an
art ; not only an art but a moral system and almost a re-
ligion. Is there, has there ever been, another such unself-
ish work done outside the religious faiths ? Take the law
for comparison, and, except in rare and exceptional cases,
can a poor factory girl or workman get from analogous
legal institutions talent for his defense, and, by its aid, jus-
tice before the law, without first laying down a handsome
retainer? Even with the most just of causes, unless the
money at stake be immense in amount, is it not wiser to
allow injustice to rule, than to seek redress in a modern
court of equity ? What is the appreciation shown the science
of medicine? One instance only need be given as an
answer. In the so-called medical center of the United
States, $20,000,000 is spent to construct a palace, rich with
marbles and carvings, largely for the use and behoof of
ward politicians ; but never a thousandth part of such
an amount to endow an institution of medical education,
sanitary research, or preventive medicine things certain
to repay, even in dollar-values, a thousand-fold, and in
health progress and beneficence, incalculable blessings
throughout coming time !
THE DUTY OF THE COMMUNITY TO
MEDICAL SCIENCE.*
I cannot say that I have had any personal experience as
regards the difficulty, but it is stated that an intelligent and
duteous rich man, by reason of his mental vision and con-
scientiousness, finds no problem so hard of solution as that
of disposing of his wealth without doing injury to the in-
dividual legatee or to the general community. There are
but few " charities " so carefully and judiciously established
that a cold intelligence does not find them productive of as
much harm as good, and there are many that are fountains
of almost unadulterated evil. The most grievous crimes
of many "good" men are frequently their wills those
very documents in which the devisors seek to make some
atonement for the sins of wealth-gathering by the uncon-
scious sin of wealth-scattering. There should be a book of
instruction written on this subject, setting forth the science
of endowing without damning. Millionaires are such com-
mon, every-day folk that they should be instructed and
trained in that excellent art, so little taught, so little prac-
tised the art how not to make an ass of one's self. I have
read somewhere of a spinster of advanced years, bearing
a secret grudge against the government for taxing her,
triumphantly considering that on her death-bed she had
" got even " with the United States treasury by burning
her whole fortune of government bonds. Many bequests
* A paper read before the American Academy of Medicine at its meeting in
Milwaukee, June 3, 1893. From the Bulletin of the American Academy of
Medicine, No. 16
144
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 145
are quite as wise and still more harmful. There is a
strange fatality, a subtle waywardness in institutions,
whereby they insensibly drift away from the plan of
founders, and in a few years are seen to be increasing the
very evil they were meant to check. There is in this an
historic sarcasm, a divine irony that tells the impertinent
philanthropist that it is of no use to give unless he gives
wisely. In charity, sentiment alone is not to be trusted.
It is only intellect that transforms benevolence into benefi-
cence. And this is simply because benevolence seeks only
alleviation and the annulling of effects, whilst it is only the
intellect that tells how to stop causes, and thus end the en-
tire generation of effects.
The object of this writing is to encourage medical men
by every means in their power to spread abroad through-
out the community the knowledge of a truth, awful in its
significance, and absolute in its application, a truth of
which legislators and philanthropists are outrageously
ignorant or scornful the truth that there is no duty so
imperative and no self-interest so evident as the duty and
the self-interest of the endowment of institutions of pre-
ventive and didactic medicine. When the power-squander-
ing legislator or the wealth-squandering capitalist falls ill,
the first thing he does is to call a physician to rescue him
from death. Power and wealth would he gladly give for
health and lengthened life. But he does not then ask
himself if he or his fellows have given a word or a dollar
to enable that physician to discover the causes, and thus
to prevent the existence of disease in the abstract. And
neither by word nor deed has he done anything to help
that physician to outfit himself with the knowledge and
experience necessary to deal successfully with his own in-
dividual ailment. We should, therefore, by iteration and
reiteration pound it into the brains of these silly folk that
such a proceeding is simply a lack of foresight, a failure in
13
146 DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE.
simple prudence. In financial matters they know enough
to create sinking funds and prepare for coming drafts and
liquidations, but they are ignorant of the most palpable
self-interest in the matter of the financial value of life and
health, and the dire expense of disease and death. It is
the duty of the Academy to teach financiers some financial
good sense.
Dr. Bayard Holmes tells us that the productive funds
of the theologic schools of the country amount to seven-
teen or eighteen millions of dollars, whilst those of the
medical schools amount to about one-half of one million.
I have no sympathy with those who would scorn the value
or belittle the dignity of the science of theology. But in
all candor what egregious injustice and imprudence, finan-
cial imprudence of the most literal sort, does not this fact
show up ? Personifying the community as an investor of
capital does he not really exhibit a mad-house economic
science? Which yields the best mundane and cash inter-
est, the investment in M. D.'s, or that in D. D.'s ? Jenner
saves the community more dollars in one year than all
the endowments of all the theologic schools of all time.
Behold the financial wisdom of the world that makes an
investment thirty-five times as great in heavenly stocks
that have never declared a single earthly dividend, as the
stingy subscription in a company that infallibly divides an
enormous per cent, profit in hard cash every year ! It is
agreed that within a few years medical science has length-
ened the average life some three or four years. This pro-
portionately postpones and lessens the number of funerals
and funeral processions, does it not? Well, now how
much do you suppose the community pays the under-
takers and the liverymen ? The saving in cab hire to the
community from these postponed funerals would alone
richly endow every medical school in the land ! This is a
reductio ad absurdum of a peculiar sort, but isn't it literally
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 147
true? We are compelled to this kind of argument to
arouse the attention of our remarkable democratic investor.
Gratitude for the saved life and the postponed death we do
not expect Lord Demos has no love for his medical
friends but we do wish we might have this saving in cab
fares wherewith to endow a dozen hygienic institutes, a
score of bacteriologic laboratories, and two score of medical
schools.
Behold plainly the necessary results of not endowing
schools of preventive and didactic medicine :
I. The putting of the most precious thing in the world,
health and life itself, in the hands of men uneducated either
as regards general literature and science, or as regards
medicine. No one of us indeed, not one of the poor
fellows himself so dumped into the community has any-
thing but pity and scorn for the medical outfitting of a man
who is compelled to take charge of seriously ill patients,
without general preliminary training, and with only ten
or a dozen months of medical theoretic study. What an
outrageous mockery ! After many years of profound study
and experience a schooled mind feels most poignantly the
inadequacy of known science and the bootlessness of rich
experience to deal with the unfathomable mysteries of
disease. It takes half a lifetime to learn how not to make
useless mistakes. But to take a boy so untrained that he
can't spell correctly any five Anglo-Saxon words, and after
a few months' lecture-taking and mnemonic cramming to
place in his hands the awful responsibility of the life and
health of hundreds or thousands surely this is a farce
worthy only of our civilized barbarism.
To illustrate, let me show you a printed sheet containing
a student's notes on the differential diagnosis of four
varieties of tumors. It needs to be remembered that the
student making the notes was about to graduate in 1893,
and that the school in which he studied makes much of its
148
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE.
preliminary entrance examinations. The young man was
an amateur printer. He set up the type himself, corrected
the proof, and himself printed off a number of copies for
the use of his classmates.
ENCEPHALOID.
1 Soft elastic not uniformly so
2 Groth Rapid Large
3 Adhesions, Earley and Slight
4 Pane, Wandering until ulceration
then fixed and servere
5 Veins Large
6 Foul ulcer fungating edges ex-
curvaled undermined much
bleding
7 Glandular envolvement early
j\ Comes at any age
8 Seat, Breast, Testicles, Uteris,
Overies, Prostate and Salivery
glands.
9 Duration 9-12 m fatal.
10 Nipple not retracted.
1 1 Histary Bad.
SARCOMA.
1 Firm, generally irregular soft
and flucuating apperently.
2 Rapid and Slow, Groth large
size
3 Adhesions early.
4 Pane slight until, ulceration then
more
5 Veins moderate.
6 Foul ulcer, great bleeding,
7 Glandular envolvement late.
7 1 Any age.
8 Seat connective tisue extremities
of bones periosteum, brest.
9 Long duration before fatal
10 Nipple not retracted.
1 1 History good.
SCHIRRUS.
1 Hard, inelastic.
2 Groth, Moderate and Small.
3 Adhesions, Late.
4 Pane, Earley and sharp fixed.
5 Veins, Modatly large
6 Edges, Hard thickened abrupt
little bleeding.
7 Glandular envolvement, Late.
^\ after 45 X
8 Seat, breast uterus stomach rare
in overies and testies and
Prostat
9 Fatal 18-36 mts.
10 Retracted nipple.
1 1 History good, excema of nipple
may precid it Pagits diseas.
ADENOMA.
1 Hard elastic.
2 Growth slow.
3 Adhesions rare.
4 Pane neuralgic and menstral.
5 Veins not enlarge.
6 No Bleading
7 No glandular envolvement.
7 Under, 30
8 Seat, brest.
9 Not fatal.
10 Nipple not retracted.
11 History good
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 149
2. The lessening in the proportion of men studying medi-
cine who have had college training. Again we are indebted
to Dr. Holmes for his sad showing of but some fifteen per
cent, of such students in the United States. When a pro-
fession fails to attract the college-bred men, something is
certainly radically wrong somewhere. The wrong is
essentially the love of the community for quackery and
medical humbug, but the " somewhere " can only be more
definitely located as due to the general lowering of profes-
sional character and standards due to dumping thousands
of uneducated boys into the profession.
3. And the fault of the dumping process must lie with
the commercialization of medical teaching. Men, however,
must be taught in some manner and to some degree ; and,
with unendowed schools, the motive of teaching must be
as it too long has been, and too much still is, the earning
of money, or more commonly the making of consultation
practice by the fact of professional honor and position.
Hence the inevitable result, the necessity of graduating as
many students as possible, regardless of fitness or acquire-
ment. It thus comes about that proprietary or commer-
cial medical colleges do not generally willingly advance
the standards, either of entrance or of graduation, and they
lengthen the period of study only as they are forced to do
it by the example of university rivals or in shamed defer-
ence to public opinion. The rule does not hold in Buffalo,
doubtless in other places also, and in Philadelphia we have
one splendid exception to this sad law. Led by the
glorious example of the University of Pennsylvania and
fired with the pride of sex, supplemented also by a genuine
love of progress, our noble Woman's Medical College has
adopted the four years' graded course in advance of two
large medical schools for men.
Excellent instances are pointed out, that show proprie-
tary medical schools advancing the standard, and at least
ISO DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE.
soon following the example of endowed schools in length-
ening the course and broadening it to meet the demands
of the entirely new scientific school of medicine so suddenly
and so lately come upon us. Such exceptions both prove
the law and test the rule. They are what they are despite
the natural tendency, and because of the dignity of charac-
ter of the governing and teaching body. If half a dozen
men own a college, absorb all its revenues and honors,
it is asking too much of unconverted human nature
to expect them to tremendously enlarge the paid teach-
ing body, dividing both the emoluments and fame, by
reorganizing the school to meet the entirely changed
demands of to-day. It may sometimes happen, but, alas !
it may often not happen. It is nothing but opera-bouffe
medical education to pretend to fit modern physicians for
their work by a half dozen or so men talking a few hours
a week at a half thousand boys for two or three half years.
Sometimes the half dozen may be united in harmonious
ambition, and with dignity " tide over " the passage to a
better future. But sometimes, too, the plan may result in
making a school a hotbed of politics, of injustice to
alumni, and of mutual jealousies.
Possibly the dying economist thinks he is doing his
duty to the health of the community and to medicine by
the endowment of hospitals. It is, indeed, becoming
fashionable to endow free beds, to dance and conduct
lotteries, as the newspapers say, " for sweet charity's sake."
Some good, much good has certainly been effected in this
way, but it is time to modify, limit, and direct the thought-
less trend of sentiment before historic momentum increases
so much that hospitalism will become a sad disease and
hospital endowments will rival the wasted wealth of the
present day English guilds. As at present managed it is
useless to deny the enormity of the hospital and dispensary
abuses already existing, impossible to ignore the dangerous
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 151
increase thereby of popular communistic habit, to forget
the improvidence thus encouraged, and lastly the frightful
injustice to physicians as a class. If these things can not
be righted, the giving of money to hospitals without care-
ful and sharp restrictions as to uses and abuses, the weed-
ing out those able to pay, etc., etc., may become and has
even now often become a public injury rather than a
public benefit.
Let me illustrate how hospital endowments may be
utterly turned from the purpose of founders and become
at once engines of professional and social wrong. The
Coventry Provident Dispensary, of England, came into
existence in 1831. It now has a membership of some
26,000 in a population of some 50,000. The medical staff
numbers twenty-six. Of course in founding it, and one of
the founders still lives to bear witness, the intention was
to provide medical services for working people and those
who could not pay medical men. But now behold ! On
the ground that some of the medical staff receive small
salaries from the endowment funds, the government of the
hospital by a large majority lately passed a resolution to
the effect that the well-to-do and rich should be allowed
membership and so entitled to charity treatment as well as
the poor.
Much of this sort of socio-economic depravity would of
course soon ruin medical education and professional dignity.
It is high time that we as a body of men haul up sharp
and refuse to further aid in our own personal and profes-
sional self-degradation. This is a sort of suicide that can
arouse only pity and contempt. If we are willing to become
valets we are worthy to become valets. But even if we
are willing, society should not be willing, because every
gain of professional honor is so much gain for society,
and every loss of professional self-respect is society's
loss. Society, the ordinary citizen, should be more
152 DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE.
jealous of medical honor and progress than physicians
themselves.
But even if we left this aspect of the matter entirely by
side, what is hospitalism at last but pecking away at results
without a finger raised to shut off the everlasting produc-
tion of these results ? There is no need to remind phy-
sicians of their divine duty to heal disease, but there are
two other duties far more divine : The duty, first, of training
and fitting the physician so that he shall be capable of
healing disease ; and, second, the still grander duty of
preventing disease. To train men in the knowledge and
cure of disease requires an endowed college. The unen-
dowed institution is doomed and must be supplanted by
the institution that by reason of endowment is freed from
the mercenary dictates of its patrons and of its proprietors,
and that can provide the laboratory and clinical instruction
needed to enable the physician to meet the arduous and
exacting demands of modern science and modern society.
But the great problems of medicine are now summed up
in the word prevention, and the greatest benefactor of the
world is he who directly or indirectly neutralizes or kills
the germs or origins of disease. There is nothing more
hopeful for the future of medicine than the fact that phy-
sicians are eagerly turning their interest and labor to the
work of hygiene and prophylaxis. There was much danger,
and there is still some danger, that the nonmedical scientist
I mean the bacteriologist, the hygienist, and the scientific
man abstractly considered should seize upon preventive
medicine and leave the physician the more restricted and
subordinate domain of therapeutics. If this danger is not
obviated through the retention of the grander domain by
medical men proper, if they do not hold and lead in the
work of prevention, then medicine would in a few years
not occupy the proud and honorable position into which
she is now gloriously entering. It is professionally a great
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 153
good fortune that Jenner and Koch were practising physi-
cians. May it be that the coming discoveries in prevention
shall also be made by physicians, and that we shall all do
our work in the sanitary and prophylactic sciences upon
which the welfare of society depends. Ours is the only
profession that is literally and enthusiastically devoted to
professional suicide.
And we must teach and beg society to help us to commit
this divine sort of suicide. We must plead with our
masters against their own blindness and indifference to us
and to their own welfare. We must beg them to found
and endow institutions where, while it is needed, men may
best learn the therapeutic wisdom of the past, and also
where they may discover the means to make therapeutics
itself unnecessary. Pathogeny will soon kill pathology if
we give it a chance, because pathogenic knowledge will
stop pathologic function.
We should therefore seek to switch some of the money
now fashionably and mechanically going to hospital endow-
ments towards institutions devoted more directly to the
better education of physicians in the therapeutics and the
prevention of disease. Here is an almost unpreempted
field and one that infallibly offers speedy and certain re-
turns.
Like morning light surging upward from below the
horizon's edge, we all see and know that the sun of scien-
tific medical discovery is soon to rise upon our long dark-
ened world. We all recognize that we are soon to discover
the causes and the prevention of much of the pathologic
evil that has filled the world with suffering and gloom up
till now. If we could but have the means, if concentrated
effort could be brought about, if the awful opportunity
could be grasped !
There are two sources whence may come the endow-
ments of institutions of didactic and preventive medicine :
14
154 DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE.
From communal, i. e., governmental gift, or |from private
bequest.
Shall we also feed at the public crib, or seek to do it ?
There is not the least discussion as to the abstract duty and
self-interest of the state to do this work. It is preemi-
nently a state duty and necessity. The resultant good is
the good of all, and more particularly is it the good of the
coming race. The appeal is to the whole and to the future
rather than to the individual and the present. Why then
should not the state be educated and compelled to execute
its most manifest duty? Simply because the object we
seek to realize is an ideal beyond the mental grasp and the
moral strength of Lord Demos. In his heart of hearts
Demos loves magic and quackery, and in a representative
form of government the representor cannot rise far above
the moral and intellectual level of the represented. We
must do good to men, we must give them good gifts, even
though they at first scorn both the gifts and the givers.
This is the attitude of mind of all great men. True grati-
tude may be ours only after our ears are deaf and dead to
the word of belated thanks.
But there are other reasons why we should not rely upon
the government. If the unselfish and worthy may be thus
aided, the selfish and the unworthy will bedevil the legisla-
tor out of his wits until he consents to their clamor. With
state legislatures voting the people's money for hypnotism,
homeopathy and humbug and the like, and protecting the
infamies of the patent nostrum vendor, what may be ex-
pected of Demos and his representatives? In Pennsyl-
vania and elsewhere things have already reached the pass
of taking every petition from every institution that by the
most ludicrous twists of logic do dub themselves charitable,
and after footing up all the figures, vote a small lump sum
to be divided pro rata among all. Each thus gets at least
an ear or a nubbin, and the representative can smile at his
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 155
constituents until the next election! It thus becomes
doubtful if the success of the best institution in securing a
governmental grant, even for the best medical purposes,
will not in the long run prove a cause for regret rather
than for congratulation. It forms a precedent that will
enable proprietary and private greed to secure the same
benefits, and thus the evil will grow as fast, perhaps even
faster, than the good. The watering tongue and the long
carnivorous teeth of " me too " will be well hidden beneath
the cloak of charity. And if all that the community
thinks medical were really so ! If we were a united pro-
fession ! But the sectarians make it impossible to speak
to the community with one voice.
I think our reliance must be upon private bequests, and
these can be secured only as we educate and interest the
rich. We must never weary in showing the neglect of the
greatest, most palpable, most certain means of doing good.
There is a strange fatality in men, an unaccountable in-
ability of seeing the need that lies nearest, the good that is
dearest. There is more money to-day devoted to astron-
omy than to the prevention of disease. It is positively
wonderful to think that men should be more interested in
stars and constellations than in their bodies and their
physiologic life.
As educated men there can be no question of our pref-
erence for the institutions of didactic medicine that encour-
age the better preliminary education. We have shivered
to learn that the proportion of college-bred men entering
upon medical careers is so ignominiously small, and that it
is decreasing. To medical schools connected with univer-
sities we should therefore seek to divert the streams of en-
dowment. Assuredly the most ludicrous of beggars is the
proprietary school seeking endowment without limitation
of the professorial salary of the professorial proprietor. If
private persons wish to make presents to their private pro-
156 DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE.
fessorial friends, it is a good thing for the friends but
the donors may hardly lay claim to much intelligent per-
spicuity or to a large humanitarian love.
And so far as relates to the education of practical physi-
cians a most pathetic negligence is that of medical scholar-
ships. There may be such, but I do not know of one in the
United States. The first noble attempt or example in this
direction is that of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in
Chicago, which has offered free tuition to ten students each
year for the purpose of encouraging a higher standard of
preliminary and medical education. All honor to the men
and institution that set the example. Thousands of scholar-
ships exist to help struggling ambition in the fields of gen-
eral collegiate training, in theologic, technologic, and in
general scientific education ; but with some experience and
observation I have never elsewhere witnessed purer ideals
more heroically pursued through years of penury and suf-
fering than by many medical students. Everybody seems
to think it of no question, even a matter for mirth, that a
medical student shall endure unspeakable bitterness and
loneliness in seeking to prepare himself for a work of the
most primal importance and value to the community. If
good citizens wish to help noble young men, if they wish
to forefend and brighten many tragedies silently and man-
fully borne, let them look among medical students. Thous-
ands would gladly give more years than the schools demand
to their studies and preparation if by rigorous and unan-
swerable necessity they were not driven out to speedy
bread-winning with its resultant experimentation on the
lives of their fellow-men.
Let us, then, go back to our lay friends with a message,
a new gospel we must be absolutely unwearied in preach-
ing the message of a new, hitherto-neglected duty to a
new, hitherto -neglected science of medicine. Let us prove
to them a hundred times over that the best good abstractly
DUTY TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. 157
is freedom from disease, a healthy life, a reduction of a
needlessly high death-rate. Viewed from a low stand-
point alone, there is no investment in money so certain of
interest, and of so high a rate of interest, as the investment
in saved human lives. Let us urge again and again the
services of medical men to the community. Where would
have been our navies and their victories with scurvy still a
scourge ? What a saving in money to the English gov-
ernment is that shown by the reduction in the Indian army
death-rate from ninety in the thousand to thirteen in the
thousand. Pasteur's bacteriologic studies are estimated
to have saved France as much money as the entire German
indemnity payment. Can the financial value of the work
of Lister be estimated, so enormous is it ? In the German
army by compulsory vaccination, smallpox is nonexistent,
and all over the world, despite the antivaccination cranks,
vaccination has saved the nations more money than their
present national wealth. We are almost certain that by a
similar procedure the dread scourge of cholera may be
likewise stopped. Lastly, there are your insurance statis-
tics and premiums showing beyond all negation or quibble
the lessened death-rate. Compute by average wage and
average length of life the money value of a human life ;
then multiply and again multiply the three or four years
of lengthened life due to medicine of every one in the
nation, and in all civilized nations, and compare this amount
with the total values of all wealth ! Then it may become
manifest what medicine has already done, but before and
beyond all what she still promises to do if she have but a
tithe of the sympathy and help she deserves.
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.*
No subject is more rich in suggestion and in acute de-
mand than that of the relations of medicine to those depen-
dent upon the community by reason of crime, of disease
of body or mind, or of defect, congenital or acquired.
Of these classes not one is devoid of medical relations, for
as counsellor, as curer, or as preventer, the physician's
voice should be heard. If we do not strike hands with
Lombroso and say that all crime is due to abnormality of
organism, certainly crime and disease have some most inti-
mate relations. What are they ? What likewise are the
subtle bonds that link together disease, physiologic or
neurologic, with mental abnormalism ? We do not seek to
escape from our responsibility for much of the world's
blindness ; the idiot is physiologically defective ; otology
and laryngology have not said their last words as to deaf-
mutism ; every United States pensioner holds a physician's
certificate (more's the pity !) ; have the surgeons done all
that is possible for the cripples ? Have we no accounta-
bility for pauperism, no responsibility for the criminally
high death-rates, and no guilt for the criminally low aver-
age length of life ? In the mysterious tapestry of civiliza-
tion disease is weaving a thousand miscolored and rotten
fibers that mar its beauty, spoil its design, and weaken its
strength. Shall we longer permit with careless consent
* Abridged Presidential Address delivered before the American Academy
of Medicine, at its meeting in Jefferson, N. H., August 29, 30, 1894. From
the Bulletin of the Academy 0/1894 and from The Medical News, October 13,
1894.
158
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 159
such negligent and fateful weaving ? Nay, shall we longer
consent to be ourselves such weavers ?
And when one faces these problems, how they grow !
At first it seems as if the interrelations of the profession,
the dependent classes, and the lay community are few and
comparatively unimportant, but with sharp observation we
see long and strong bands of cause and effect subtly run-
ning out and in, like warp and woof, linking and locking
one with another and each with all.
One of the strangest and most dazing truths that soon
becomes manifest is that charity as commonly practised is
sin. The word, like many another, bears witness to the
sad history of mankind. The beautiful Greek word is
almost untranslatable into English. Its gracious compas-
sion or tender pity has become simply almsgiving a thing
usually a double curse, degrading both to the giver and to
the receiver. To relieve suffering is the delight and the
duty of all good hearts ; but we must see to it, I. That the
suffering is real and not fictitious ; 2. That, if real, it is not
deserved; 3. And most important, that by our methods we
do really relieve and do not increase the suffering. It is
just here that we run across the first principle of the
charity-organization societies, which is to make benevo-
lence scientific. It only needs a few bitter experiences (and
we have all had many such, I suppose) in relieving sup-
posed suffering without investigation, in giving doles to
street beggars, or in cashing checks for unfortunate ac-
quaintances, to give us most convincing proofs that under
existing circumstances and as human beings are at present
constructed, noninvestigating relief increases the evil it
thinks to lessen.
Last year at the Philadelphia Hospital I was puzzled at
my vain attempts to cure what seemed a case of simple
conjunctivitis. After weeks of varied therapeutic measures
I suspected and demonstrated that the " tramp " anointed
160 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
his eyes just prior to each of my visits with a strong solu-
tion of soap. In this way he avoided being turned out
upon a cold world until springtime came. Another fellow,
so long as he remained under treatment, was in receipt of
$5.00 a week from the Cigarmakers' Union, and he could
at pleasure induce a subacute attack of iritis, filling the
anterior chamber of the eye with blood by a very energetic
bit of ocular massage. The older surgeons at the Phila-
delphia Hospital were often puzzled by the unusual diffi-
culty of healing chronic leg-ulcers, until it was found that
the owners did not desire to have them healed, and pre-
vented healing by tightly binding in the ulcers old-fashioned
cents.
It has for years been my practice to give every street
beggar a charity-organization card, with promise of relief
if he should be found worthy by the agent of the society.
Only one has ever returned, and he was set right without
any almsgiving. In China the making of monstrosities
was a regular business by putting children in pickling vats
for years, by breaking and mending their bones, or by
transplanting upon their bodies bits of the skin of animals.
We are horrified at this, but are we not equally infamous
with our dime-museum glass-eaters, our foundling-asylums,
and our patent-medicine beastliness ?
Mendicity is mendacity. The crimes of tramps and
street-beggars are only surpassed by the crimes of those
who give to them. Mendicancy in all its forms and masks is
not the result of poverty, but is the cause of poverty. All
indiscriminate almsgiving, all wholesale crowd-relief, or
collective-relief of want or suffering, is either a forged, to-
be-protested promise-to-pay note of sympathy, or it is the
payment of wages for something done. Nine times out of
ten it is selfish charity, or self-flattery. Foolish people
love to flatter themselves that they are kind-hearted.
Benevolence is fashionable, and fashionable people are
fashionable !
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 161
One of the most debauching and disgusting forms of
selfishness is that of indiscriminate philanthropy. For
downright diabolism witness the mutual hatreds of two
rival professional philanthropists ! Almsgiving, on the
other hand, is wages : by giving to beggars and tramps we
pay for the continuance and increase of beggary and
trampism ; by Sunday breakfasts we increase hunger on
Sunday mornings, and we also secure listeners for our
pseudoreligious after-performances ; by indiscriminate out-
patient relief we stimulate the production of disease, hire
patients to experiment on, increase our own reputation or
that of our hospital, and at one fine stroke pauperize both
the profession and the populace ; by municipal workshops,
State aid to the unemployed and socialistic demagogism
we hire people to be unemployed, to strike, and to lessen
the sum-total of production ; by institutionalism gone mad,
we hire the people to get rid of their personal duties to
their dependents, and hire those on the borderland of
breakdown, physical or mental, to give up the last instinct
of self-help. We pay for these things and many like them
when we give alms and taxes and hire other people to be
sympathetic for us. Of course, what we shirk doing our-
selves, our hired agents will hardly do better. " Like
master, like man."
Appalled by this condition we, perhaps, stumble upon
the work of the charity-organization societies, and at once
we have a clear statement, both of the etiology and the
treatment of the disease. Of all things these societies beg
that no living spark of compassion or good-will shall be
quenched, and no hand reached out to help shall be per-
manently withdrawn. There is a profound danger that,
chilled by ingratitude and fraud, the foolishly kind shall
become the foolishly cruel. If so, it only proves that their
former charity was as selfish as their present uncharity.
They gave before to please themselves, and refuse help
162 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
now for the same reason. Charity-organization, as I have
said, aims at making kindness effective, benevolence scien-
tific. The heart must inspire, the intellect carry out. The
brain is an inhibitory organ, whether we view it physiologi-
cally, scientifically, or sociologically. But inhibition is
regulative, not destructive. In the amelioration of the
afflictions of mankind, it is only the intellect that can guide
to lasting results, but, like the governor of the engine, it
cannot supply the living steam, and it would certainly not
advise " no steam."
As stated on the title-page of the excellent little Hand-
book for Friendly Visitors Among the Poor, compiled and
arranged by the Charity-Organization Society of the City
of New York (published by G. P. Putnam's Sons), charity
must do five things :
1. Act only upon knowledge got by thorough investi-
gation.
2. Relieve worthy need promptly, fittingly, and tenderly.
3. Prevent giving unwise alms to the unworthy.
4. Raise into independence every needy person when
this is possible.
5. Make sure that no children grow up paupers.
Or, we might say:
1. Don't help frauds.
2. Help so as to make future help unnecessary.
3. Don't hire people to be miserable.
4. Prevent dependency.
All of this, once more, seems to have little medical bear-
ing ; but it is only seemingly so. The booklet contains an
important and excellent chapter on sanitary suggestions by
Dr. Charles D. Scudder. It should be remembered that it
is only an A B C book, so to speak, designed only to guide
beginners, to interest, and to lead on to the deeper purposes
of the organization. I hope every member of the Academy
will get and read the book issued by the Johns Hopkins
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 163
Press, and edited by President Oilman, entitled The Organi-
zation of Charities, being a report of the Sixth Section of
the International Congress of Charities, Correction, and
Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893. In the last twenty
years at least ninety-two charity-organization associations
have been formed and are now actively at work in our
country, whilst many hundreds exist in Europe. The
English Charity-Organization Society is also publishing a
series of manuals, of which I mention as of special interest
to physicians, one on the feeble-minded child and adult,
and one on the epileptic and crippled. Another volume
is devoted to insurance and saving (intimately bound up
with disease and the medical profession), and there are
others on food, on medical charities, on the training of the
blind, on the dwellings of the poor, on idiots, imbeciles,
etc. The most cursory glance at these works will show
how deeply into the whole organization of society the
seeds of this ideal are striking root, and how intimately
blended are they or may they become with those of
medicine.
But before we can be very consistent or whole-souled
charity organizerers we must first clean house ourselves.
We must practise what we preach. There are few more
outrageous sinners against the principles of the organiza-
tion than our profession itself. The London Lancet has
recently been weeping very profusely over the failure of
the public to respond with sufficient liberality in financial
support of the hospitals of London. Curiously enough,
the epiphora seems to be caused by a respectably-sized
beam in its own professional eye. To justify the tears it
cites the number of cases treated in the one hundred and
eighty-one London hospitals during 1803. The figures
are so huge that it is necessary to quote them in full.
164
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
SUMMARY OF TABLES.
a
-
J B
B
o
,
z z
H
* *
ESP
B
H
Q
3 E {
Z H K
- 2
Sid
M Z"!
H
5
w S
z (j Q
1*
< i2
Q W U
- 2
B.
1-4
&
u
dJ "
K H
Q
"
O
U g
General Hospitals
Special Hospitals
Convalescent Hos-
^'7,378
",747
49.835
28,426
14,027
8,615
27,607
14,466
4,614
2,611
3,476
2,74
4.9'0
1,974
',442,447
1,203,830
222,733
20,876
pitals
Dispensaries
4.069
25,324
7,419
'5,42 l
68
1,288
209
",974
1,213,039
192
Total
^35,o67
103,585
30,061
57,494
7,293
7.505
7,093
3,871,290
243,801
Let us leave out of consideration the in-patients (over
100,000) and the accident cases (243,801), and fix our
attention for a moment upon the (nearly) four-million
visits of out-patients. It strikes me that if any hysterics
are justified in reference to this appalling figure it would
be hysterics of indignation. Can any conscientious physi-
cian, can any sane man, believe that this number of people
have been adequately considered, and had careful diag-
noses made, and discriminating scientific treatment insti-
tuted? Can he believe that a vast proportion of these
patients were unable to pay some fee for the service ren-
dered ? The whole affair begins to become ludicrous. The
sentimental grimace of the charity-tragedy is plainly broad-
ening into the guffaw of opera bouffe. The cloven foot of
selfishness on the part of those lucky or powerful enough
to get in charge of these hospitals is all too plainly evident
to allow us to be much grieved at the moans and wailings
of the melodramatic artist. The competition for these
hospital positions among the physicians of London, and
everywhere else, for that matter,, is vicious and intolerable.
It is a question of sauve qui peut, and After us the deluge.
But there are some 3000 medical men in London not
connected with hospitals ; what of them and of their pro-
fessional interests ? Go where one will the same astonish-
CHARITY ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 165
ing hospital-abuse glares at us. We are debauching and
pauperizing both the profession and the public by this
gigantic nuisance. Money given for the endowment or
support of hospitals is likely to become a curse instead of
a blessing to humanity, unless certain provision is made
against indiscriminate free treatment. Indiscriminate medi-
cal charity is just as pernicious as indiscriminate alms-
giving. One is disposed to ask if it might not be well to
save much labor by adopting the plan of Louis XIV and
Louis XVI, and gratuitously send out millions of bottles
of medicine all over the country, with accurate directions
" for the relative indication " for taking, etc. Perhaps, even
better, we might farm the entire business out to the Ameri-
can patent-medicine syndicate !
We should also not forget that the absorption of medi-
cal energy in the free treatment of disease by those who
could pay keeps the profession bound in the treadmill of
drudgery and of piddling cures, whilst the nobler and
infinitely more important sciences of public hygiene and
preventive medicine are left unfurthered or are turned over
to the nonmedical world. Thus in this blind man's race
we rush impetuously to a silly suicide.*
How difficult it is to get either the profession or the
* Specifically, the chief defects of the hospital craze are thus set forth by
the Charity-Organization Society in a petition to the House of Lords :
1. The promiscuous congregation in out-patient departments of large crowds
of persons, who in most instances are suffering from slight ailments for which
skilled hospital-treatment is quite unnecessary, is a constant hindrance to medi-
cal instruction, increases the discomfort and pain of those who are suffering
from severe maladies, and occasions much vexatious and needless waiting.
2. The indiscriminate admission to the benefits of hospitals and dispensaries
tempts many who could pay for medical relief to become occasional recipients
of charity, and by degrees habitual paupers.
3. The provision of gratuitous medical relief to large numbers of persons,
both as in-patients and out-patients, without inquiry or any sufficient regulation,
is, as investigation shows, a serious obstacle to the promotion of provident in-
166 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
public to take any interest in prevention ! Rather than
stop the causes once for all, all prefer to peck away at the
ever-recurrent effects. Dr. Benjamin Lee tells me that
every year the State of Pennsylvania gives $200,000 or
$300,000 to hospitals, while all that could be secured for
the State Board of Health last year was $6000.
Up to the present generation charity has been a blind,
benevolent tyrant ; now charity-organization proposes to
introduce the justice of freedom, the independence of a
true democracy. Instead of charity of the modern sort
stitutions at which medical treatment can be secured by small periodical pay-
merits.
4. Hospitals and free dispensaries, as at present administered, usually offer
no special advantages to those artisans and laborers who have combined to
make provision against times of sickness, and there is no recognized relations
between these hospitals and dispensaries and provident institutions.
5. There is no clear and definite division of the work between voluntary
hospitals and dispensaries, and poor-law infirmaries and dispensaries, but the
former deal with cases which might more properly be left to the poor-law, and
the latter with cases which, from their medical interest, or special requirements,
or from the character and circumstances of the patient, might more properly
be treated in charitable institutions.
6. By the multiplication of gratuitous and part-pay institutions, and the ab-
sence of regulation or organization, those medical men whose practice lies
among the poorer classes are, year by year, more severely hampered in making
a livelihood.
7. There is keen and continuous competition between hospitals which spend,
year after year, sums considerably larger than their average income would
justify, and are thus driven to resort to all manner of contrivances to meet
their liabilities.
8. Year by year, also, new hospitals are (sometimes under very doubtful
auspices) established for the treatment of special diseases, without any reference
to the provision already available.
9. The hospitals and dispensaries are often ill-grouped for local purposes,
and though sometimes a hospital and one or more dispensaries are, from their
position, conveniently placed for cooperation, there is no settled relation or
agreement between them by which cases may be transferred from dispensary
to hospital, and vice versa.
Id. There is no uniform system of keeping and publishing accounts.
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 167
we are to have the gracious dignity of personal kindness.
Instead of a weak sentimentalism that increases the evil,
let there be the wise benevolence that prevents it. Instead
of vicarious almsgiving there must be a direct and per-
sonal helpfulness that usually leaves out of the count all
financial dealings. The ideal seeks to cure where it can,
but always to prevent the deplored evil.
What is the evil ? Dependency. It is, as I have said, a
duality of shame and evil, unwelcome alike to giver and
receiver, and if not unwelcome, more's the pity ! Every
dependent is an unnecessary and an expensive burden to
the community. It needs only one observation to show
how intimately united, logically and by the most absolute
necessity, is the work of charity-organization with that of
medicine. There is hardly a dependent whose dependency
does not spring from or is not related to physical or men-
tal abnormalism. What is the physician's designation of
such abnormalism ? Plainly the simple word, disease.
The dependent is the patient, curable or not, of society,
and he is also the patient of the physician.
There are two classes of such patients : those directly
the result of disease or defect, and those indirectly or par-
tially so. In the first class we have the insane, the idiotic,
the crippled, the blind, the deaf-mute, the senile, the sick
poor, the epileptic. In the second class we have the
orphan, the criminal, the pauper, the alcoholic, the beggar,
and the tramp.
The fundamental principles of the treatment of depen-
dency by the charity-organization societies, are: I. The
personal relation ; no patent-medicine cure, or therapeutics
by the wholesale. 2. The permanent cure, when it is pos-
sible, by proper and thorough means, not the perpetuation
and increase of the disease by doles and homeopathic
similia. 3. The prevention of the disease in future by in-
dividual health and vitality. Surely no principles could be
168 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
more strictly medical. Every physician must heartily
assent to them and seek to apply them. It is my chief
object now to suggest that the methods advocated by
these societies are genuinely medical, and that in dealing
with these patients from the strictly professional standpoint,
we as physicians have at hand a powerful therapeutic
means spontaneously offered to us. Ours also are the
duties of cure and of prevention. As ordinary citizens
and members of society we must each become members of
the charity-organization societies, and as physicians we
should use this method of therapeutics just as we do hos-
pitals, climate, nurses, food and sanitation.
In some respects it seems a great pity that as a pro-
fession we have allowed the beneficent exotic of charity-
organization to grow almost wholly out of lay ground and
not in the sacred soil of medicine. Having done so, how-
ever, it is the more our duty to nourish it all in our power
and to help to disseminate its blessed fruitage. It is
gratifying to learn that physicians are coming to recognize
what possibilities of good lie in the movement, and how
they are utilizing and guiding it toward splendid results.
We may with absolute truth urge that with our profes-
sional help the ideal will find a speedier, a more solid, and
a more lasting realization than without. It is for the wel-
fare of the movement that its leaders seek to interest us
and elicit our sincere and powerful cooperation. We in-
deed rest all our treatment upon the personal and single
consideration ; we must as therapeutists individualize our
cases ; we also aim to cure, not relieve and in relieving
perpetuate the disease ; above all things we too believe in
prevention.
Applying these principles to the second class of our de-
pendents we find a multifold variety of duties and methods
at once springing into view. Even as to mendicancy we
have an especial professional function. Begging is a crime
CHARITY- ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 169
against the law. Let us help to put the law in action. The
self-exposure of the crippled and blind, the shams of the
pencil-peddler, the parading of suffering to elicit alms
such things should be stopped. They are usually masked
under the excusing guise of physical infirmity. If real
suffering exists, ten to one it is deserved, and even if so,
there is a proper mechanism of relief and cure, which we
as physicians can make operative. It is better to hire such
people to be warm than to be cold, to do something useful
than to do something hideously useless. There is a place
and a possible useful occupation for every tramp and every
beggar. Most of them do not want to have their infirmity
healed. Ours is the duty of unmasking at least the physi-
cal fraud.
And we also know as few others the influence of idleness
in the production of pauperism and disease. The physi-
ologic inaction of the occupants of our poorhouses and
asylums is a prolific breeder of disease and preventive of
cure. Let us help to do away with this foul shame. Our
descendants will wonder at our heathenish cruelty and
shortsightedness when they read that we house our insane,
epileptics, paupers, and even our criminals in forced idle-
ness at an enormous expense to the thrifty producer, and
with multiplication of physical and mental evils.
Much of our institutional life is a practical reward for
and promoter of laziness, a destroyer of the safeguards of
health. The charity-driblets and free-soup philosophy of
life is despicable. Rather than cheap and free food we
should teach the poor the proper choice, the proper cookery,
and the proper use of food. Any American family wastes
more food than would keep a French family of the same
social status, but it will be a long time before our people
listen to Mr. Edward Atkinson's advice in these respects.
A few years ago my friend, Mr. Bond, of Cambridge, Eng-
land, took charge of the poor-law administration of the
1 70 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MfcDIClNE.
city. By the methods of charity-organization he has already
reduced the municipal annual expense of this item from
about $40,000 to $15,000 with great coincident improve-
ment in the condition of the deserving poor. There are
some 218,000 out-door senile paupers in England, and yet
in twenty years the mere fall in the prices of food, etc.,
would have enabled every one of them to have insured
himself against pauperism had he but saved his excess and
from 1874 applied it in the way of insurance-premiums.
In Buffalo, N. Y., a comparison of twelve years with out-
door relief with twelve years without out-door relief showed
a saving of $700,000 and also a saving of in-door relief
of over $400,000 in all over a million dollars, and a less
number of paupers to-day than fifteen years ago.
As to the criminal, it is yet an open question how far his
condition is a result, direct or indirect, of congenital or ac-
quired disease. The relation at least needs to be carefully
studied by medical men. But that the criminal should be
an expense to the law-abiding thrifty is outrageous.
But it is to the prevention of pauperism that we should
look most sharply. Let us see, for example, if we cannot
avoid the evils of the English system in its treatment of
destitute children, who are crushed together in orphan-
asylums and " barrack schools," from 200 to 1400 in each.
This costs the producer $150 a head, almost one-half going
for officers' salaries.
If we turn to classes of dependents whose conditions
result almost directly and wholly from disease we are
struck by the magnitude of the task and the multiplicity of
methods of cure. It is not my purpose, because of lack
both of ability and of time, to review the etiology and sug-
gest the treatment of the evils of insanity, of epilepsy, of
idiocy, and the like. It is only by the cooperation of a
thousand minds working through many years that we shall
reach any satisfactory solution. I desire only to ask the
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 171
question, Shall we as physicians, and especially shall the
American Academy of Medicine, undertake to help in the
great work ?
As to the hopeless idiot, the impossibility of cure, and
the impossibility of reaching the ultimate causes of the pro-
duction of this class of cases, have led some to the question
we all shrink from asking. And yet, despite the dangers,
there are those who see no really valid argument against
the many valid ones for a legalized, public, beneficent sen-
tence of painless death upon him. We each silently vote
the sentence in our silent prayer that if we should become
hopelessly idiotic we would not wish to be allowed to live.
The blind, the needlessly blind, are the ghosts in the
empty chairs at every ophthalmologic banquet. We are
glad that best efforts are being made toward the chief re-
form. Alas ! that we cannot pay the lobbies to get a little
law passed to prevent much of the world's blindness.
Politics has reached such a state of degradation that a
definite sum of " blood-money " seems often required to
secure the most cryingly-needed legislation.
The crippled, the chronically diseased, the deaf-mute, the
prematurely senile, etc., all have the most vital relations
with medicine. We can do much to cure and to alleviate,
and all may be made self-supporting, and certainly made
more happy, by self-help and self-dependence.
Perhaps of all diseased people the epileptic demands our
greatest compassion, and it is precisely he that reacts most
wonderfully to our treatment. It is again sadly strange
that the best treatment has been devised by the nonmedi-
cal. Our failure to cure by drugs or by the trephine
should have stimulated us to increased effort instead of
shaming us into inaction. Intellectual and sensitive, other-
wise able-minded and able-bodied, the epileptic is thrown
out of work and out of ordinary social life by his mysterious
malady. It is gratifying to know that the colony-plan has
172 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
at last found a footing in England and in America, but it is
horrifying to know that there are to-day thousands of these
shunned and shunning, suffering souls deprived of the hap-
piness that might so easily be theirs.* There is probably
nothing in the world that is such an inspiriting example of
beneficent blessedness as the Bielefeld Epileptic Colony in
Germany or the Magull Home near Liverpool, England.
Most if not all of you know well enough about these places,
and I need not weary you with details. If not, read the
account in the Charity-Organization Manual. At Bielefeld
in 1891 there were treated 1277 patients, if patients they
may be called in this beautiful home-like place, at once
most hospitable, but most unhospital-like. The colony is
largely self-supporting. At the Magull Home, a relatively
small institution, but perhaps all the better for that, the
" home-treatment " with no bromids, or very little, is re-
markably successful. " In fourteen of those who passed
through the house during the year, the fits had been
arrested at the end of the year." " In the case of twenty-
two patients the fits in the first half of their stay during the
year numbered 1673, but in the second half, 948, a decrease
of 725." Dr. Alexander believes that such homes may be
made entirely self-supporting. There is no idleness. Idle-
ness, as Dr. Ferrier says, " increases the instability of the
nervous system." The chief and necessary therapeutic
measures are country-life, home-life, employment, con-
genial surroundings, good nourishment, and little or no
bromid.
I had a number of notes and gathered data of interest as
to crippled children and as to feeble-minded children and
* In Germany the number of epileptics is about one per thousand of the
population. Dr. Peterson puts the number of epileptics in New York State
alone at double this number, or about I2OO. This would give us in the
United States about 130,000, ah infinitesimal portion of which only has proper
care.
CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE. 173
girls, and what maybe done for them ; but I must pass the
subjects by.
Another reproach of medicine, and especially of psy-
chology, is insanity. To this I can also make but passing
reference. A prominent neurologist has lately passed
severe criticism upon his brother-specialists as regards the
treatment of insanity. That many of the criticisms are just
few even of those " touched " would deny. But few would
also deny that in many respects the charges were often
greatly exaggerated, and that many qualifying or contra-
dicting facts were left out of the count. Such, for example,
were the unmentioned facts that in the city wherein he
spoke the criticised " banishment of the white caps from
the wards " had been of profound good, and that the desired
abrogation of locks and bolts was also exemplified. Yet
another is the fact that there are nineteen training-schools
in the United States for the special training of nurses for
the insane. But whatever has been done, there remain
herculean tasks yet to do. What a shame it is that many
thousands of overactive, unstrung nervous systems are in
idleness, consuming body and mind, hoplessly and expen-
sively, when the burden to the taxpayer, to the physician,
and to the sufferer might be greatly lightened or entirely
taken off by colonization, employment, and individualiza-
tion.
And thus we ever return to the same repeated lesson,
whatever the kind of dependency we study. The Charity-
Organization Society has found a remedy for much, if not
all the evils. It remains for us to aid, to utilize, and to
realize the clearly realizable ideal.
It corresponds, for example, with the American charac-
ter to do things in a large and lavish way, and we have the
awful and growing evils of institutionalism. A dangerous
habit is also exaggerating and deepening the evil : I refer
to the voting of the taxpayer's money to private institu-
174 CHARITY-ORGANIZATION AND MEDICINE.
tions. In New York State nearly $3,000,000 a year are
thus given to private institutions for orphan children and
the friendless. For charities and correctional purposes the
State of Pennsylvania gives to private institutions about
one-third of all amounts thus spent. In a series of years
this amounted to about $ 1 2,000,000. What a wretched and
criminal blunder ! In politics, as well as in sociology, we
need to learn the lessons of other countries and of other
methods. We have yet to perceive all the reductio ad ab-
surdum, all the ironical truth of the pertinent question,
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes f Mechanically - working,
military-governed, outwardly-splendid, noncurative prison-
palaces are not the proper or lasting solutions of the prob-
lems of dependency. Charity-organization says we must
individualize our cases and get into personal relations with
our dependents ; and charity-organization is right. It says
we must seek to cure, not simply to endure them ; that we
must give them interesting employment ; that we must
reward sanity and self-help, not encourage the weak to throw
away self-respect; that we must get our dependents into
the country and into an approximation to home-life, etc.
And in all this charity-organization is right, and the way
of the world is wrong. Let us adopt and carry into prac-
tice the better therapeutic methods !
HOSPITALISM.*
Definition. The dispensary-disease, or hospitalism, is
a contagious, epidemic, ingravescent neurosis of civilization,
limited (it is to be hoped) as regards time to the present
fin de siecle and as regards geographic distribution to
urban populations ; it attacks three considerable classes,
the professional philanthropist, the commercial physician,
and the social sponger, and, so far as medicine is concerned,
is characterized by a maniacal propensity to professional
suicide, and to the spread of the disease by the inoculation
of the will with the germs of the affection.
Etiology. In brief, there are two chief etiologic factors.
The first consists in the morbid desire of the lazy charity-
monger to perform his duties vicariously ; the second
springs from the ambition of certain physicians to " get on,
regardless." From the interactions and mutual comple-
mentings of these two cachexiae arises the distinct type of
disease called hospitalism. These two agencies may need
an added word of explanation. The first, the habit of the
professional philanthropist, united to the universal desire to
satisfy conscience with vicarious charity, is a widespread
evidence of religious and ethical anemia, resulting in multi-
form sociologic denutrition and malfunction. The unregen-
erate layman, the civilized savage of modern times, is sub-
ject to a strange hypnotic delusion that the universal law
of the biologic world antedating civilization is an egregious
* A paper read before the American Academy of Medicine, at Baltimore,
May 4, 1895. Published first in the Bulletin of the Academy, 1895, and in
the Medical News of June 22, 1895.
'75
1 76 HOSPITALISM.
error. This law has up to now proceeded on the assump-
tion that health and vitality are the conditions of permitted
life, and that this health and vitality are based essentially
upon pay or equivalence of service, upon personal self-de-
pendence, desire, and effort. The modern philanthropist
jauntily sets aside the wisdom of the ages, the necessities of
evolution, and all that, and says he has a much better idea
of how to conduct the universe than has God. Acting
upon this antithetic science he says the conditions of social
health are the encouragement of personal dependence and
the increase of pauperism. His remarkable therapeutic
theory is that to cure a disease we must administer a
remedy that in health would produce exactly the symptoms
of the disease. He therefore seeks to cure pauperism and
dependence by increasing the number of paupers and de-
pendents.
There is nothing so delightful to weak souls as the unc-
tuous self-flattery of benevolence, and there are few things
more satisfying than to rid one's self of a nagging duty. We
thus have two classes of citizens : The tremendously large
class that pay others to perform their personal duties, and
the very small class of those that hire themselves out as
agents of the first class. Charity and the personal relation
to the poor and sick are thus deftly avoided by this copart-
nership, and alms-giving and institutionalism deceptively
act as vicegerents of the genuine officers. This is the first
factor of the dispensary-disease.
The second factor is confined to the medical profession
itself. Like most other people, certain doctors desire to
" get on, regardless." The vicarious and professional phil-
anthropist offers him the means in the shape of institutions
for the treatment of all other diseases except the hospitalic
variety. (Perhaps in the progress of time and with the
growth of virtue we shall have a special hospital in every
large city where may be treated those in the acute and vio-
HOSPITALISM. 177
lent stages of the terrible disease, Epidemic Hospitalism.)
If the enterprising doctor can get himself appointed " Pro-
fessor," or " visiting physician " to one of the numerous in-
stitutions supplied by the vicarious philanthropist he will
at once become better known ; he will be furnished abun-
dant " clinical material; " he will get ahead of his less fortu-
nate brothers ; and he will assuredly " get on, regardless."
Lachrymose sentimentalism and philanthropic vanity are
appealed to, endowments follow, wills and codicils to wills
are made, and lo ! there arise the lofty walls, the spacious
wards, the waiting-rooms and operating-rooms, the crowded
out-patient departments, the boards of wealthy trustees,
and the not-to-be-forgotten medical staff itself.
Sometimes the physician bound to get on, the business
doctor, sans phrase, conceals his ambition with the broad
mantle of institutionalism itself, and it appears that the pa-
tient (the doctor-patient afflicted with the disease) indulges
in a mild monomania of enthusiasm for his particular
medical college, for medical science, and for the purposes of
medical instruction. He solemnly contends that without
an abundance of clinical material the best medical instruc-
tion would be impossible and medical colleges would lan-
guish. His by-standing confreres, not yet afflicted with the
disease, smile pityingly, both at the patient's delusions and
at the sorry belief of the patient that he is deceiving those
about him as to the real motives of his mind. Those
healthy-minded attendants know that there will always be
an abundance of clinical material supplied by the worthy,
the deserving, and the really poor, without the appeal of
competitive medical charity to those who could pay for
medical service. They also know that nine times out of
ten his medical college itself has no ethical or scientific
raison d'etre whatever, but is itself simply another bit of
objective evidence of personal and selfish ambition on the
part of those who are " getting on, regardless " by means
16
178 HOSPITALISM.
of their " Professorships " and the advertisement of official
position. If one has been vouchsafed a clear glance into
the inferno of political chicanery and undiluted deviltry
that often go on to secure a professorship in a modern
medical college, he will have a perfect demonstration of the
altruism and the purity of the " charity " at work among
the candidates. Men do not smash the entire Decalogue
and commit all the venial sins in order to get an oppor-
tunity to be kind to the sick or to teach boys how to cure
disease.
The etiology of hospitalism may, therefore, be epitomized
as consisting, first, in the morbid desire of the well-to-do to
rid themselves of real charity and of the duty of personal
hand-to-hand and face-to-face kindness, by the self-decep-
tive, vicarious makeshift of almsgiving; and, second, to the
get-on-regardless physician, reckless of the good of the
profession, greedy of office and of patients, even though
they are of the nonpaying variety. Professorialism is only
a variant of the disease of hospitalism, not a distinct type
of disease.
Symptomatology. The disease afflicts three distinct
classes of society, and has a somewhat different symptom-
complex in each class.
I. The first, the endowing class, many of them placed
by death beyond the reach of criticism, is composed of
those that mistakenly preferred to patch up effects rather
than altogether to prevent them, and who left their money
without proper stipulation of the conditions under which
their trust should be administered. Theirs is a mournful
error. There are so many ways, especially in medicine, of
preventing disease, of killing the causes of diseases, instead
of curing the individualized results, that it is shameful that
they did not add wisdom to pity, and to kindness, intellect.
If we could but show the benevolent how much greater and
more speedily reached would be the effect of their charity
HOSPITALISM. 179
if applied to the encouragement of preventive medicine in-
stead of to curative medicine : One well-equipped and en-
dowed laboratory of hygiene, of bacteriology, or of sanitary
science would do more for humanity than a dozen hos-
pitals. To prevent diphtheria is a million times better than
to keep everlastingly treating children ill with diphtheria.
But the unwise endower of hospitals committed another
intellectual sin and in this world intellectual error at last
and always results in millionfold moral error. He failed to
condition his gift with the necessary limitation that as a
result of his charity none but the needy and deserving
should profit by it. Without that condition, in the muta-
tions of time, his kindness becomes an engine of evil, both
to them who receive and to them who administer.
The endower is sometimes the State or the city. The
fact itself proves that giving to hospitals has so long been
recognized as right, per se, that no regard need to be paid
as to how the money is spent. It is a most remarkable
fact, this of giving away millions of the public money with-
out a single stipulation, and hardly without a demand for
accounting. When given to public officers for State
asylums and hospitals the precedent is bad enough, but to
church, sectarian, and college hospitals, and even to private
institutions this decidedly is to be thought twice about.
In the scramble of the competitive medical-charity de-
bauch, the hungry institutions have hit upon a plan of
making the universal public a universal endower. Every-
body must be made to feel how good he is and to experi-
ence the pleasures of almsgiving. We thus have every
imaginable form and invention of beggary spurred to the
limit of endurance and of impertinence. Hospitals Sun-
days, fairs, " dances for sweet charity," masked gambling,
and heaven knows what else are instituted. It might, with
self-restrained people it certainly should, suggest a little
prudence to see how prominent in getting up and pushing
180 HOSPITALISM.
on these things are the wives, mothers-in-law, the personal
friends, or the relatives of the ambitious visiting physician,
or would-be professor, the advertiser, the newspaper
doctor, et hoc genus omne. The motive of self-seeking is
too often but poorly, very poorly, concealed, and sometimes
it is thought good enough to boast about.
2. The second class, the lay-public, likewise suffers from
the disease, although it thinks itself very cunning and
lucky in having the disease. There are more diseases than
hysteria that people love to suffer with, and the dispensary-
affection is an example. There is no evil that is more
ruinous than the awful one of communism. When a man
gets that poison in his blood he will be a curse to the world
until he is well-hanged, thoroughly dead, and everlastingly
buried. There is no curse so fatal as the curse of desiring
to get something for nothing. It is the half-hidden rock
upon which the very ship of state, democracy itself, is run-
ning headlong. Nothing is serving so subtly and so
powerfully to prevent physical and social health, and to
keep the world in the thraldom of disease, as medical beg-
gary and medical communism. When a man buys medical
service for nothing he pays a high price for it. He culti-
vates the habit of lazy reliance on medical aid, and grows
careless of hygiene. The people think they are fortunate
in being treated for nothing, but instead of curing, the
"treatment" really fastens the disease perpetually upon the
very heart of the body politic. The medical profession is
bound to the treadmill of curing individual cases and the
effects of disease, instead of shutting off the causes of dis-
ease. The profession is so hardly pressed .and so poorly
paid that its members have no time to prevent disease.
One of the great curses of medicine is the commercial
medical colleges, with the resultant superabundance of
doctors. The hospital and dispensary disease is encour-
aged by (nay, is one of the direct results of) the commer-
HOSPITALISM. 181
cial medical college, and the vicious circle is completed by
the mere reversal of the process. The rivalries and ambi-
tions and " politics " of competitive medical charities, dis-
played every day stark naked to the public, at once
arouse and disgust the world, and keep low that standard
of professional dignity and honor, so that the profession
cannot demand and command health. Hygiene and pre-
ventive medicine could at once halve the death-rate if we
had the respect of the community, if we but spoke clearly
and could carry to realization the known laws of life-saving.
If the cunning Communist only got what he thinks he
is sponging ! But every physician knows well enough he
does not get it. How can one man diagnosticate the dis-
eases of a hundred patients with scientific precision and
treat them effectively in an hour ? I may not speak dog-
matically of other departments of medicine than my own,
but I must confess that out of hundreds of cases of hospital
refraction work that I have afterward examined in my
private office I have never yet seen one, my own included,
that was correct. If only the deserving poor were treated,
there would not be the crowds ; if the physician received
even the smallest fee, that fact would make the patient the
master instead of the obsequious sponger; and then the
doctor's work would have to be better, or the natural laws
of competition would soon settle the fate of the bungler,
and the " hustler," and the " cooker " of hospital statistics.
I am not at all certain as to the effect upon the social
world of the free treatment of patients with syphilis and
gonorrhea and alcoholism a fact that constitutes a large
part of hospital-disease. There are two sides to that ques-
tion. I am not a little doubtful as to the ethics, and even
as to the worldly wisdom of turning the hospital into an
annex of the bagnio and the bar-room, a convenience
whereby the natural punishment of the infractions of the
sexual and hygienic laws (upon which life itself rests) may
182 HOSPITALISM.
be escaped. It is not quite certain that we can get the best
of God in such ways. There is entirely too much of the
" prophylaxis-of-gonorrhea " business tainting the whole
profession, and literally befouling much hospital-practice.
One might more dogmatically decide as to the wisdom of
the common social commingling of the prostitute and the
innocent in the hospital-wards and the dispensary waiting-
rooms.
3. But the physician is interested in his profession, and
the influence of hospitalism upon our guild is becoming
pernicious in the extreme. Take the simple fact of hos-
pital-manners. I well understand that neither the posses-
sion of the doctorate degree, nor the possession of the
knowledge and skill it should certify, can make a man a
gentleman. But there is no doubt that the instant influence
of the necessity of treating crowds of mingled deserving
poor and of indistinguishable spongers acts disastrously
upon the physician's disposition and manners. The very
work wherein gentle kindness is as the sunshine's benedic-
tion over the gracious harvest-fields of benevolence is trans-
formed into bitterness and harshness. What is more dis-
gusting than arrogance and dictatorialness in a physician ?
What is more common in hospitals and dispensaries ? A
dog judges of his master's mood by the manner and the
timbre of voice, although he understands hardly a word of
language proper. Every hospital-patient, likewise, forms
quick conclusions as to the man's character under whose
care he comes, and instead of gratitude for the service
rendered the ungentlemanly physician is breeding through
the community a condition of mind that bodes no good for
medicine. The patient thinks himself sharp to secure some
benefit from grudging surliness, and the overworked, non-
paid, half-excusable doctor is glad to get through his job
in one or another wretched way. " He has the European
habit and style " such is the patient's verdict. The pa-
HOSPITALISM. 183
tients know well enough when they are looked upon as
"clinical material," and when, on the other hand, they are
sympathetically treated as unfortunate human beings, whom
we have the privilege of helping.
And this leads to the thought that nothing so speedily
and surely as hospitalism leads to the degeneration of the
physician into the therapeutic or pathologic fiend. If, as
is well known, an interne or visiting physician hangs about
a hospital beyond a certain time, the more certainly will he
fail as a practicing physician. Every day in the hospital
teaches him to dissociate disease from humanity, and to fix
his attention upon morbidity, per se. He learns to treat
disease and not the diseased human being. The laboratory,
necessary as it is, runs the danger of becoming the execu-
tion-chamber of practical therapeutics. Every disease must
be seen through the lens of personality before it can be
thoroughly understood. There is no disease, there are
only diseased tissues and the tissues are alive, and there
is a living soul unifying all the tissues into that strange
product of life, Homo; and Homo is not one individual,
but includes conditions, family, heredity, age. The rage
for " clinical material " is becoming a genuine mania, itself
a downright disease, a disgrace to curative medicine.
Street-car placards and column-long newspaper " ads " so-
liciting patients are part of the expenses of some hospitals.
From a daily paper I clipped the following racy account ;
it has too much of the air of truth to be more than half lie :
"A local employment agency has instituted a unique depar-
ture. A few days* ago an advertisement appeared in the
morning paper which read: 'Wanted A young man suffering
from pulmonary or heart disease. Examination free." Inquiry
at the office of the advertiser elicited the information that the
'young man' was wanted for the various hospitals about town,
which were anxious to get live subjects for clinical demonstra-
tion. ' The applicants are received here,' said the manager of
184 HOSPITALISM.
the agency, ' and are promptly examined. The eligible ones,
that is, those who are found to be victims of the two diseases in
question, are given cards for presentation at the hospitals which
we serve. They are paid well for their services, and they suffer
no inconvenience from their experience at the hands of the sur-
geons. Sometimes, in fact, they reap benefits which they had
not counted on, some of them regaining complete health under
the treatment. So you see pulmonary and heart affections
command a sort of premium. Sometimes we find among the
applicants some cases even more interesting than we had
expected. These men, of course, command more money than
the ordinary sufferers." '
But all these methods of trapping game are often only
diversions of the strong, subdominant motive of practice-
hunting and success-advertising. Just as the great pro-
fessors give lectures at medical colleges in order to get
consulting practice, so will men consent to bang through a
lot of " charity-cases " at the hospital and dispensary in
order to have the eclat of the position and the fame that in
one way or another brings private practice. Sometimes,
indeed, it is not by the indirect means of the fame that pa-
tients are secured, but upon one excuse or another the
modus operandi is well known the hospital is made a very
direct feeder of the private office.
And what brutal injustice is the indiscriminate treatment
of hospital-crowds to the younger members of the profes-
sion, and to those, the immense majority, who are not of
the elect the poor fellows who are neither professors,
chiefs, nor visiting physicians; it is among the lay poor
that the professional poor must work. After years of
heroic preparation the young graduate finds the very
teachers who have taken his money for instruction treating
questionless and gratis those who should be his own pay-
patients. I have a profound sympathy for the young and
unsuccessful physician. He has been outrageously de-
HOSPITALISM. 185
ceived, and is daily being outrageously treated by men of
his own guild, to whom he has a natural right to turn for
aid in this matter. If he settle in the country, the reckless-
ness of the city-hospital and dispensary government pursues
him like a fury. The non-discriminating urban physician
receives the country patient without question. It is thought
that the distance from which the countryman comes can-
cels all scruples as to duty to one's colleagues. Medical
ethics have at best very narrow geographic limitations.*
Only the countryman's local physician knows whether he
is able to pay or not but how often is the matter inquired
about by the city brother ? Even in private practice the
rights of the distant local physician are but little considered ;
how much less, then, are they considered at the dispensary ?
And thus, to summarize, are we cruelly, consciously,
persistently committing professional suicide. Every noodle-
head knows that that which costs no thought or labor is
not appreciated by men, and yet we tumble over each other
in our mad rush to do our grand work for nothing. We
make the most valuable thing the most despised by our
pusillanimous politics, until the poor public learns, instead
* A remedy for the abuse of medical charity is offered by " A Young Sub-
scriber " in a letter to the Medical Record. He suggests that the victim of
this abuse " the next time and whenever he has need of a consultation, or has
a patient to send to a specialist, avoid the man who daily robs him by indis-
criminate dispensary-work, and pick out instead one who regards the rights of
his fellows. There are men at the heads of dispensary classes throughout the
city enjoying large special practices, who boast that they have no care for the
financial standing of their dispensary-cases so long as they furnish the required
material for clinical purposes, and as for the complaining doctors, they say, ' Let
them go and be blanked.' So long as they can do this and keep the support
of the general practitioner, they will hold the same views. The moment they
find it affecting their pockets they may at least cease to pride themselves upon
their dirty treatment of their professional brethren. Let the non-dispensary
men look to their rights, and they will soon have less wrongs." Boston Med.
and Surg. Jour., March 21, 1895.
186 HOSPITALISM.
of respect, contempt of us. Where is the hospital for free
legal advice? And yet which is the most honored, medi-
cine or the law ? Oh ! for a breath, nay, a blast, of profes-
sional self-respect that would sweep us into unity. Why
should we not have some organization, some esprit de corps f
Even thieves preserve some sort of honor among them-
selves.
Treatment. Let us briefly consider the treatment of
the disease. What can be done to abate this graceless
nuisance ? A thousand good hearts and wise minds are
racked by this problem. It is almost impossible to find a
way out. In fact, we have gotten ourselves so pitiably dis-
eased that we can hardly hope for much else than a life of
chronic invalidism, at least so far as this generation is con-
cerned. The disease, if one may so speak, is intensely
chronic. One thing is certain, we cannot make men moral
by act of Congress. There is not one great general
remedy. Everyone of us must take the matter up. The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you. The influence of one,
of each individual, steadily and patiently opposing the
wrong, will, in time, transform the whole. Every one of us
has power ; each one of us has been a sinner ; each one may
do little or much toward stemming the evil trend.
And first as to the endowers, whether individual or com-
munal, let us preach incessantly and repetitively the truth
that indiscriminate charity is unadulteratedly sinful and
cruel. Every penny given without inquiry as to merit is
simply hiring people to be sufferers. In a great civilized
country, only last year, there was discovered to be a fiend-
ish manufactory of cripples and victims to excite pity and
secure alms from the " charitable." Children's eyes were
gouged out and every bone in their bodies broken, in
order, by their exposure, to stir up the sensibilities of the
" kind-hearted," who, by their gifts, kept the manufactory
" running on full time." Just as certainly does indiscrim-
HOSPITALISM. 187
inate charity operate now, and here, and everywhere.
God's command is infinitely stern, but it is just as infinitely
compassionate, that in the sweat of the brow shall we earn
our bread. The lives of East Indian ryots are quite as
happy, fully as comfortable, and far more moral than those
of an American mob of train-wrecking strikers ; and yet the
annual income of the ryot is not one-thirtieth of that of the
striker.
Let it be clearly understood that there is to be no chill-
ing of sympathy, no killing of kindness, no less giving,
because of this law of life. There is to be all the more
but the sympathy is to be intellectualized, the kindness is
to be made effective, and the giving is really to stop the
suffering, and not increase it.
We must teach the rich that every endowment of hospi-
tals and dispensaries must be conditioned, narrowly, rigidly
conditioned, upon the law that only emergency-cases and
the absolutely deserving poor are to be treated in hospitals.
When importuned to contribute on hospital-Sundays, or
to attend entertainments, charity-balls, etc., etc., let us re-
fuse, and publicly refuse, unless the managers of such hos-
pitals publicly state that rigid exclusion of those able to
pay something for medical services is carefully and sys-
tematically assured.
The indiscriminateness of the doled-out charity of the
hospitals is a natural result of the stupid indiscrimination
of endowers. These-pour out the money, year after year,
and century after century, in reckless disregard of the laws
of economics, of the real needs of the community, and of
the experiences of other lands. Hospital-farms for epilep-
tics, for the insane, homes for convalescents, homes for the
dying, special hospitals of various kinds, especially for the
tuberculous these and more are pitifully wanted, and yet
the old ways and the old evils are stupidly increased. If
we could only have an omniscient or even half-wise Czar
I8S HOSPITAUSM.
to direct almsgiving ; if it were only someone's business to
instruct people how to give their money. At present it
depends either upon haphazard or upon the cunning wiles of
some interested person. Rich plebeians, right versed as to
oil, or beer, or dry goods, are made presidents or trustees,
flattered to the top of their bent with the bauble of office and
authority in the things of which they haven't even a spark or
a glimpse of knowledge, all in order to wheedle endowments
out of them. These go on building wings and additions to old
evils, until, as with church-building, the historic momentum
results in monstrous aggregations of multiform uselessness
or abuse. And every day or two the daily newspaper-
reporter gets hold of some scandal, a dying patient refused
admission to hospitals, a fisticuff of rival visiting physicians,
the "politics" of rival hospitals, etc., etc., and regales his
readers with it. All the time the evil grows, until one of
these fine days the donkey endower will suddenly awaken
to a realization of the fact that he has been imposed upon,
and that his ears are several inches longer than they should
be. Then he will resign, shut up his pocket-book very
tight, and genuine medical chanties and properly conducted
hospitals will suffer. To arouse the profession to the
danger it is incurring by the abuses of medical charity, the
danger of a sudden reaction whereby proper medical
charity will be stopped, this has been the motive I have
had in mind in writings upon this subject during the last
six or eight years. It hardly needs the saying that one
earnestly desiring the curing of a disease hardly wishes to
kill the patient, yet some foolish folk affect to think that
those who speak of the disease of the hospitals would des-
troy all hospitals as incurably diseased. The physician,
even of the specialty Hospitalism, hardly desires to become
a Reign-of-Terror guillotinist. Nothing is more divinely
beautiful than a noble hospital, rightly managed, and illus-
trating at once the science, the art, and the benevolence of
HOSPITALISM. 189
medicine. But, according to the old maxim, corruptio
optimi pessima, and a hospital endowed by wealthy hypo-
crites, managed by medical advertisers, and filled by social
parasites, is as bad as the other is good.
In the hospitals and dispensaries of England and
Wales, 2,855,644 patients were treated in 1878, while in
1893 the number was almost four millions (3,985,263), an
increase of noteworthy proportions. At the same time the
number of physicians has, of course, also increased. In
1882 there was one medical man to 1703 people, whilst in
1893 there was one to every 1427 that is, each medical
man has 250 less people in his clientele. If this is true in
England, where medical education and medical charity
have preserved at least the tradition of sanity, what must it
be in the United States ? In order not to be charged with
invidiousness, let us take the experience of a foreign insti-
tution. I assure you, however, illustrations could be had
very much nearer home. St. Thomas' Hospital, of London,
has an annual income of $285,000, and appeals urgently
for more money. A writer in the Medical Press and Circu-
lar thus further describes the condition of this institution :
" That Hospital was chartered by Edward VI, and splendidly
endowed with landed estate, and up to the year 1862 it enjoyed
a high reputation, and, so far as I know, did its work efficiently.
In that year its site at London Bridge was invaded by the South-
eastern Railway, and the Hospital received, I think, $2,300,000
as compensation. That to the common mind would seem to be
a tidy sum with which to build a new hospital, especially as the
ground which it occupies was secured on the cheapest terms,
having just been reclaimed by the Thames Embankment, but
when architects and builders got, as they did, a firm hold of the
job, it turned out to be quite insufficient to realize their aspira-
tions. They succeeded in producing not only a heavy deficit,
but a veritable white elephant a building about twice the nec-
essary size, containing bed-accommodation one-third greater
190 HOSPITALISM.
than could be maintained by the income of the institution, and
constructed in every detail in the most expensive manner. It
was stated by the Royal Prince at this meeting that five of the
wards are now empty, there being no money to keep them full,
but it was not mentioned by his Royal Highness that several other
wards are filled by paying patients, most of whom are in no
sense deserving of charitable relief, and ought to be in their own
houses, nursed and treated at their own expense, and not at the
expense of the charitable.
" It would not be just to blame the present administrators of
the Hospital for the mad extravagance of their predecessors of
thirty years ago, but for the financial administration of the Hos-
pital at the present day they are responsible, and I may ask a
question or two on that. I find from Burdetf s Annual that
every bed maintained costs 1512.37 per annum, and every pa-
tient admitted represents an outlay of $38.83, the highest rate
among the twenty-three London general hospitals save four.
This does not mean that the sick patient costs directly any such
sum, for, as far as I can make out from the figures, his mainte-
nance, nursing, and treatment do not consume more than one-
third of the amount, the remainder representing outlay in salaries
to officials, pensions, and other matters which are only of indi-
rect benefit, if at all, to the sick patient. When I find that the
most efficient provincial, Scotch, and Irish hospitals can and
do keep, nurse, and treat a similar patient all told for just half
the money, I am moved to ask what claim has St. Thomas' to
public sympathy ? Not all the royal princes, dukes, archbishops,
and millionaires in existence will persuade me that a hospital
which builds beyond its means, spends its resources like water,
and refuses to retrench, deserves to be subsidized with $500,000
or any other sum."
As to the public, every one is a teacher, and may make
his voice heard against indiscriminateness. I plainly tell
my patients, and the occasion arises nearly every day,
that they cannot get as good medical service at the free
dispensary as at the private office, and that private treat-
HOSPITALISM. 191
ment is far cheaper than the treatment for which nothing
is paid. I think it our duty to stigmatize the hospitals and
give them a bad name. We can hardly exaggerate the
truth in this respect. Let us laugh to scorn the clap-trap
delusion of the masses that at the dispensary they will be
treated by the great Professor Bigwig, and that therefore
they will be better treated than by yesterday's graduate,
Dr. Nobody. We, of course, know the silliness of such an
illusion ; we know that often at the Hospital Bigwig gets
all the honor and young Nobody does all the work. Ten
to one, with his care and desire to establish a reputation,
young Nobody would do the better work of the two, even
if Bigwig had the case himself. Then there is the wasted
time of the patient, the crowds, the shocking surroundings,
the shame of being a pauper ! Let us use the blunt, brutal
word, and drive it into their heads hospitals and dispen-
saries are for paupers! It will hurt a little, but it will do
good. Every older physician has some younger friend
and colleague who needs the poor patients and their poor
fees. Why not do the patients and the friend a real ser-
vice with one word of advice ?
As to the profession, if one has anything to do with a
hospital, one can do not a little in the interest of discrim-
ination. A trained mind can learn to detect the old clothes
put on for the visit, the odor of whisky, the concealment of
ability to pay something. There should be no mincing of
words with such folk. Every patient caught shamming
should be half-insulted and unceremoniously turned out.
Let them go to " other places where they will be wel-
comed;" the " other places" will thereby secure for them-
selves an evil name in time, which will prove a poor invest-
ment.
There is one half-evil that is condemned by some
and practiced by many, but it has the excuse that it is
somewhat better than the hospital wholesale business.
192 HOSPITALTSM.
The drug-store doctor is not, perhaps, the best type of pro-
fessional man, but he is not so bad as Professor Bigwig.
By the drug-store doctor I do not mean the druggist who
is not an M.D., but who in fact prescribes much as if he
were. That problem is fast settling itself by the commer-
cial medical college selling diplomas to the druggist.
What is meant is the genuine doctor who also keeps a
drug-store, but who charges well, nothing for advice and
everything for filling the prescription ! Such a product of
our fin de siecle medical civilization is in fact a direct reac-
tion and result of indiscriminate medical charity. And
since the doctor gets something, however roundabout, for
his work, I am not inclined to scold him much. When
hospitalism is whipped out of the field it will be time enough
for all good men to turn in and run out the drug-store
doctor.
Still another form the reaction has taken is that illus-
trated by the physician who, while pursuing essentially the
same plan as the drug-store doctor, carries it out by the
vice versa method. I mean the charging for advice but
giving the medicine gratis. This is certainly a step, nay,
two steps, in advance, and hits two heads well-deserved
and good-resounding whacks with a single shillalah. Who
does this at once " gets even " with the soulless hospital
and with the nostrum-selling, prescribing druggist, both
having tough skulls that need many downright doughty
thwacks ! Perhaps the same club may in time split wide
open another cranium, that of the patent-medicine man.
The remarkable progress in the arts of modern pharma-
cology makes possible, and many other reasons make justi-
fiable, the dispensing of one's own medicines.
In England medical clubs are already deemed unmiti-
gated nuisances and deplorable grievances. With us they
have not yet become so, but we are fast entering the same
smooth descensus Averni. But it seems to me even this
HOSPITALISM. 193
phase of the wholesale medical business is preferable to
hospitalism a road, that if not to Avernus, trends toward a
lake into which certain tormented swine did once rush
somewhat hastily, with much relief to their mental dis-
ease.
One finally asks, Why should each physician not have his
own private dispensary ? Behold his empty office and his
unoccupied time! Why should he deimpersonalize his
charitable work and give himself namelessly to an institu-
tion a sort of a corporation which proverbially has neither
a body to be abused nor a soul to be saved ? Better, it
seems to me, and far better, would it be to do the service
and get the gratitude one's self. In such cases there is a
real and a scientific service on the physician's part, and a
real and not a sham gratitude on the part of the patient.
Private individuals should go into private competition with
the hospitals. The hospitals can be whipped out every
time. And when one corrects the botch-work of the hos-
pitals, the time and the health of the patient have been so
patently spared that the thank-offering of an unexpected
and shyly given fee is much larger than one would have
thought of receiving from a " charity-case." One may
perhaps hear the sneer that it would be unprofessional for
a hungering young doctor to solicit gratis-cases at his pri-
vate office and ten-to-one the sneer would come from one
who hangs his name on big sign-boards from his dispensary
doors, and advertises himself or his hospital in cheap news-
papers and on theater bulletin-boards. I would be far
from justifying advertising ways on the part of the younger
man, but decidedly when the advertisement of the hospital
means the advertisement of the men running the hospital,
then I excuse the young non-hospital advertiser first and
quickest. When Bigwig quits the trickery, young Nobody
will soon do so also.
17
194 HOSPITALISM.
I would like to add a suggestion that seems never to
have occurred, either to our profession or to its most excel-
lent coworking sister, that of the trained nurse. Thousands
of women have heroically and successfully struggled under
the greatest difficulties to secure their special training and
ability. Thousands more are preparing, but already the
profession is overcrowded. Why should they not take up
the hospital-business as a work for which every considera-
tion of natural and acquired fitness shows them adapted?
The hospital business is a sort of a special boarding-house
business. I see no reason why in America we should
drift into the huge barracks-hospital system with droves of
daily thousands. The individualization of cases is the first
requisite of clinical wisdom, and the individualization of hos-
pitals is another professional desideratum. There might be
hundreds of single-house hospitals or homes for the sick,
adapted to different diseases, and to all purses, in all of our
cities, in which nurses should be the responsible owners or
controllers, and to which any physician might upon regular
business arrangements send his patients, and relieve him-
self of all except the medical responsibilities, the nurse as
now carrying out his orders. There is something belittling
I will not use a harsher word in the custom of physi-
cians going into the boarding-house business euphemisti-
cally called the private hospital or the private sanitarium.
The physician should not be interested in or bothered by
the chambermaid's work, the price of beef, or the rental of
rooms. This is all alien to his proper work, not seldom
inimical to it, and even leading sometimes to scandalous
conditions. But placed in the hands of a woman specially
educated for exactly that sort of thing, it would at once
elevate the dignity of her own nurse's profession, lessen the
shame of the impertinent and bulimic hospital, and regu-
late and systematize the physicians' proper labor
HOSPITALISM. 195
But when all has been said and done the hospital abuse
will continue unless professional sentiment is aroused.
Trustees, professional philanthropists, and the public will
gladly continue to eat the oyster of medical service, and
leave the shells to our asinarian rivalries. Possibly there
will be no great and thorough cure of the evil so long as
we remain a divided profession, so long as local medical
societies never touch professional abuses and wrongs, so
long as censors have no moral sense and are never incensed
surely not so long as the American Medical Association
numbers as members but one in a hundred American medi-
cal men. As certainly also there will be no reform while
like a lot of unspanked school-boys the members of that
Association hanker after and quarrel over the right to
advertise nostrums and to associate with quacks, and while
the cynical wrap themselves in the cloak of respectability,
hold themselves aloof, and grin sardonically from the safe
retreats of success. The two immediate and demanded
conditions of all reform are :
1. That medical men shall have a large share in the
government of hospitals, thus making them responsible for
abuses and rendering it possible to stop this old monkey
trick of getting chestnuts by our stupid professional paws
thrust into the fire.
2. The principle of the Charity-organization Society
must be made a part of all hospital management. It would
be well if a genuine copartnership could be realized be-
tween the local Charity-organization Society and every
hospital. At least, there must be at every hospital an
officer whose sole duty it shall be to discriminate between
the worthy and unworthy and he must be made to dis-
criminate, too.
POSTSCRIPT. From the Lancet of June 8, 1895, we learn
that during the year 1894 there were treated gratuitously
in the London hospitals :
196 HOSPITALISM.
GENERAL HOSPITALS :
In-patients, 52,080
In Convalescent Homes, 5 ,585
Accidents and Emergencies, 264,379
Out-patients, number of visits, .... 1,684,448
SPECIAL HOSPITALS :
In-patients, 24,963
In Convalescent Homes, 2,526
Accidents and Emergencies, 25,660
Out-patients (visits), 1,205,688
COTTAGE HOSPITALS AND CONVALESCENT HOMES :
In-patients, 24,963
In Convalescent Homes, 39
Accidents and Emergencies, 244
Out-patients (visits), 13,858
DISPENSARIES :
Out-patients, 1,204,045
Totals, 4,508,478
The Lancet, in pitifully begging for more funds to carry
on this tremendous labor, notes that whereas in 1890 the
total number of out-patient visits was 2,429,219, in 1894
the number has risen to the perfectly absurd figures of
4,108,039. What more convincing argument could be
adduced for lessening the amount of subscriptions, and
thus, perhaps, stopping this riotous debauchery of both
profession and public ?
THE ETIOLOGY, DIAGNOSIS, AND TREAT-
MENT OF THE PREVALENT EPIDEMIC
OF QUACKERY.*
You have all heard of the doctor who would never eat
roast duck because the impolite animal had always been
so personally insulting to him in its remarks. Doubtless
you may wonder if I am not also a bit impertinent in choos-
ing the subject of quackery as a theme of talk before
physicians regularly educated and presumably despising
irregularity and sectarian medicine with just indignation.
I assure you it is not because I suspect you of infidelity
at least of a very pronounced type. I simply wish to give
you a hint of the difficulties and temptations you will
encounter when, as physicians loyal to science and modest
self-respect no science, you know, without unselfishness
and modesty you come in sharp contact with the evils of
modern sham medicine. The temptation to compromise
will then come with subtle but decided force. I said I
would not suspect you of positive infidelity, but as science
always consists in finer discriminations and the recognitions
of small differences that escape ordinary observation, so,
with civilization, is coming the influx of a thousand grades
of deception and fraud.
The question is always suggested : How much of a
quack is he ? You may have no doubt about Sharp & Co.'s
Safe Cure, the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter,
* An address delivered by invitation of the Faculty of the Medical Depart-
ment of the Buffalo University, before the Graduating Class, May 3, 1892.
From The Medical News, May 7, 1892.
197
198 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
or the pictured old man leering at you from the theatrical
bulletin boards with Mephisto grin as he lovingly clasps
to his arms a bottle of sarsaparilla. But how is it with
the very great and the very regular Dr. Supersuspect,
who writes puffs of secret proprietary preparations, or who
praises one especial brand of wine after receiving a fine
case of "samples" as a sure cure for influenza. How
about Dr. Slydog, who fills his reception-rooms with
hospital dummies, or who makes his patients come many
times for the relief of a simple ailment, that if cured at once
would result in too small a bill or, who tells them all
their symptoms are very serious, but that he has caught
the disease just in time? Are these gentlemen quacks ?
Dear old John Phoenix complained that our use of
adjectives was entirely too vague. If a man were called
good, he wanted to know just exactly how good you
thought him. If " Sally who lives in our alley" should
be thought beautiful, is that the only adjective that could
be applied to Helen of Troy? John, therefore, proposed
to prefix a number to each adjective that should indicate
just the degree of perfection desired. If, in your calm
and dispassionate opinion, Sally is as beautiful as Helen,
then you would call her 100 beautiful, though perhaps
your friends might think her only 25 beautiful. If we
apply the principle to quacks, we have excellent results
that will enable us to ticket them with a fair degree of
accuracy. For instance, take the street-corner man who
sells Wizard Oil with negro-minstrel accompaniment and
four white stallions ; he gathers a lot of money from the
crowd and then drives off at a gallop; he is evidently a
100 quack, pure and simple. Take Keeley next: in order
not to exaggerate, let us put him at 98 or 99. Then the
Hahnemannian Knights, according to the degree of their
medical education and the weakness of their potentizations,
may be ranged from 95 to 97. The metaphysical Healers,
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 199
being sincere but ignorant, should find their level at 80 or
70 perhaps. Where must we put the " vivopaths," the
" physio-medicals," the " bio-chemicals," the " manupaths,"
and all the motley crowd, unnameable, indescribable ?
Where should we grade the cunning fellows that are cling-
ing desperately to the coat-tails of respectability and medi-
cine, but who are neither respectable nor medical, except
in externals ? Surely not under 50. Where shall be
placed the fellows who receive "presents" from drug-stores
and instrument-makers, who write therapeutic articles on
drugs that they know nothing about, or run dispensaries
as feeders for the private office? Can they come nearer
than 25 ? Then the " brilliant-operation men " whom the
newspaper reporters so easily fool, the college professors
and hangers-on, who in blowing the collegiate horn pianis-
simo, opportunely emphasize the note of their own private
and personal trombone fortissimo ! In all such cases the
individual conscience must decide.
Quackery may be likened to a poor artificial eye
everybody else can see through it except the patient.
Strange beyond all strangeness is the gullibility of the
patient, his devotion to his duper. Populus milt decipi
which being modernized means, the mob loves hum-
bug.
But however disgusting, the fact is explainable. The
deep-seated grudge and suspicion of the populace for scien-
tific medicine and the secret love with which it turns to-
ward its magic-mongering humbuggers is evolutionally
but a survival of the time when medicine was nothing but
magic, an atavistic return to primitive modes of thought
and therapeutic superstition. And it is also profoundly
pathetic, an appallingly serious fact. The scientific stu-
dent of sociology watches the inrooting of institutional
weeds and fruitless brush that the future civilization must
grub out and burn with costly labor and sacrifice. The
200 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
student of heredity and psychology sees the hardening
of modes of thought and habit that must bring only
pain, or misapplied or useless function. The sincere
physician sees disease permeating unborn babes, and scien-
tific progress crippled and unutilized by reason of popular
perversity.
But a further explanation of the peculiar and rejuvenated
power of modern medical charlatanism consists in the fact
that it is not only a survival of half-extinguished medieval
fires, flaming up with temporary and dying brilliancy, it is
also a " combine " with modern civilized money-making
and unscrupulous politics. It is not only an atavism,
it is also an avatarism, present-day cupidity is engrafting
itself upon ancient superstition, a marriage of medieval
magic mummery and money-making, so that the sly
cunning of the politician uses the stupid monkey's paw
to pull the chestnuts of profit out of the fire of human
suffering.
Nowhere else is this fact so certainly seen as in the his-
tory and actual outworkings of that consummate example
of civilized quackery called Homeopathy. An hour's study
of Hahnemann's works would convince any convincible
person that this sorry specimen of nineteenth-century
medievalism is a disgrace to civilization ; and yet it is fash-
ionable. Laughed out of Europe, it has sought and found
a home among Americans, infinitely receptive of every
form of opera bouffe whimsicality and rampant rascality.
If its lay adherents had the faintest conception of the hide-
ous absurdities on which it is built, and the trickery by
which it lives, they would be sickened with disgust. The
distinctive principles that make it differ from scientific medi-
cine are the following delectable Hahnemannian hocus-
pocuses :
I. The cause of human disease is either the " miasm "
of sycosis, of syphilis, or, in overwhelming proportion, the
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 201
itch.* With marvelous inconsistency, however, the origin
of all disease is held to be beyond the discovery of the
human mind, supernatural, hyperphysical, a disturbance of
our " dynamis " or soul life. Diagnosis of disease is, there-
fore, impossible, and thus the very first requisite of cure,
the knowledge of the cause of morbid conditions, is de-
clared incomprehensible and scorned.
2. The more you weaken or dilute a drug, the stronger
it becomes. Hahnemann's own words are: "A homeo-
pathic dose is augmented by increasing the quantity of
fluid in which the medicine is dissolved." Oliver Wendell
Holmes, who has tried to drown this pestiferous sect with
logic and laughter for a quarter of a century, calculates the
oceans of water in which a grain of medicine must be dis-
solved in order to " potentize " it to suit Hahnemann.
Mathematically, the thirtieth " potentization " would re-
quire a body of water equal in amount to 480,769 worlds
the size of our own in which to dilute a physiologic dose
of medicine. Hahnemann himself could not get it "thin
enough," and so finally gave all medicine by the nose, by
" olfaction," or smelling. And yet medicine so thin as this
has effects that only a madman would dream of ascribing
* It is sometimes said that no man could have been so asinine as to ascribe
to the itch such profound powers, but using Hahnemann's own words, as
quoted by that most excellent writer, Prof. Nathan Jacobson, of Syracuse
(Journal of the American Medical Association, March 5, 1890), psora is the
only real fundamental cause and source of all the other countless forms of dis-
ease figuring as peculiar and definite diseases in books on pathology under the
names of nervous debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, mania, melancholy, idiocy,
madness, epilepsy and convulsions of all kinds, softening of the bones (rha-
chitis), scoliosis and kyphosis, caries of bone, cancer, varices, pseudoplasms,
gout, hemorrhoids, icterus and cyanosis, dropsy, amenorrhea, hemorrhages from
the stomach, nose, lungs, bladder, or uterus, asthma and suppuration of the
lungs, impotency and sterility, sick headache (hemicrania), deafness, cataract
And glaucoma, renal calculus, paralysis, deficiency of the special senses, and
pains of every variety.
18
202 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
to it. A purely inert powder like lycopodium, administered
in unimaginably minute doses, will, according to Hahne-
mann, produce 1608 distinct symptoms, covering a period
of fifty days. One-millionth of a millionth of a millionth
of a grain of common table-salt produced 1349 symptoms,
including headache, vomiting, cardiac and lung troubles,
disturbance of sight, hearing, and so on.
The method of potentization is by shaking. Hahnemann
would not advise above two shakings for fear of making the
dose too strong. The great apostle of homeopathy, Lutze,
in an address that has reached at least forty-two editions,
says that an old man was cured of persistent vomiting by
means of a glass of water that Lutze had magnetized by
simply holding it in his right hand.*
3. To cure a disease, give a medicine that in a well per-
son would cause the disease, or Something as near to it as
possible, that is the holy nonsense of similia similibus cu-
rantur. By a grain of a drug diluted in millions of oceans
of water, you are supposed to substitute a drug-disease for
the natural disease; and the "instinctive vital force" will
turn and "go for" the natural disease, because the vital
.force has, as it were, been made mad and spurred on by
the drug disease.f
* He concludes " that if pure water can be so enriched in medicinal virtue
by simple contact with the hand as to cure a disease of years' duration, how
much more must this power grow if a properly diluted drug, whose peculiar
powers experience and provings have taught, be subjected to constant shakings
in the hand until it becomes enormously efficient." Further, he says : " The
poisonous properties are removed from a drug through its dilution, while its
special peculiarities, so to speak, its soul, remains, and by rubbing and shaking
becomes vivified and strengthened by human magnetism."
f Hahnemann's own words again : " By administering a medicinal potency
exactly in accordance with the similitude of symptoms, a somewhat stronger,
similar artificial morbid affection is implanted upon the vital power, deranged
by a natural disease ; this artificial affection is substituted, as it were, for the
weaker similar natural disease (morbid excitation), against which the instinct-
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 203
It is worthy of this lunatic medicine that, reeking with
medievalism, it should claim to be the " new school," and
call " old school " that system which, by instruments of
precision, bacteriology, experimental research, and a hun-
dred scientific methods of which no homeopathist ever
originally dreamed, is endeavoring to cure and prevent
disease. It is worthy of this new school that it should
pretend to practice Hahnemannism, while secretly using
any medicinal agents and in physiologic doses. Made
according to Hahnemann's theories, made as it is to-day
pretended they are made, one could harmlessly eat a
stomachful of their sugar pellets, supposed to be deadliest
poison.
Not an instrument of precision, not a bacillus, not a
ptomain or leucomain, not a single measure of genuine
therapeutics or experimental research, not a single dis-
covery of the thousands that make up the body of modern
scientific medical truth and power, not one, not one was
ever discovered by a homeopath. Their greatest discovery
I know of is that the human iris, by its tints and fleckings
and colors, denotes the parts and the particular ailments or
wounds of the patient's body diseased or injured.* I have
the recent catalogue of a homeopathic drug store in New
ive vital force, now only excited to stronger effort by the drug affection, needs
only to direct its increased energy; but, owing to its brief duration, it will soon
be overcome by the vital force, which, liberated first from the substituted arti-
ficial (drug) affection, now again finds itself enabled to continue the life of the
organism in health." The wondrous clearness, logic, and correspondence with
the facts of pathology herein displayed make the statement a fitting corner-
stone for a lot of lunatics and sharpers to build a system of philosophy and
medicine upon !
* Die Iris, nach den neuen Entdeckungen des Dr. Ignaz von Peczely ;
also, Die Augendiagnose des Dr. Ignaz von Peczety, etc. ; von Emil Schlegel,
Tubingen, 1887. Spots in parts of the iris, according to location, mean
wounds of the ear, the shin, a syphilitic tumor, lung-disease, prolapse of the
uterus, etc., etc.
204 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
York, in which, to-day, among thousands of filthy things,
or rather names of things, offered for sale are the following
" morbific products, nosodes," etc., offered in high potencies :
" Lice insects," either of the three varieties: " serpents,"
" tarantulas," and " crickets." You can buy bottled sun-
light, nay, the sun himself; or you have the choice of the
blue rays, the yellow rays, bottled galvanism, or faradic
electricity, etc. " Snow " and " ice," or " moonlight " or
the " east wind," are at your command for ten cents a
' graft;" it is not the germs or material particles, but the
disease itself Bright's, catarrh any that you will ; but you
can also have the " pus from a carbuncle," from " Pott's
disease," etc. You can buy " Brahma " himself, it seems ;
or, if you are sad, you can, for ten cents, have " tears of a
young girl in great grief and suffering; " the " salt of the
brain secreted from a gentleman's scalp with the perspira-
tion ; " a silk handkerchief eaten by a cow and taken from
the stomach in a hard ball ; during the three years she
never had a calf." One of the most interesting and sug-
gestive items of the catalogue is simply entitled " Omnia."
If one quotes Hahnemann or the elder homeopathists,
the Hahnemannians say " this is misrepresentation," and
that " in modern progress we have advanced beyond all
that." And if one quotes the modern homeopathists more
versed in the art of mystification, but at heart equally
absurd, it is said these do not represent true homeopathy.
I have quoted both ancient and modern somewhat exten-
sively, not because I have any special grudge against this
School far from it but because its adherents are the
most numerous and coherent body of sectarians, and be-
cause they have succeeded, in this quack-ridden land, in
befuddling so many people, sensible in other matters. In
a simple commercial sense, I ask, would it pay to publish
catalogues and offer for sale combined middle-age filth and
modern rascality, if there were not buyers ?
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 205
To-day there are in 53 "institutes" some 8000 pitiable
victims of sin, forming four times a day in 53 lines ("jab-
time") to receive from renegade medical graduates (hired
servants of an ignorant charlatan trading upon the name
of medicine) the hypodermatic injection of a secret sub-
stance. They are guaranteed a permanent cure of their
disease, and yet a large proportion have gone through the
cure more than once, and a large proportion of those
never returning a second time, relapse. Despite the
medical, physiologic, and literary barbarism of the Keeley
pamphlets, despite the indirect fiendish cruelties of the
system (to friends of patients who ruin themselves to raise
the money those who can't pay the $100 "may," as at
least one of the superintendents said, " go to hell !")
despite this and the secrecy, there are men, otherwise
sharp-witted and intelligent, who are crazy in advocacy of
this pernicious filth. The whole affair illustrates well the
popular distrust in scientific medicine, and the popular
belief in a magical short-cut to health by therapeutic miracle.
Young Men's Christian Associations, which would not
think of listening to a scientific lecture on the results and
cure of chronic alcoholism, open their doors to this mon-
strous guller, and the Jay Gould of the preaching business,
from a supposedly Christian pulpit, calls for God's bene-
diction on the most unchristian of deviltries. With a
hound's chorus of a thousand newspapers, the Chicago
Tribune leads in this infamous exploitation of the poor
drunkard. So Perkins's tractors sprang into popularity, and
so, after the speedy burial of this delusion, others will
periodically spring up in obedience to popular superstition,
prodded and nursed by cunning Mephistophelianisrn.
The danger of medical lunacy overtaking the people is
again illustrated by the vogue of the creed of the sorry folk
termed metaphysical or divine healers, Christian Scientists,
Faith or Mind Curers. Would you think it possible that
206 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
people right here in the United States, among us to-day,
could believe that " it is impossible that a boil is inflamed
or painful," and that inflammation, hemorrhage, and
decomposition are but thoughts, beliefs,* and that carci-
noma, diphtheria, typhoid fever, what you will, can be
cured by prayer or thinking hard at it ? According to Dr.
Nichols,f there are within the limits of only one of these
curious sects about thirty organized churches, and also 1 20
societies that maintain regular services. Twenty-three
institutes, " scientific" and " metaphysical," are advertised
in one periodical. The number of practitioners " regularly
graduated" reaches thousands.
Or, take another national disgrace, the patent-medicine
shame. Even semi-barbarous countries have forbidden
the entrance within their limits of these vile concoctions,
devised to empty the pockets of the poor of money, while
filling their bodies with poison. Any chemical analyst
would tell you these "non-alcoholic bitters" are made up of
from 25 to 50 per cent, of the vilest alcohol. Thousands
of poor babes have been killed by soothing syrups of
course, containing no opium or other hypnotic and so on,
so on, to the end of the list !
What an egregious farce, that people should buy a
cure-all containing they do not and cannot know what;
compounded they do not know by whom certainly not, of
course, by a physician vouched for by no one an evident
bit of hoodooism to get money a shotgun prescription
fired at a disease in the abstract an unknown remedy for
an unknown disease from an unknown hand ! And yet the
millions upon millions of dollars invested in these nostrums,
and thereby annually filched from the ignorance and want
of the poorest and neediest, should arouse even the most
* " Science of Health," pp. 188, 231.
f Science, January 22, 1892.
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 207
corrupt of legislators to put a stop to it all. The superla-
tive impudence of the villainous syndicates is degrading and
wrecking the once noble profession of pharmacy, and
turning the disgust of the reader and traveler into nausea
by the pollution of every newspaper and of every landscape
with sickening advertisements.
And now, why do Keeleyism, the patent-medicine and
nostrum sham, the homeopathic disgrace, and a thousand
such things exist among us ? They are, of course, a vital
loss and a vital injury to the community, working a pollu-
tion of body upon an idiocy of intellect, by a Boss-Tweed-
ism of ethics. Why is our country the refuge and asylum
of the survival superstitions, the delirious nonsense, and
diabolical financial schemes that Europe has kicked out in
wrathful disgust ? Simply this : the newspapers, journals,
and magazines dare not tell the truth or be the means of
telling the truth. Every magazine or serial depends for
existence upon two sources of revenue : its subscribers and
its advertisers. Let a journal or paper publish an article
exposing the infamy, and " stop my subscription " would
come from a few dozen people whose pet fad is that they
are being persecuted, and that they, who have never stud-
ied such things a minute, know the truth about physiology
and disease that thousands of scientific men have been de-
ceived in finding. Hence no editor dare admit an article
showing up the shame and wrong of these things. Physi-
cians and other scientific men have nothing to sell, nothing
to advertise ; but all quacks, nostrum venders, and patent-
medicine men have something to sell, and their advertise-
ments form a tremendous source of revenue to every paper
in the land. Let any journal reveal to its readers their
humbuggery, and at once it is ruined.
But advertisements maligning and misrepresenting their
opponents are put into the reading columns as reading
notices, neither editor nor publisher daring to disobey the
208 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
orders of the syndicates. A well-known illustration is the
thousand-journal denunciation and contumely, for the past
year or two, of the druggists who dare " substitute " for
the quack medicine called for similar and equally good
preparations at one-half the price of the more advertised
cure-all.
Other examples of journalistic perversity might be cited;
e. g., Harper's Magazine a year or two ago published an
article by a professional humorist, claiming that home-
opathy had saved modern medicine from the medieval bar-
barism of filthy medication and beastly therapeutics.
Would it insert an article showing that the reverse is the
truth, and that by the malicious and egregious blunder it
had grossly insulted every physician and scientist, civiliza-
tion, and truth itself?
Would the newspapers of the country, headed by the
North American Review, give one-hundredth of the free ad-
vertising to a reputable or scientific institution for the treat-
ment of chronic alcoholism that they have given Keeley's
humbuggery, and out of which that shrewd advertiser is
making millions of dollars?
The etiology and pathology of carcinoma is certainly a
deep scientific question, and yet a dashing magazine editor,
who had never studied it for a minute, indorses the cure of
a quack, Mattei, who had likewise not a scrap of medical
knowledge, and the people are thus gulled into spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars. Any medical student
could have exposed the fallacy, knowing how easily tumors
are diagnosticated as carcinomata, and thus often " cured."
Neither Mr. Stead nor his Italian Count care for science.
They have a short cut to scientific knowledge no physician
could have even found out by study or pathologic investi-
gation !
A month or two ago, a bill, " a very moderate one,"
and one that " the three leading and influential schools of
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 209
medicine " had recommended to the Legislature of Ohio,
to control the practice of medicine, was shouted down in
guffaws of derision by the barbaric civilized legislators of
that State at the command of the lobby controlled by the
so-called physio-medicals, the druggist, patent-medicine
men, and the newspapers. After this delectable piece of
diabolism, this same Fejee Island Legislature of Ohio
voted $5000 to experiment with the Keeley humbug, each
legislator to furnish one Keeley patient. Doubtless with
such men charity is to begin at home, and the patient will
not be hard to find !
Charley Lamb said that the only way he could relieve
his feelings when he had heard a Gregorian chant, was to
lie down on the floor, flat on his belly, and howl like a
Dervish.
It is useless and tiresome to multiply examples. To the
honest physician the diagnosis is easy, but to the physi-
cian himself infected with the disease and in the incubation
period, the disorder is unrecognizable. He will contend
most vehemently that the patient is in blooming health.
All who wish to know the facts can easily learn them.
Evidence of the fallacy of the popular distrust may be seen
by the words of one who is certainly a competent and un-
prejudiced observer the present highly honored president
of Harvard University.
4
"It is not more than a hundred years ago that medicine
claimed to have been a liberal calling, an intellectual pursuit,
and even to-day its position as such is very inadequately recog-
nized by the mass of educated men. Now, I venture to say
that, as medical education is now given in the best schools, no
profession has a better right to claim the title of an educated,
intellectual calling, and no men have a better right to demand
recognition as intellectual men, as men of trained reasoning
faculties, than the physicians themselves. I see, in my position
at the head of the University, which includes the department of
aio EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
liberal arts and several professional departments, that the edu-
cated community does not recognize this. And I exhort you.
gentlemen, in all your various fields of influence to do your
utmost to establish this just claim of the medical profession to
the position of an intellectual calling, and to establish the claim
of this great body as a body of highly trained men who use to
the best advantage for the community the reasoning faculty, the
scientific power of the human mind."
A quack is a man more interested in himself than in the
healing art ; caring more for his patent than for his patient ;
more desirous of making dollars than of curing disease.
A physician is one whose first thought is to cure his pa-
tient This is the sharp dividing line that makes the whole
matter clear.
There are those that say that medicine is a business,
that the cure of diseased people and the obviation of dis-
ease is a calling like any other; that the one who cures
best will do the best business *. e., get the most patients.
There is but one single comment to make to that ; it is a
lie, and the man who says it knows he is a liar. I beg of
you, if you are entering the medical profession with such
ideas in your heads and such intentions in your hearts I
beg of you, leave the profession to-day. You will be poor
physicians, you will die ashamed of yourselves, you will
disgrace a noble calling, and you will hinder civilized pro-
gress. I assure you this universe is not put up that way !
You may make some money, perhaps, but the same devil-
try applied in politics or bucket shops will get you much
more of the stuff you seek. We have a wretched super-
abundance of such fellows now to watch. A large share
of the energy of good men is already used up in neutraliz-
ing their malice and thwarting their cunning. You will do
far better by running for alderman, dealing in green goods,
or in anything except in the health and confidence of
afflicted human beings. That is a work fitting only to
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 211
those who recognize other ideals and purposes than selfish-
ness and money getting. The acceptance by you of your
diplomas this day pledges and consecrates you to a mission
among your fellow-men that is truly holy. How far you
are to be above trade is clearly shown by the fact that the
chemist as near a physician as he is can without dis-
honor patent drugs and reap exclusive pecuniary gain from
the learning and ingenuity of his brain but you may not
do this. In a close analysis the work of the chemist and
scientist is due humanity as much as is yours ; every de-
vice and improvement of civilization withheld from public
use or sold dearly is trading in people's lives, is a sin
against the race but only you, yours alone of all the call-
ings, must realize the fact in every-day life. It is a glori-
ous honor to belong to the profession of which that can
be said. But the honor only comes to them that are will-
ing to be unknown as honored, who find the reward in
doing the work, and in the secret satisfaction of a silent,
happy, and peaceful conscience.
But with the professional honor and beatitude coexists
the professional duty. There is the greatest danger that
the men who believe that medicine is a business will have
their way, and sink professional standing to the level of
politics and trade. Will you join them or will you oppose
them ? The whole of your life will be the answer, and this
answer will largely consist in your attitude to quackery.
Dr. H. C. Wood says that as few or no homeopaths to-day
believe or practice the Hahnemannian clap-trap, they have,
ipso facto, suicided, become in a sectarian sense non-ex-
istent, and that on our part we may ignore the fictitious
distinction and fraternize with them. The President of the
Philadelphia County Medical Society advises letting them
into our medical societies. A prominent weekly medical
journal of New York smiles very graciously at the sectarian,
and a good friend of mine, an editor of a high-standard med-
212 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
ical journal, tells me that in his city consultations with a
sectarian are very common, and go unrebuked by physi-
cians otherwise in good standing.
In other words, after centuries of struggle and with vic-
tory in our hands throw it away in a fit of avariciousness,
cowardice, and weariness. The gentlemen quoted doubtless
mean well, but the advice is unconsciously traitorous to
humanity and to the medical profession. If the advice be
followed, we shall fall back again into what the printers call
pi, and out of this general debasement moral physicians,
as individuals, will again have to raise themselves above
the re-commercialized mass, and with century-long struggle,
reform again a new guild, with precisely the same ideals
and aims as that we poltroons had destroyed.
It cannot escape the observation of anyone who wishes
to see facts as they are, that the great mass of homeop-
athists, by pure necessity, have in practice entirely aban-
doned the whole crazy nonsense of Hahnemannian mumbo-
jumbo, and cling only to the name for purely commercial
reasons. The great homeopathist, Guernsey, he probably
who supplied " Dr." Swan with his sample or graft of " ca-
tarrhus nasi," says that there is in New York City, to-day,
no exclusive homeopathic practitioner. Any fool knows
that no disease can be influenced or cured by the medieval
drivel of potentizations, shakings, smellings, similias, etc.
But a lot of silly women have got it into their heads that
this is a "nice" and a "new" school, and these mounte-
banks, while giving common drugs in physiologic doses,
are willing to sail under false colors for the sake of the
practice it brings. It is a sickening fact, but fact it is.
What is the treatment of this veritable and terrible con-
tagious disease quackery ? How shall you meet it ?
What are you going to do about it? Compromise? The
suggestion recalls Hugo's famous monosyllabic fighter at
Waterloo.
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 213
Instead of the ninety thousand surrendering to ten thou-
sand, suppose the ninety thousand learn a lesson.
Combination is the order of the day in the world of trade.
What is thus done for selfish reasons may be done for un-
selfish ones. The patent-medicine men have got every
druggist and every newspaper in America in their deter-
mined grip. The homeopathists meet in National and In-
ternational conventions, and devote their entire energies
and time to schemes for getting State and Governmental
money and aid, and for grasping every point of pecuniary
and social advantage. In our lofty scorn of such low cun-
ning, and in our intense preoccupation with disease and its
cure, we never raise a ringer toward meeting such attack,
never pass a resolution to set Legislatures right, never try
to instruct the public in its medical duties and self-interest.
If as a profession we did but devote a tenth of our collect-
ive energy and intellect to these things, quackery would
disappear. The medical profession is shut within itself.
It has no means or machinery for reaching the public ear.
The few thousand quacks occupy the field ; the public
hears from them always and emphatically.
Realize the condition of the farmer and workman, un-
educated, undiscriminating. These are the bulk of our
people. With almanacs and circulars and million-fold de-
vices, the advertisements, fictitious certificates, and false
promises of the nostrum-traders and the quacks reach his
mind and feed it with subtle poison and plausible falsehood.
The family physician is squeezed aside, and his testimony
against these frauds, if he have the frankness to denounce
them, is credited to his jealousy. The medical profession
has scorned to devise machinery to reach these people and
to open their eyes to the humbuggery. By the great mass
of the people the medical profession is looked upon with
contempt or ill-will, its members to be called in dire neces-
sity, its bills paid grudgingly. The bottles of the cure-all
214 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
meet the physician's eye in every household. Every State
and National medical congress or organization should have
a literary bureau, the local physician as the local agent, to
instruct the people in physiologic, sanitary, and medical
duties, and to neutralize the pernicious influences at work.
It should not be held beneath our dignity to make a popu-
lar but honest and instructive medical almanac for popular
distribution.
The American Medical Association and the Congress of
American Physicians and Surgeons, every State and every
medical society, should pronounce as bodies upon the great
questions affecting the health of the public. Legislators
think we do not care, that we have no power. The quacks
have their ears and fill them. There are a hundred great
public duties we are leaving undone when, if we but spoke
as a profession, medical and sanitary progress would sweep
on to certain victory. It is, let us hope, only a question
of time. In the riot and intoxication of the rich conquest
of American advantage, Democracy thinks that every out-
rageous form of delusional crankery must have its swing
and chance to rule or ruin. But that day is fast passing
away. We must now settle down to the hard work of
governing and civilizing. When the Prince Hal of Democ-
racy becomes the King of Civilization he must henceforth
scorn the Falstaffs of quackery and scatterbrained tomfool-
ery. So in your case when the Student Hal becomes the
Practitioner King beware that you be not tempted to think
that the aim of your life, professional success, will come
more quickly by compromise with quackery and trickery
methods. There is no doubt of the fact : if you are after
quick success you will find it that way. But this plan
has three disadvantages 1 : you will not find enduring
success, you will not be self-satisfied and morally strong,
and you will not gain the love and honor of your fellow-
men.
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 215
To be explicit and detailed, let me counsel a few
" don'ts : "
1. Don't be in a hurry for success.
2. Don't consult or fraternize with quacks of any kind
or degree.
3. Don't be afraid of speaking out your denunciation of
quackery, regardless of the loss of a few possible patients
and the charge of jealousy.
4. Don't support medical journals run in the interests
of the advertisers, journals that are muzzled, that are con-
ciliatory to or nondenunciatory of quackery.
5. Don't sign a single certificate so long as you live, as
regards special, proprietary, or secret preparations.
6. Don't write a medical article in which such prepara-
tions are praised or even mentioned.
7. Don't accept commissions or presents from druggists,
manufacturers, opticians, or surgical-instrument dealers.
8. Don't let any professional allusion to yourself, your
opinions, or your work get into the lay newspapers. Don't
be a sneak advertiser, a " newspaper doctor."
9. In your own righteous wrath against quacks outside
of the profession, don't forget that there are many within
the profession, and that they are the most despicable true
wolves in sheep's clothing. I would rather be the
" Wizard King of Pain," and buy affidavits of impossible
cures at twenty dollars each, than a respectable hypocrite
indirectly or secretly hobnobbing with newspaper reporters
and supplying them with " data."
As physicians charged with the health of the present
and future, our duty must become clear: the entire witch's
Sabbath of 'pathies and 'isms, the morbid cranks, drunk
with ignorance and conceit ; the sly cunning of advertis-
ing schemers, the tricks and frauds of medical parasites to
suck the blood of their dupes, the patent medicine disgrace
all these things must be choked out of existence. It is
216 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
a warfare, not a compromise, we are entering upon. It
is not a theory, it is a condition that confronts us.
Another need is for individual instruction of people.
People are wofully ignorant, medically, and we have been
shuffling and cowardly. When a nice little foolish woman
or a pig-headed man with arched eyebrows and self-satis-
faction tells me, " Oh, I belong to the new school," I at
once say, Ach, so ! the very school I belong to but, we
differ as to what the new school really is. Excuse me, do
you have the itch ? Do you believe that your eau-de-Co-
logne gets stronger by shaking it, and that if you shake it
in a peculiar manner too many times it will get stronger than
aqua fortis ? Do you believe your ink will get blacker, or
your whiskey stronger the more water you put in it? Do
" ink-grafts " and Cologne "grafts " work? Do you believe
in watching the way the toe-nails grow for a year after
taking a bit of vegetable carbon toasted bread as symp-
toms of disease and evidences of drug-power? Do you
believe the only safe way of taking medicine is by smell-
ing it? Did you, as a boy, find that stomach-ache from
eating green apples was cured by eating green currants?
If you don't believe any of these things, you are a sensible
person, not a Hahnemannian. These and such things are
the only things that can be called Hahnemannian. If you
don't believe them, do you think it honest or manly to pre-
tend to believe them for the sake of a few dollars, and
sneakingly, hypocritically practice medicine much the
same as physicians do, giving common drugs in physio-
logic doses?
I have been surprised to see how a few minutes' talk
with such people makes it plain to them what silly fools
they have been, and how egregiously they have been
duped. I have looked about for some scrap of literature
I could hand to these folks, to show them what roaring
nonsense they unwittingly gave their assent to. Oliver
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 217
Wendel] Holmes's little skit is almost the only such thing.
Convinced, however, that people need and will profit by
simple instruction honestly, plainly, justly put before them,
I wish to have a little pamphlet prepared that, historically
and actually, will show up the ridiculous pretensions of
modern homeopathic practice. I shall, therefore, postpone
a bit of private pleasure I had planned, and offer a little
prize of $100.00 for the best essay on the subject.*
Such a monograph supplied as a missionary tract for
gratuitous distribution by physicians, at the cost of print-
ing, would set thousands of people straight, and would
soon stop the legislative and financial Governmental sup-
port of this trumpery. I wish some millionaire would
give me a few hundred dollars to offer as prizes for other
missionary tracts, e. g., on the " Patent-Medicine Evil ; "
" The Reasons Physicians Do Not Advertise ; " " Why
Physicians Do Not Patent Instruments, Drugs, Etc. ; "
" The Duty of the Government and State to Medicine ; "
" Everbody's Medical Duty ; " " The Desirability of a
Higher Standard of Medical Education," etc. What a
disgrace that we cannot get Governmental aid for payment
of meat and milk inspectors, boards of health, bacterio-
logic and hygienic institutes, etc., etc., whilst the people's
money can be filched from them to support arrant quackery.
What a disgrace that patent-medicine syndicates can draw
many millions every year from the diseased, deluded, and
poverty-stricken of our people, with a Governmental tax
*An essay should not contain over 15,000 words, and in simplicity and
directness should be adapted to the commonest lay understanding. Papers
should be sent me on or before January I, 1893, type-written, without the
name of the author, but accompanied by a sealed letter, giving the author's
name with motto or nom-de-plume. The essays will be given to a competent
committee, and when their decision is reached the sealed letters of the authors
will be opened, and the prize sent the winner. The essay will then be
cheaply but well printed in large quantities, and supplied physicians at the
cost of printing.
19
218 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
of only 25 per cent, upon their mixtures, whilst the same
people must pay a tax of 60 per cent, upon microscopes,
and one of 49^ cents a pound and 60 per cent, besides
upon woolen clothing.
The physicians of the civilized world are to day working
for the public welfare with a zeal and intelligence, combined
with an unselfishness, that no other profession, trade, or
calling can faintly rival. Think, first, that these men are
almost furiously seeking by hygiene and prophylaxis to
render their own calling useless and superfluous, themselves
occupationless. That is a fact so strange as almost to seem
unnatural in these days of self-seeking, class-legislation,
trusts, and combines.
Notice, again, that every instrument, discovery, drug, or
invention brought out that will do any good to humanity
is at once and unreservedly given to the world. No phy-
sician ever patents or keeps secret any discovery or inven-
tion. Compare that with the world's way.
Reflect, thirdly, that all the world over every physician,
whenever asked, gives his services to the poor without
demand or without hope of compensation. Would not a
lawyer or a locksmith think one crazy if it were proposed
that he should give a large share of his time and service
for nothing ?
Carry the thought on. The entire tremendous labor, for
the benefit of the community, of keeping up the enormous
hospital work of all the world's cities is borne by physi-
.cians without a cent of pay. Are there, for example,
thousands of similar institutions where the poor, free of
charge, can get legal counsel and help ? Is there one
such ?
It has been the universal medical tradition, accepted
without a murmur, that whosoever devotes himself to the
healing art must gladly construe his duty in this unselfish
manner, renouncing the usual ideals and commercial
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 219
methods of the surrounding world. Beyond all question
it is a fact that a like grade of intellectual capacity, the
same educational preparation, and an equal amount of tire-
less labor in any other calling would yield a far greater
financial result than is secured by the average physician.
A great physician said, " If my son goes into the medical
profession, I shall cut him off with a shilling." " Why
so ? " " Because the profession is not appreciated by the
public."
It is a public misfortune, a social evil, if there is slowly,
subtly, but most certainly, creeping through the profession
the lethal poison of a lowered ethical standard. Every
person of the land has a selfish interest in preventing our
adoption of the more selfish aims and ideals of the world
of trade. Business men are very short-sighted if they allow
or encourage medicine to become a business. Whenever
this change shall have come about (if, alas ! it should), and
medical success is sought by the prevalent rules of trade,
then the degradation will be irreparable, one of the noblest
of offices will have become as corrupted and salable as
those of politics, and an engine of incalculable good to
humanity will have been hopelessly wrecked.
Could one but reach their ears, how one would like to
appeal to the general public, to legislators of a serious-
minded type, if such there be, to the better class of inde-
pendent journals, to the more thoughtful of literary men,
to the rulers and teachers in colleges and universities, to
careful and prudent business men even, to patriots and,
lovers of humanity, all. This malicious and stupid miscon-
ception ; this non-recognition of, and opposition to, the
true work and worth of modern scientific medicine ; this
hectoring and bullying of physicians in all their aims for
the public good ; this cordial support of all legislative and
sordid schemes of cranks and quacks- is a social menace
and a common danger. It is long past the time that this
220 EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY.
suicidal debauchery should have been stopped. To all
good citizens it should be protested : This is your affair,
not ours. It is as much a national sin as slavery, monopoly
or class-legislation, vote-buying, the liquor-corruption, or
city-luxury more than a sin, it is a moral disease of the
body politic, and such disease is an expensive luxury. It
costs untold money, suffering, and human lives. Every
physician knows of many deaths directly due to quackery,
but the indirect deaths and consequences are incalculable.
Quackery kills thousands to hydrophobia's one. The
silent scourges are the great ones those that cut off single
lives slowly but ceaselessly. It becomes for you every day
more and more a question of self-protection and self-interest.
It is not, as you seem to think, a huge joke, but it is your
health, your life, your future, that you are trifling with.
Every epidemic of any contagious disease, to put it in the
crudest way, means the waste of millions of dollars of lost
time, of expensive sickness, and of grievous death. In
these United States hundreds of thousands of needless
deaths are annually taking place needless, because you
will reach no helping hand to physicians to carry out
the preventive measures, discovered and well known to us.
In these same States, still other millions of years of sick-
ness and millions of deaths are going to occur during the
next few years, again because you will not aid the medical
profession to search out other at present unknown sources
of disease. There are plenty of possible Kochs and Pas-
% teurs among American young men, if you cared, as they
do abroad, to help find them instead of laughing at them,
killing them with indignity and distrust, whilst feasting and
honoring your beloved charlatans. Are your charlatans
founding institutes of bacteriology and preventive medicine ?
Are they trying to probe the mystery and prevent the
mockery of disease ? Has it been the quacks that have
builded the noble new home of which city and profession
EPIDEMIC OF QUACKERY. 221
are proud, for the trinity of great schools of Medicine,
Pharmacy, and Dentistry, of your beloved Buffalo Univer-
sity ? Are you wise as a nation, if, like the old persecu-
tors, you martyrize those who are your truest, most service-
able friends ? For the sake of the simplest selfishness, for
the love of your children, for the sake of civilization and
humanity, for God's sake, let us turn away from the folly
and sin of this trifling, and enter at last upon the ways that
lead to HEALTH !
THE UNTRUSTWORTH1NESS OF THE LAY
PRESS IN MEDICAL MATTERS.*
Unless the writing be a verbatim quotation from a
medical journal it is quite impossible for an educated
physician to finish the reading of an article on a medical
subject in a nonmedical journal without a smile either of
contempt, of amusement, or of both combined. A strange
fatality seems to attend the filtration of medical facts
through the lay editorial and reportorial mind. Not long
since, the editor of one of the most popular and respectable
magazines, with puzzling injudiciousness, allowed a profes-
sional humorist the use of his columns to prove that the
quintessential nonsense and mummeries of medieval
therapeutics had been extinguished solely by the power of
so-called homeopathic rationalism and science. By reason
of this exquisite illogicality the humor of the sketch to
discriminating minds was greatly but unconsciously height-
ened. In a recent number of one of the best of English
magazines, an author and the editor evidently thought
that they were firing at the slow-going medical profes-
sion a discovery of vast importance as to the resuscitation
of asphyxiated persons. What was new in the discovery
was not true, and what was true was by no means new.
Had we space we could adduce from recent journals of
otherwise good reporting-ability a score of examples of
most egregious and not infrequently amusing misrepresen-
tation. We complain, so far, of no intentional misinforma-
* From the Medical News ; November 21, 1891.
222
THE LAY PRESS. 223
tion, but wish only to emphasize the fact that with the best
ability and intention the result is ludicrously inaccurate and
the mind of the ordinary reader is filled with half-truths
and untruths that perpetuate the proverbial and frightfully
inaccurate jumble of opinions as to medicine held by the
ordinary individual.
If we descend from the better class of carefully edited
serials to the preposterous Sunday newspaper and the out-
rageous advertising sheets supplied Master Demos, we are
at once confronted with a farrago of unmedical travesties
of medical knowledge quite. beyond adequate description
and worthy vilification. Here begins an ignorance that is
far more than culpable and a misrepresentation that is at
once venal and shameless.
Even in many of the best papers the power of the patent-
medicine man, the World's Therapeutic Institute, and the
advertising agent is supreme. The profitable advertise-
ment closes the editorial mouth or opens it with a prompt-
ness that is comparable only to that of a rigid mechanism
responding to a preordained stimulus. The most striking
exemplification of this has lately occurred. From one
boundary of the United States to all the others almost
every newspaper of this broad democratic land has been
repeating as news and howling as editorial judgment the
echoings of a certain hired advertiser's agent of the patent-
medicine fraternity, denouncing and abusing the poor drug-
gist who should dare to offer his customer any preparation
other than the " patented " cure-all the poor over-adver-
tised dupe of a customer had asked for. The " substitution
evil " has been cursed and spat upon with all the wrath of
all the money of all the patent-medicine syndicates of all
the Americas. What are the facts? A set of sharpers
compound some secret mixture, good or bad, of drugs and
syrups, and, relying upon the gullibility of people, in order
to reap millions, they purchase the press with an odd
224 THE LAY PRESS.
hundred thousand dollars' worth of advertisements. The
booby dupe calls at the drug store for the cure-all. The
druggist cannot make a cent on the patented and adver-
tised article, so completely has the advertiser got him in
his grip. But the druggist knows the ingredients of the
mixture, and knows the advertised article is sold at an
enormous profit to the advertiser. He is equal to the
emergency and mixes his own unpatented medicine, truth-
fully guaranteeing it in every way as good as that of the
patentee, and with a fair profit to himself he can sell it at
half the price of the advertised and patented article. In
a commercial sense he is doing perfectly right, and every-
body but the owner of the secret article must wish the
druggist well in his hard lot in thus fighting fire with fire.
But in hounding the druggist as a scoundrel the general
press has shown most superbly how its opinions in medical
matters are anything but useful to the community. Could
a single one of these guardians of public morality be counted
on to help tell the world what a disgrace to civilization the
entire vile patent-medicine business is ?
The query arises as to the possibility of setting this
right, of the possibility of so stating medical truths that
the common intelligence may be able to understand them,
and of the duty and responsibility of medical men in thus
molding and clarifying the lay mind about these things.
Other departments of science have their plebificators, their
professional popularizers of knowledge, and in every other
sphere attractive handbooks and simple expository treat-
ises are continually multiplied, which, without distortion
and mystification, put even the most unlettered att entrant
with the latest discoveries and the most abstract of scien-
tific truths. Why is it that that which pertains most vitally
to the welfare of each and every person is left untouched
and the unprofessional mind allowed to grope in a gloomy
twilight of fancy, prejudice, and ignorance? The continu-
THE LAY PRESS. 225
ance of this condition of the lay mind is the essential and
almost sole reason that quackery, medical superstition, and
medical sectarianism are of such prolific growth. Ignorance
and misinformation are the manures of these sad weeds.
Among many there are three principal methods whereby
the profession may counteract the malicious influences at
work :
1. A persistent endeavor on the part of each of us to have
modern and scientific physiology made a more prominent
part of the teaching in all schools and colleges. Wherever
we can, we should try to influence school boards, educa-
tors, teachers, and trustees of educational institutions, both
primary and higher, to make anatomic, physiologic, and
hygienic courses of study a necessary part of the curricula.
2. Medical men should write for the newspapers, and
should compile elementary manuals that may popularize
medical knowledge without mutilating and rendering it
absurd or erroneous. We are well aware of the fearful
danger lurking in this advice : the license thereby given
the schemer to advertise his professional ability and serv-
ice, a danger that in the present state of professional
greed and public indiscrimination cannot be too sharply
emphasized and prophesied. But it is not an inobviable
danger, and its checks and preventions will, with growing
intelligence and morality, be speedily found.
3. The noble and marvelously effective new method of
general education, known as the University Extension
system, should be seized upon and made use of by the
medical profession to extend in the minds of all a correct
knowledge of the body and its diseases. The instrument
seems as if made to our hand. Professors in medical col-
leges, teachers of physiology, hygienists, even the humblest
physicians, have inexhaustible stores of correct observation
and knowledge for which humanity is waiting and asking,
and which to it would be of inestimable value.
THE DISORGANIZATION OF MEDICAL
SCIENCE.*
One of America's well-known scientists, in charge of an
ethnologic exhibit at the Columbian Exposition, was asked
if there were no distinctive medical exhibit showing the
progress of medical science and art. " Progress of Medi-
cine !" said he, contemptuously. " There is no such a thing !"
From further conversation it was clear that, in the opinion
of the gentleman, by the term medical science is only to
be understood the curing of a sick person in its most re-
strictive sense. It may be asserted, moreover, that this
limited definition is that tacitly agreed upon by the general
scientific mind of the day. It is becoming more evident
that hygiene, with its hundreds of subordinate departments,
and its thousands of meeting-points with human life, is be-
coming autonomic, so far as medicine is concerned, and
that soon hygiene and medicine will not only be possibly
distinct callings, but that they will necessarily be distinct.
Bacteriology is also tending toward a similar autonomy.
In a word, to generalize the two aspects, we may say that
preventive medicine and curative medicine are slowly drift-
ing apart, each segregating into distinct fields of study and
activity, to be pursued less and less by the same individ-
ual. Even the medical profession is in various ways as-
senting to the breach. It is not uncommon to hear some
half contemptuous remark about the " laboratory doctor,"
the " bug-man," or the " sewer-physician."
* From The Medical News of July 29, 1893.
226
DISORGANIZATION OF MEDICINE. 227
But it remains an infinitely serious question whether
this is a wise movement or not. It may even be held one
of the most important things the profession has to ponder
and decide about during the .next generation. Its signifi-
cance is manifest in the fact that with the progress in civil-
ization cure must more and more yield place to prevention,
so that as all wise minds seek to forefend coming ill, the
function of the therapeutist as such must be one of pro-
gressively lessening influence, whilst that of the preventer
must be one of continuously enlarging influence. If the
treatment of smallpox a century ago had been the sole
duty of the physician, he would now find himself out of
work. Thus as one after another we learn the preventions
of diseases, the role of the therapeutist becomes more and
more sharply restricted with each new discovery.
It may be said that it matters not by whom or by what
class of men the work is done, so that the work is in truth
done, well done, and so that society receives the protection.
In answer, it should be remembered that there is a doubt
in the minds of many if the tendency toward differentia-
tion of function in our work of life is not already excessive.
Some specialism there must be, even much, but so far as
medicine goes it is agreed that all specialists must first have
a thorough grounding in general medicine, and that they
must well understand the physiologic and pathologic rela-
tions of the special organs and objects of their own study with
those of other specialists. Moreover, prevention is never ab-
solute, and no disease is, so far as we can judge, ever wholly
stamped out. Hence the curers will always have office,
and work to do. Prevention, too, not seldom runs, or may
run, into pathogenesis, and the sanitarian or bacteriologist
must be on the alert to see that prophylaxis shall not in-
directly become the origin of disease. He must be a
physician to keep from being a disease-producer.
A multitude of weighty reasons at once arise in the mind,
228 DISORGANIZATION OF MEDICINE.
all going to show that if the two departments of curative
and preventive medicine become separated, each officered
and manned by men knowing little or nothing of the work,
methods, and ideals of the other, it will be the worse for
that society for whose welfare we labor. The consequent
narrowing of the physician's sphere of labor and usefulness
will serve to further emphasize the contempt with which
the populace already looks upon the doctor-world. Medi-
cal sectarianism will be immensely increased by it, and
heaven knows that few greater misfortunes could happen
than greater popular ignorance as to the value to the
world of an enlightened and powerful medical profession,
and of the disgrace of medical sectarianism.
Those, therefore, who shape our legislation and mold
popular sentiment should, we think, struggle against the
disorganizing tendencies of our science. The work of
preventing and of healing disease is essentially one work,
and the further apart they drift the poorer will the work
be done, the worse for society, and certainly the worse for
that part that is content to become, in the ever-narrowing
sense of the word, medical. It should never be forgotten
that Jenner, Koch, and Lister were physicians. It will be
a profound professional misfortune if future discoveries
and progress in preventive medicine shall be made by non-
medical men. Then will the future scientist ask, with all
the more reason and justified scorn, " What progress, pray,
is there to chronicle in medicine ? " The genuine progress
in medicine consists, indeed, in making medicine and
therapeutics unnecessary. Those who have true pride in
their profession will not willingly give up the work that
rightfully, and by inheritance, has fallen to them, but
while prompt to relieve the present evil and lessen bad
results, they will also seek to prevent the coming evil, and
to neutralize the causes whence flow the bad results.
Sanitary science, bacteriology, and all those biologic
DISORGANIZATION OF MEDICINE. 229
studies that go to makeup preventive medical science must,
therefore, be integral parts of the curricula of every true
medical school ; the teachers of these branches should be
physicians ; the boards, National, State, or City, of public
health, quarantine, etc., should at least have medical repre-
sentatives, if not be entirely made up and governed by
medical men. Throughout the land every physician should
actively interest himself in whatever pertains to the health
of the community, thus showing by word and deed that it
is our proper function to prevent as well as to heal disease,
and that the two things must be done by one person, and
by one profession.
CONCERNING SPECIALISM.*
We have lately been treated in numerous articles to
criticisms of specialism in medicine, varying from placid
censure of its most obtrusive extremes to violent denuncia-
tion of the very fact itself and of all its important illustrators.
At first we were inclined to sing in chorus. The recent
hypertrophy of specialism, the outrageous extremes to
which certain exponents have driven it, especially in
America, with our orifacialists, graduated tenotomists,
female castrationists, ossicle-excisionists, and all the rest,
have always loomed big before our eyes. Assent would
therefore be an easy task, especially when the impertinent
exaggeration o f morbid extremists seems to delight in
o o <->
thrusting itself upon the attention, and insulting all sense
of self-control with examples of manifest evil. It may,
however, very properly be asked if there is no good to be
extracted even out of things most woful. All evil has its
uses at least for purposes of warning.
The first and most obvious answer to the critics we
mean the critics sans phrase, the delendo est Carthago fellows
of specialism, is that the contempt poured upon the
greatest extremists does not apply to the vast majority of
specialists. It is unjust to single out the maniacal hobby-
riders and sneer ex uno disce omnes. All are not alike.
The hobby-riders are few and exceptional ; the preponderant
majority do not deserve the strictures and are not affected
by them. It is sheer nonsense to say that the great body
of specialists know nothing of general diseases, that " a
* From the Medical News of September 28, 189$.
230
CONCERNING SPECIALISM. 231
man who looks only into the ear cannot see far into the
nose," that "they who view female life through the vagina
will have little respect for the stomach," that the surgeon
will cut rather than cure, and that for stricture of the rectum
the oculist will apply glasses or snip eye-tendons. The
people who say such things are cantankerous, and try to
say sharp things instead of true things. Argument by
epigram may be amusing, but, like government by epigram,
it ends nowhere or worse than nowhere. The makers of
mots never say the truth, only the error they impale.
Their desire is not to instruct or to be honest, but to make
people say, "How smart !" But if they wished to be truth-
ful instead of supercilious, careful instead of captious, they
would take special examples or at least types of extremism
and pour upon them the vials or larger vessels of justifiable
wrath, and not rain it upon the just and the unjust alike,
thereby in themselves logically and literally illustrating the
very indiscrimination of which they so bitterly complain in
others.
The tu quoque argument is usually a weak one, but in the
present contention it is exceptionally strong and convincing.
There is not a specialist in the land who does not every day
see instances of mistaken diagnosis (and hence of treatment)
upon the part of the general physician. What oculist, from
examination of the eyes alone, has not pointed out to the
general physician the existence of hitherto unsuspected ne-
phritis or circulatory disease? The aurist is constantly
emphasizing the facts of ear-disease as a cause or medium
of communication of septic cerebral disease, or as a result
of respiratory abnormalism. The daily rehearsal of trage-
dies in the specialist's office, plainly due to errors in diag-
nosis of the general physician, is pitiable. " My doctor told
me my headaches were due to congestion and anemia, and
never to let any oculist meddle with my eyes;" "he didn't
tell me to have my teeth looked after;" " he didn't examine
232 CONCERNING SPECIALISM.
my urine, although I've had pain in the back for a year;"
" he didn't examine my sputum, although I've had a hack-
ing cough for a long time," etc., etc. We do not mean, nor
do we think, that the general physician makes more errors
than the specialist ; we mean that the specialist is not the
only medical sinner. It is our conviction that the average
specialist is as much alive to the symptoms and importance
of systemic disease as is the average general physician, and
certainly no one would deny that he is also as much alive
to the abnormalisms of special organs other than those of
his specialty. We sharply emphasize the word average as
applied to both classes. A recent diatribe against special-
ism tirelessly reiterates that the present-day variety is em-
piric. The charge is, of course, too true of all medicine, but
to say that it is particularly true of specialism rather than
of general practice is topsyturvyism and squarely opposed
to a proper reading of the facts. What is the very strong-
hold of empiricism, what the enemy that the most extreme
specialism is heroically fighting to carry by storm what
but general therapeutics?
But if, as vehemently averred, the specialist is the super-
ficial empiricist and faddist, why does the general physician
not annihilate him? Why, instead of annihilation, does
he encourage the ever-increasing custom of sending the
specialist his patients to treat for their special diseases ?
The specialist's fate lies at the disposal of the family phy-
sician. Without reference-cases the specialist would soon
languish and die his supposably deserved death. A homely
saw says, " The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Is
it not plain that the family physician is learning that the
specialist has his uses, that he has special ability and excel-
lence gained by special application and experience, and that
in our day of the infinite division of function and profund-
ity of research he must often be called in to supplement
the general therapeutist? Has the family physician not
CONCERNING SPECIALISM. 233
learned by bitter experience that never again can one mind
encompass more than a small fraction of the knowable, and
that his duty to his patient is henceforth to learn where
and of what nature is the root of the evil, and, beyond a
certain range of ailments, he must advise consultation with
the specialist ?
There still linger about the fringes of our scientific world
some wonderful specimens of an antediluvian age, strange
stranded relics of megalosaurian vanity, or of slimy avarice
the quacks we mean those within the profession who
"treat all diseases," they who " turn no patient out of their
offices." Heaven help them or, rather, help their pa-
tients ! In the meantime, heaven not helping, the "em-
piric" specialist must patch up the bungler's work as best
he may after the "all-round man" has finished with his
ignorance and mistakes. It is simply maudlin nonsense to
contend that any one mind can longer compass or master
all branches of medical science. It is painfully evident that
any one specialty demands the most devoted application of
the very best mental ability and training in order to keep
abreast of the giant-progress of the time. The inevitable
and ruthless march of scientific progress has divided and
will continue to divide the practice of medicine into depart-
ments or specialties. There are undoubtedly unfortunate
aspects and results of this subdivision of work; they are
most glaring as well in other sciences as in medical science ;
but the law, divide et impera, is as predestined and inobvi-
able as gravitation, and to rail at it is utter fatuousness. It
is wiser to guide it rightly and utilize it shrewdly.
All critics say the specialist should enter upon special
work only after thorough training in general medicine, and
that is true ; but it goes without saying, and in its final
analysis it means that the schools must give a far more
thorough grounding in general medical essentials than they
do. If it means that every person must practice general
234 CONCERNING SPECIALISM.
medicine for ten years before taking up a specialty then
there is something to say on both sides of the question.
We are unable to see how the delivery of a thousand
women or the treatment of five hundred cases of typhoid
fever can much help one to be a better aurist, or bacteri-
ologist, or ophthalmologist. It is easy to demand much
of the young physician, ambitious, short-lived (ars longa,
vita brevis), and eager to be at his real life-work. He cer-
tainly should be consulted a little about it all. The advice
savors a little of the old maxim about learning to swim
without going near the water, or in another aspect it looks
like advising an experimentum in corpore vili ; but mistakes
in specialty-practice are hardly more expensive than those
in general practice. We are not advising the young gradu-
ate to plunge into a specialty at once ; we are contending
for the due weighing of circumstances, ability, training, and
all that.
And what does one mean by specialism ? Where will
one draw the line ? Should every family physician be also
a surgeon? Assuredly not! It is simply impossible.
It is to-day truer than ever that no man can serve two
masters, much less a dozen or two. Should every physi-
cian rely upon his own judgment as to refraction? Should
he treat obscure aural diseases? Should he be his own
bacteriologist ? Not in any case if he have a particle of
modesty, or honesty, or interest in his patient's health.
Beyond all question and despite all abuses, the rise of
specialism has been the condition of medical progress.
How many thousands, nay, millions, of people are there to-
day blessed with ocular health and ability to carry on the
duties of civilization by reason of the work of Graefe,
Helmholtz, Bonders, and their followers. Would any of
the discoveries in ophthalmology and their applications
have been made without the specialist? What has revolu-
tionized surgery but specialism ? What is now revolution-
CONCERNING SPECIALISM. 235
izing all medicine but the work of the specialist in bacteri-
ology? Has there been a single great discovery in
modern medicine that is not the work of the specialist, or
of men who, if living, would to-day be specialists ? Is
specialism not the absolute sine qua non of promised dis-
covery in the future !
Finally, mark it well, the family physician is now quite
as much a specialist as anybody else, and this whole pother
of discussion is a mere meaningless war of words and mis-
understandings. The general physician does not treat
more diseases, perhaps even less, than the physician who
confines himself to a single organ. In the progress or
process of subdivision the generalist has become the veri-
est specialist. Moreover, almost every disease has or may
have its effects upon every special organ, and no specialist
who ignores general diseases, and diseases of other organs,
will henceforth be able to hold "the pace" set for him by
his broader-minded and more comprehensive rivals. Thus
the evils of specialism evils that we acknowledge and
deplore are in a fair way of curing themselves. The way
as advised by high authorities should not be backward,
but on through ! Specialists will not, cannot renounce
their peculiar work, and become general physicians ; science
and humanity cry out against such an absurdity; the
way through is the right way. The specialist is already
becoming the general physician in the sense that he knows
the limits of his own knowledge, and does not try to do
what he cannot do, but advises consultation with those
who can and who do know. This also the specialist
family-physician is fast learning, and so he is broadening
also into general practice, and no longer puts " drugs of
which he knows little into a body of which he knows less,
for a disease of which he knows nothing."
Theoretically the essence of the controversy and of the
whole matter consists in the attainment of the vantage-
236 CONCERNING SPECIALISM.
ground of accurate knowledge of at least one organ, and
of the diseases of that organ. From this standpoint one
cannot worse but better survey the whole field of
medicine.
But the practical lesson of it all is that every one *'. e. t
every " specialist " shall learn to confine himself to the
work he is competent to do, and beyond that to advise
consultation with others more competent to treat certain
organs or diseases; and the advice to consult the specialist
family-physician has been, is, and will remain that very
frequently given by his coworker in other specialties.
MEDICINE AND CITY NOISES.*
Not long since a foolish gentleman, who preferred to
live in New York or not to live at all, committed suicide
rather than to longer endure the ear-splitting noise of the
bells of a neighboring church. In thousands of cases peo-
ple are being made ill, are committing slow suicide, or are
being painfully and slowly killed by useless city noises.
Noise, then, becomes a question of health and of medical
importance concerning which physicians should have a
word to say and a duty to perform.
Scientifically, our rebellion against the noise-makers is
founded upon the physiologic truth that rest is necessary
to health, and that over-stimulation or persistent stimula-
tion of any organ or of all organs is essentially pathogenic.
Herbert Spencer secured for himself a sad sort of freedom
from noise by a mechanic contrivance that held some
kind of soft plugs or stoppers in the external auditory
meatuses. If there were only some method whereby one
could at will shut out unwelcome sound, as one can shut
out the light from the eyes ; if some aurist could devise
an artificial method a la Spencer, one that would not injure
the ear, he would be a great benefactor to humanity. The
evil done the few people that would thereby possibly be
burned to death or otherwise injured would be small, as
compared with that of the many deaths and much sickness
due to noise.
Sociologically, the whole community has an unrecog-
nized duty as regards noise that rests upon a physiologic
* From the Medical News of August 26, 1893.
237
238 MEDICINE AND CITY NOISES.
and esthetic basis. Delicacy and accuracy of response to
a physiologic stimulus are the characteristic marks of per-
fection in an organism. Whatever prevents this is against
the welfare of society and progress. In this brutal noise-
making era, one of two things must follow the ceaseless
bruising of the mind by noise. Either the auditory mechan-
ism, and the nervous mechanism with which it is related,
that is, the whole mind, must become blunted in sensitive-
ness, crushed, and stupefied ; or it must react pathologic-
ally. People are, therefore, divisible into two classes :
those whose nervous systems and minds are becoming
mechanicalized, anesthetic, and brutalized, and those who,
thus failing to kill sense and mentality, develop disease-
reactions. The distinct agency of noise is to make us
either savage or sickly. Civilization, of which noise-mak-
ing is a decided component, is thus bearing in its bosom a
self-poison, to its own undoing. We are losing all refine-
ment and delicacy of the senses and are reverting to the
condition of the barbarian whose senses had to be pounded
and whipped into reaction, or we are becoming neurotic,
hysteric, and neurasthenic. Generally and progressively,
" Society " is either a crowd of the mentally stupid or of
the hyperesthetically morbid, and social amusement is be-
coming a game of battering and spurring jaded senses, or
of ministering to sense-diseases.
In the narrowest sense, we are medically bound to re-
duce the amount of noise-making, not only because noise
engenders disease, but also because it prevents the cure of
disease, or aggravates disease, very often, indeed, is the
immediate cause of death. In an American city like Phila-
delphia there are something like 3000 needless deaths, and
the equivalent of 6000 years of needless illness each year.
What proportion of this waste of life is due to noise, it is,
of course, impossible to say, but certainly a considerable
proportion is chargeable to it. The sick are in private
MEDICINE AND CITY NOISES. 239
houses scattered all through the city, or in hospitals that
are often located in the most densely crowded portions.
Every physician knows how necessary quietness is to the
sick, and how often noise has been the last baneful influence
that the weakened organism could not resist, and thus the
controlling and distinctive cause of failure to cure.
The recklessness of production and the unnecessariness
of modern city noises are disgustingly astonishing. The
worst of it is that they are even kept up throughout the
night. If the night, at least, were kept quiet, and the
organism were thus given periods of repose, it would not
be so impossible to preserve normality of sense-reaction
and sanity of mental reaction. In Philadelphia one or a
dozen drunken brawlers may make the night hideous with
howl and curse and obscenity. Remonstrance with the
policeman elicits a smile, with ill-concealed contempt for
the remonstrant as a crank, and the avowal that he has no
authority to interfere. In Philadelphia it is illegal for
locomotive-engineers to blow whistles, and yet all night
long sleep, at least in summer, is to healthy ears and minds
impossible by reason of this ear-splitting curse. Street-car
bells rung all the time (by horses or by wheels) are no
protection to the public, and yet the public submits to the
horrible nuisance. The laying of railway-tracks and the
paving of streets at night are only necessary for the ad-
vantage and profit of mercenary corporations, and yet the
authorities have no power, or do not assert it, to repress
the evil. If our freedom-loving American submits to the
dictation of his tyrant and master as to trolley-cars, his
master puts down the new tracks at night, with fiendish
noises, and will by and by run the cars with the still more
fiendish and ceaseless noises.
From whatever aspect the subject be considered, it seems
strange that people will submit to the indignities of the
noise-makers. A thousand are outraged in order that one
240 MEDICINE AND CITY NOISES.
or a few may possibly be benefited. The shrieking of
whistles and the ringing of bells to notify workmen to
stop or to start work is an instance in point. Everybody
has a watch or a clock at hand. Why, then, blow the
whistles ? Why, also, thunder or jangle bells to tell people
that should be asleep what o'clock it is during the night ?
The 10 per cent, of people who go to church must be
warned by bells ; but have the 90 per cent, no rights who
do not need or heed ? and what about the sick ? The
milkman arouses a whole neighborhood in delivering a
quart of milk. The cartmen, the peddlers, the hawkers,
the ragmen, etc., bawl and howl to be heard half a mile
away if some other greater noise near by do not drown
their voices. There are persons that think it strange that
barking dogs and crowing roosters in a city should be
objected to.
All noises may be divided into the necessary, the par-
tially necessary, and the wholly superfluous. The makers
of the last class of noises should be proceeded against in
the interests of the public health by all the forces and with
all the vigor at the command of physicians. And this by
all odds is the largest and most injurious class of noises.
Here is a worl* ready for the Associations for the Public
Good. There is something particularly exasperating and
baneful about the unnecessary noise in the very fact of its
unnecessariness. Let all the loafing rowdies, howlers,
hawkers, whistle-blowers, bell-ringers, and the rest be
incontinently hushed, and especially if they carry on their
diabolism at night.
Concerning the class of partly preventable noises of
cities, the greater amount of them is connected with street
traffic, and here arises the great need of good, smooth
pavements. As with the strawberry, so it is with the as-
phalt pavement, doubtless a better one could have been
or may be invented, but doubtless it never has been in-
" MUSIC." 241
vented. It is incomprehensible that people should consent
to endure the torment arising from the stone and boulder
pavements, and seemingly designed, like African music,
for creating the most intolerable clatter possible. In addi-
tion to this aspect of the question, there is another reason
why, as physicians, we should do away with block and
cobblestone pavements : they are excellent culture-grounds
for lodging filth and disease-germs. The asphalt pave-
ment offers no such a nidus and can be easily flushed and
kept clean.
The degree and character of the civilization of a country
are indicated by the amount of unnecessary noise it endures,
and this is accurately gauged by the condition of the pave-
ments of its cities.
THE NOISOME NOISE OF UNMUSICAL MUSIC.
" The News is delighted with the responsive Amen ! in
many lay and medical journals and from personal corre-
spondents as regards its protest against the brutality of the
noise-makers. It is a pity that we should end with protest
only, and that legislative and police restriction cannot be
made effective. Let everybody appeal personally and by
letter to the proper administrative authorities and demand
that illegal noises shall be stopped, and that those that are
not absolutely forbidden shall be lessened. Medical socie-
ties should act as bodies and through committees to abate
these nuisances. The hours for sleep should be kept quiet
for the thousands of sleepers and not monopolized by the
half-dozen brawlers and howlers. There seems to be a
tacit understanding on the part of the police that anything
that a South-Sea Islander or an Oriental would call ' music '
242 " MUSIC."
must be sacred, no matter how execrable and ear-splitting
the din or the bawling. The police of Philadelphia would
not think of stopping a crew of drunken, singing rowdies, a
darkey band, a French-harp fiend, an organ-grinder, or an
accordion monomaniac from committing his crimes against
health, no matter if the iniquities are carried out in what
should be the stillness of Sunday or of the night. The air-
beaters and ear-bangers have it all their own way, and if a
lot of well-to-do folk meet together to eat and chat, they
set a worthy example by having a band to scrape and blow
musical sounds that not a single diner listens to for a sec-
ond and which forces him to roar and bellow at the top of
his voice to make his neighbor six inches away hear a
spoken word. ' What you talk about is music, but what
you like is noise,' said a wise man to his pupil, and it is
true here and to-day." [Medical News, September 9, 1893.]
MEDICAL ASPECTS OF LIFE INSURANCE.*
Every thoroughgoing Darwinian, Spencer chief among
all, is never weary of pointing out that modern civilization
and sentimentalism works to the survival of the unfit, thus
contradicting the plain trend of the ordinary laws of bio-
logic evolution. Devolution is in this way set against
evolution, and instead of progressively strengthening and
hardening the race, there are subtle forces sapping the
vitality and rendering the more luxurious or civilized
unfit for competition with the sturdier and biogenetically
more obedient races. The great growth of civilized luxury
is thus working to produce an ever-increasing army of
social parasites, who, without aim or ability, live but to
enjoy themselves, and make a miserable failure even of
that. Indiscriminate charity, say the evolutionists, compli-
cates the problem and exaggerates the natural supply of
hangers-on, while the weak, the stunted, the diseased, the
defectives of a thousand types, are nursed and coddled by
protection and kindness to propagate their like, and thus
handicap both the present and the future in the struggle
for existence that is said to underlie all genuine elevation
or even persistence of stock. Looked at from this stand-
point exclusively, it has been contended that medicine
itself is guilty of sustaining those in half-life, who, having
received their death sentence, postpone the execution, use-
less retainers, pensioners, and camp-followers of the much-
enduring, hard-pressed army of civilization. It has indeed
been contended that had Koch succeeded instead of failing
* From the Medical News, January 23, 1892.
243
244 LIFE INSURANCE.
to find an effective tuberculocide, he would thereby have
done the world the greatest conceivable injury in licensing
the weak-lunged, narrow-chested, deoxygenated failures to
become the breeders of the coming race.
Now, however false and one-sided these views may be,
and false and exaggerated we believe them, it is still always
advisable to " heed the other opinion," know it, estimate it
at its proper value, and meet it with logic and valor. We
may shudder at the awful chasm such an unmoral and
brutal lifting of the clouds discloses at our feet, but if the
deep is there, the shudder itself renders us less steady of
foot, and less possessed of aplomb. Happily, the confuta-
tion of this view is easy. If none other existed, the fact
is patent that the workman's children are better breeders
than those of the nabob. Parasitism begets in men de-
bauchery and physiologic degradation ; in women, weak-
ness, hysteria, and general good-for-nothingness. The
children of the rich are " poor risks."
This, however, is but a too long preamble of a thought
as to life insurance and the role that it is coming to play in
our modern life. Is it, like luxury and vice, one of the
great powers reversing the law of evolution and working to
race deterioration ?
There can be no discussion as to the fact that hygiene,
sanitation, increased comfort, and medical science have
contributed to a lengthening of the average human life.
But the life-insurance rates of premium continue so high
that despite palatial offices, opera-bouffe salaries, and all
that, it becomes a puzzle to presidents and boards what to
do with the enormous surpluses constantly increasing.
Again, medical science has grown so shrewd that coming
death may be long foreseen. Doubtful risks are refused,
and thus the insured are those most certain-of long life.
Risk is thus reduced to a minimum and the surplus natu-
rally grows.
LIFE INSURANCE. 245
The crux of the argument is reached when from the
foregoing premises it is logically seen that with high pre-
miums only the well-to-do and the long-to-live can insure.
The poor those on sentimental or religious grounds most
needing insurance cannot afford insurance, and the un-
healthy, or those of suspicious heredity or occupation
precisely those again that, from sympathetic or ethical
reasons, should be most and best insured cannot pass the
examinations. Those children of the deceased parents
who were rich enough and healthy enough to insure are
left with a competence that gives them a solid locus standi
on the globe, and permits them again and always to multi-
ply ; whilst the poor workman and the " poor risk " who
had neither the money nor the body to secure insurance
for their children, early leave them sadly and doubly handi-
capped in the race of life.
Such, undoubtedly, has been the influence in the past.
Need it, or will it be so in the future ? Proofs are begin-
ning to multiply that an entire change of front and of pol-
icy is, or is to be, undertaken. Some form of socialism is
" in the air," fated to come. The life of the community is
above that of the individual.
Already several counteracting forces are at work :
i. The shame and crime of dishonest "graveyard,"
infant, and " get-rich-quick " insurance (or assurance) com-
panies cannot blind the discerning to the fact that mutual and
assessment companies, if properly watched and controlled,
can give, and do give, trustworthy insurance at one-half or
one-fourth the rates of the old companies. If, as need not
happen, the company stops to-morrow, there is no exodus
to Canada, and it has given value received up to date.
There seems no reason why a precise amount of insurance
should not be bought for a definite time, exactly as one
buys so much coffee, house rent, or a time loan. And
further, why should not the premium be dependent upon
246 LIFE INSURANCE.
or in proportion to the medically-estimated probability ot
life for each case ? At present it is either sheep or goats
two classes alone but just as we all are a little wicked
and a little good, so our chances of approaching death are
of all degrees, and ratable in proportion.
2. Many companies are so transforming their business
that it is becoming that of a savings-fund or investment
company, the death element an excluded, minor, or incon-
siderable one.
3. Many companies that will not break the rule, wink at
or whisper to their medical examiners to use not a little
discretion. Albuminuria is becoming quite " physiologi-
cal ; " a little cardiac hypertrophy, a slight mitral murmur,
a defective hereditary history, etc., are ignored. The
printed rules stand, but the personal equation is given much
play.
4. Companies are forming to insure those excluded by
the rigid medical examiners of the billion-surplus com-
panies, i. e., accepting more doubtful risks, whilst yet other
associations are forming to insure whoever will without
any medical examination whatever.
5. Governmental insurance and systematic generalized
pensioning is either under way or preparing to hoist anchor.
These and many more considerations that might be ad-
duced go to prove that " the bars are being let down." It
is felt that, taken as a nation, our people are paying for
their partial and unjustly classified insurance an excessive
rate, and receiving therefor an insurance that discriminates
unjustly between the classes and the masses. Individual-
ism in insurance must have limits, and the common health,
as well as the commonwealth, has its significance, duties,
and demands. The tendency to socialistic legislation, the
generalization, the extension of the pensioning system by
corporations and by government, government insurance
itself all these and more point to the fact that the health
LIFE INSURANCE. 247
and death of every member of the community is of interest
to every other member. Disease, if not self-interest, binds
us all together and makes our own well-being depend upon
that of every other. Preposterous as it may seem, the
rates of premium are higher for the healthy and rich be-
cause the poor and unhealthy are excluded. A strange
fact is coming to light: one of the richest of New York in-
surance companies, one that takes the most doubtful and
dangerous risks, has one of the lowest death rates. The
life companies will soon learn that popularizing, broaden-
ing, and generalizing, making less stringent their medical
examinations, will not only cheapen the premium, but
strengthen the company and multiply its power for good.
Thus, sooner or later, one sees the medical aspect of a
study, whatever it may be, comes uppermost. There
seems no doubt of the ability of companies to lower the
premium, or to lessen the rigidity of the medical examina-
tion, or to do both combined. As a skilled and directing
chief officer of these great powers of modern society, the
medical examiner for life insurance companies should use
his encouraging influence toward extending to those less
equipped with health or money the beneficent action of
the communal helping hand in time of sickness and death.
FOOT-BALL*
To one who is not bereft of reason and moderation by
the " rush-line " of a popular craze or fad, it is simply
astonishing to witness the excesses permitted nay, en-
couraged in the name of athletics and education by the
foot-ball enthusiasts.
Note, first, the clear trend of the whole affair toward
professionalism, including betting and gambling. It is
simply absurd to longer shut one's eyes to this fact.
Pseudoeducators and wild enthusiasts may deny or seek
to ignore it, but it is fast becoming an open secret that men
are making a livelihood by the game, that sometimes their
expenses in college are paid for the purpose of winning
match-games, and that betting on the results of the matches
is growing more and more common. Now, a frank, out-
and-out professionalism in athletics is not so bad a thing, if
the game be truly an athletic and hygienic one, and not
brutalizing to mind or body. But one who to any small
extent is aware of the way collegiate politics are becom-
ing bound up with semiprofessional foot-ball politics must
deplore the malevolent influence of the game upon modern
educational tendencies.
And, in the name of education what a farce ! Can any
sane man deny that in founding, endowing, and encourag-
ing institutions of learning, the object is to fit men for the
intellectual battles of life ? Can he deny that the training
and development of the muscular system, desirable as it is
or may be and there is only one thing that is more desir-
*From the Medical News of November, 1893.
248
FOOT- BALL. 249
able should be subordinated, as a feeder and supporter
to mental athletics? Finally, can it for a moment be
denied that the student who is a foot-ball enthusiast,
whether player or "howler," is nowadays giving a dispro-
portionate amount of his time and interest to the game
rather than to his studies? Does the collegiate "foot-ballist"
desire rather to stand at the head of his class, school, or
country, as the best-educated man, or to win the applause
of 20,000 spectators, and to have his hideous picture and
his biography spread before the readers of every daily
paper as one of the winning team in a match game ?
What do professors and educators mean who encourage
such a tendency? It is either an undignified renunciation
of their proper office and function in favor of the professor
of athletics and physical training (would it were even so
good a thing as that !), or it is a concession to a low type of
collegiate politics and to an irrational fashionable fad.
Do they not suspect that they are raising a ghost that
they cannot "lay" again? Wise educators are to-day
frightened at the influence of the foot-ball problem, and are
seeking earnestly to check the fatal tendency to rowdyish-
ness and coarseness following necessarily and closely upon
such practices and abuses of the game instinct.
We are well aware of the favorable statistics the
enthusiasts offer as to the influence of athletics on educa-
tion. There are two fallacies in them : i. Foot-ball is not
athletics, and the influence of this game will soon reduce
the good average as shown by and due to athletics proper.
2. The statistics are gathered and offered by the enthusiasts
of the game.
In the name of universal and of university gymnastics
what a farce ! Instead of carefully training each and every
student physiologically and systematically, so that his
bodily defects shall be corrected, and so that his body shall
be a supple, strong, and beautiful servant of the mind, there
22
250 FOOT-BALL.
is a concentration of all training upon one man out of a
hundred, for a special and not by any means beautiful
purpose. Ninety-nine let one do their exercising (except-
ing the vocal part !) for them, and we have the noteworthy
result vicarious athletics, or gymnastics by proxy. Ath-
letics by proxy can only be compared to religion by proxy
the plan of some religious sects that hire a few profes-
sionals to do their worship for them they, the passive
audience, watching the performance. The aim of educators,
so far as it relates to athletics, should be to give every
student a rounded, harmonious physical organization, not
to train a dozen or two dozen semiprofessionals (some-
times wholly professional except in name), hired, bribed,
or wheedled to attend the institution, to be a show-team,
and win matches in order to attract students to the institu-
tion. The college that has not a splendid gymnasium,
large enough for every one of its students, and a compulsory
system of physical training for each has little just claim
upon parents or the public. The wise father, other things
being equal, will send his son to the college that has the
best general gymnasium and the poorest record in winning
public athletic games.
In the name of esthetics what a farce ! What a
remarkable spectacle is that of a quilted, bepadded, dis-
heveled, long-haired, begrimed, scarred foot-ball hero who
finds glory in a savage's scrimmage in the mud! A sane
and healthy enthusiasm and love for athletic excellence
must have some artistic touch to it. How would the hero
of the games of classic Greece at the height of that nation's
splendid athletic development compare with our bruised
and dirty hero of the foot-ball field?
In the name of hygiene, physical and mental what a
farce! Last week near New York a young man's neck
was broken on the foot-ball field. The enthusiast sneers
when the game is called brutal, but in sober earnest is
FOOT-BALL. 251
prize fighting less brutal ? Doubtless foot-ball has killed
more persons than fisticuffs. The papers teem with
accounts of the physical injuries of the players after every
game. These young men are getting to be proud of their
injuries, their sprains, their battered faces, and wrenched
limbs. Is this not topsy-turvy ? Is this gymnastics ? If
so, it is inverted gymnastics on its head in the mud ! We
laugh at the outrageously perverted pride of the German
student who exhibits his chopped and mangled face as a
proof of glory instead of shame and we are going the
same road. Wise fathers are beginning to refuse their
sons permission to play a game that relies for its charm
upon a distinct reversion to a barbaric type of sport, in
which savagery, danger, and the lowest kind of physical
prowess are the alluring elements.
In the name of example to the young what a farce !
A game must be translated into the vernacular of the
street-urchin to illustrate clearly its possibility for evil.
The beautiful games of cricket and base-ball have, on the
whole, been a blessing to the country ; they are not brutal
they have large elements of skill and intellectuality in
them; they encourage suppleness and all-round develop-
ment of the body, of the senses, and of the mind. A
"scrub-game" by suburban boys, or even by street gamins,
does not make the players worse than they naturally are,
does not arouse all the fierce and brutal passions of the
savage nature, none too easily held in control even by the
best. But compare this with a foot-ball game by the same
half-civilized or quarter-civilized little savages, and one
sees quickly the influence for evil of apparently so simple
and small a thing as a game. If, governed by rigid rules
and umpires, the presence of a vast, refined audience, and
the possession by the players of good home-training,
education, and all that, the game results in charges and the
facts of " slugging," and in passionate enmities and rivalries,
252 FOOT-BALL.
what then is to be expected from its translation into the
conditions of the alley, the vacant lot of the city outskirts,
and " played " by the most unregenerate types of human
nature? Imitation is flattery usually but in this instance
the flattery is nauseating even to the flattered.
It is a cause of deep regret that we should approach the
ideal of Rome in our national sports, rather than that of
Greece, and it is especially significant when educators and
universities show this tendency. One would not expect
them to encourage gladiatorial rather than intellectual and
truly athletic contests.
Have we not more patriotism and originality than to
accept this worn-out, brutal old game second-hand from
England? Have we not enough intellect to put some true
" play," some ingenuity, and spontaneity into our national
sport? Have we not enough mind to introduce something
into play except " a secret code of signs," " undergraduate
rules," and a coarse scrimmage of a dozen bleeding,
bunched, and scuffling fellows sprawling in the mud?
If not in the name of general education, then in the
name of medical education ; if not in the name of moral-
ity, then in the name of medicine; if not in the name of
esthetics, then in the name of physiology; if not in the
name of social progress, then in the name of hygienic
progress it is time that we should command, Halt! The
game is un-American and absolutely opposed to the spirit
of true education, whether of the mind or of the body.
PROMISED FOOT-BALL REFORM.*
To one who can read between the lines, the actions and
arguments of the foot-ball advocates are furnishing a con-
* From the Medical News, January 13, 1894.
FOOT-BALL. 253
stant source of excellent amusement. They are bound to
take note of the arguments, moral, educational, and physi-
ologic, against the game as it has existed, but more espe-
cially are they forced to consider the profound wave of
popular indignation rising against past excesses. Instead
of a means of attraction of students it is quite possible
that the game may cause subtraction. In this dilemma a
way out has been found by reluctant acceptance and forced
advocacy of reform. Reform is promised, but the funny
part comes in when we note the ill-concealed disgust at the
nauseous dose. However, the critics of foot-ball excess
may rest satisfied with their work, if reform of the rules be
really brought about, and if it be such as to do away with
the evils of the game. This will be the critics' work, and
this is all they have wished. " Reform within the party "
was not tried spontaneously, and has only been promised
by force of compulsion, criticism, and popular feeling from
without. The critics may also point out that the specious-
ness of the logic so far offered in defense is apparent in the
fact that every line of the argument could be applied in
favor of boxing. Indeed, in the late magazine defenses of
the game every time the word foot-ball occurs it could be
replaced by the word glove-fighting with equal and even
with sounder logic. The difference of acceptance of the
logic consists solely in the fact that foot-ball is the fashion-
able fad of the day and prize-fighting is not. There will
never fail able, at least plenteous, defenses of the customs
and demands of the Zeitgeist. Every English Bishop, the
powers, votes, and logic of the Established Church (by
name, of Christ, and of Religion) arrayed themselves against
the abolition of slavery all of which does not affect the
fact that slavery was wrong, unchristian, and irreligious.
To flatter the Zeitgeist and " the powers that be " is pleasing
to that fickle and faithless tyrant, and, temporarily, very,
very profitable to the flatterer. But, again, flattery, ap-
254 FOOT-BALL.
plause, profit, and honor cannot alter the facts that, as car-
ried on of late, foot-ball has not been in the interests of
true athletics or genuine physiologic culture, and has been
very far from furthering the clear purposes of education
and of educational institutions. Hence when the advocates
of the game (however grudgingly and slurringly) acknowl-
edge the past abuses, and promise such reform as will do
away with these abuses, we warmly cry them welcome, and
beg pardon for any" excess of zeal " on our part. We are
all, it seems, in favor, and most heartily, too, of the best and
most perfect development of the human body ; but we pro-
test that this must be consistent with, nay, subordinated to,
the best and most perfect development of the human mind.
MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT AND USE THE
CONDITIONS OF HEALTH.*
It was, we believe, a saying of Pascal that the evils that
afflict mankind arise from an inability to sit still in a room
meaning thereby that in useless and ill-considered action
is to be found the origin of much tribulation, and that
calmly thinking out the best methods of action in advance
would obviate it. But the modern physician and hygienist
must often feel like reversing Pascal's mot, and saying that
the evils that afflict mankind or more truly womankind
(the same thing, however !) come mainly from sitting still
in a room. We mean by this that the great and the
increasing prevalence of sedentary and indoor occupations
inflicted on human bodies is already ripening a wretched
source of physical (and hence psychic and moral) suffering.
If there is any truth at all in evolution it is that animal and
human life and progress have always been conditioned
upon the exercise of the muscular system, that function
precedes and begets structure, and that disuse leads to
atrophy and death.
The disuse of the muscular system that is a result of
civilization is the prolific source of much of the disease of
modern life and an illustration of the biologic law. All the
discoveries of modern medicine and science, every bacteri-
ologic truth, every known etiology of disease, simply con-
firms the truth that, together with cleanliness, muscular
health and development are the necessary conditions of
freedom from disease, and that there is no health of the
muscles without use of the muscles. The bacillus of
* From the Medical News, November 1 8, 1893.
255
256 MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT AND HEALTH.
tuberculosis has no power of harm to a person with proper
thoracic and pulmonary expansion and development. All
" consumption cures " except this one are useless, and this
with some exceptions is effective in prophylaxis or cure.
There is hardly a disease that does not equally well illus-
trate this truth.
What is civilization doing with this law ? It is crowding
people into huge cities, where every means of artificial
locomotion, every labor-saving apparatus, and every neces-
sity of business are all working to the same end of inactive
muscles. From the weak, half-atrophied muscles naturally
follow the defective digestion and assimilation of food, and
the over-wrought hyperesthetic morbid nervous system,
ever vainly seeking to undo and to right the evils of
denutrition, hypernutrition, and muscular inactivity. Our
food is premasticated and we are becoming edentulous,
and from the advertisements of predigested foods it would
appear that we shall soon have no need of a private stom-
ach, liver, or pancreas, because we can and should buy
these products from the slaughter-house and laboratory,
and thus save personal wear and tear. It is in the line of
the much expounded physiologic division of labor. But
that line logically and inevitably ends in the condition of
some slave-holding ants that cannot move, and unless fed
by their slaves die of starvation even when food is before
them. Of course, we already have analogues of these
little organisms in the increasing horde of urban hysterics,
neurasthenics, roues, and tramps of various sorts, both
aristocratic and ragged.
And lastly, comes the sham-science that would supply
the want of healthy vital powers of all kinds, cerebral,
muscular, testicular, and what-not, burned out by abuse or
atrophied by disuse, by means of squirting into the veins
or under the skin some of the supposed vital, but really
dead and inert, juices of animals.
MUSCULAR DEVELOPMENT AND HEALTH. 257
And even our frantic attempts to remedy the evil of
muscular inactivity, with its spawn of varied disease, are
themselves morbid, and sometimes serve to increase the
evil. This fact becomes plain in our rage for athletics by
proxy, and in the steady trend of athletic games toward
professionalism and newspaper notoriety, sensationalism,
to the encouragement of betting, and to the more brutal
sorts of arena combats.
So far as cities are concerned, one of the most crying of
evils is over-pressure of school-children. Every physician
has daily before his eyes the sad results, and he knows
that instead of medicine the poor little body needs play and
exercise, and out-of-door air and sunshine. All of the
book-cramming that can be jammed into them will never
compensate for the pallor, the pipe-stem legs, the narrow
chests, and the stunted or abnormal growth.
The city child needs what it cannot have, country life.
Failing in this it should be supplied with abundant, health-
ful gymnasium exercise, under the careful eye of expert
and discriminating teachers of hygiene and physiologic de-
velopment.
All of this is doubly true as regards girls and women.
Fashion and house-incarceration and wealth are reducing
our women to sad specimens of bodily and muscular ill-
health, flabbiness, and undevelopment. Either publicly,
or in private to parents, every physician can point out the
truth, and by his advice may help to avert the crop of
coming disease or, in some degree, to cure the pathetic
instances that fall under his care.
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.*
Perhaps you feel surprised and doubtful as to the exist-
ence of any medical duty you may owe, either to your-
selves or to your fellows. You probably are inwardly say-
ing that you know nothing about medicine, and that you
employ a physician to attend to medical matters.
My purpose to-night is to impress upon you the truth
that each one of you has many and very important medi-
cal duties, and that you must no longer shirk them, because
these duties are most imperative and vital to the lives of
each and every one. The medical profession is struggling
under the Atlantean world of deputed responsibility you
have thrust upon its shoulders, but the labor is hard and
the result less successful because of your persistence in
vicariously ridding yourselves of the duty. In politics, all
good citizens are convinced that leaving Government and
Legislation to professional politicians and bosses is highly
immoral and ineffective it is political crime and leads to
the death of patriotism. So in medicine you must not turn
your own work unquestioningly over to the medical bosses,
but must see to a large part of it yourselves; you must at
least strengthen the power of those who are able to be
trusted with medical office-holding, and must destroy the
power of the corrupt bosses. In other words, you must
personally attend the primaries.
Our medical duties, like any duties, do not refer alone to
ourselves or to our families. The public health is your
* An Address delivered before the Unitarian Club of Philadelphia, February
II, 1892.
258
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 259
health. The community is a vast family, and the possibil-
ity of disease and death unites us in one common bond of
self-interest. If each of us did our duty in the prevention
of disease, the average life would be lengthened, life-insur-
ance premiums would be less by a half, and the friction, sin,
sorrow, and vice of life immeasurably reduced.
One of our medical duties of which you are most shame-
fully neglectful is lack of helpful sympathy with the medi-
cal profession. Here is a body of men, the like of which
in devotion and self-sacrifice to the interests of society has
hardly ever been seen. Assuredly nothing like the specta-
cle exists to-day in any other equally large class of men.
In a recent novel Robert Louis Stevenson says : " There
are men who stand above the common herd, the soldier, the
sailor, and the shepherd unfrequently ; the artist rarely ;
rarer still the clergyman ; the physician almost as a rule."
In Philadelphia there are besides the private cases annually
treated by physicians, about half a million public cases of
disease among the poor (and many that are not poor, alas !)
for absolutely nothing. Every hospital of the land is
carried on by the unpaid labor of physicians. Are there
twenty-five ; is there one great institution, or one ever so
little institution, where poor folks can go and get legal
advice, counsel, and help, gratis ? Do your tailors furnish
people with clothes for nothing ? If you get married or
die, your mininster is paid, and rightly so, for his labor.
Far more than this, scientific medical men are working, not
only to cure, but with undaunted, tireless zeal, to prevent
disease. Whilst almost all the rich are forming plots,
" combines," and " trusts " to increase their share of the
commonwealth, and to magnify their power, whilst the
tradesmen and mechanics and laborers of every kind are
forming unions and trade-guilds to protect themselves, the
medical profession not only forms no union, no self-protect-
ing guild, but is laboring heroically to render itself useless
260 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
and occupationless. Now, despite this splendid unsel-
fishness and zeal for your welfare, how do you treat
the profession ? You cultivate and support quackery,
which is one of the curses of civilization, and which in in-
juring the profession slightly, does the community infinitely
more harm. The newspapers are filled with quack adver-
tisers, bent only on getting money, without medical knowl-
edge, caring nothing, knowing nothing, about curing.
You support all this, because you allow servants, family, or
friends to patronize these wretches. Sectarianism in medi-
cine, a moral and medical sin, is finally your work. Not
only this, but of the regular medical profession you too
often prefer the quack in the profession to the better man.
If you see in the daily papers an account, a " reading
notice," of some miraculous operation performed by some
sneaking advertiser in the profession, or some pompous
nonsense about professional matters, you think this must be
a very smart man, and when ill, you will go to him. You
do not think that physicians who do these things have
directly or indirectly been in collusion with the newspaper
reporter, that they are advertisers and quacks, whose pro-
fessional opinion is scientifically valueless.
Moreover, whenever, to protect you from their scoun-
drelism, the medical profession tries to get laws passed
against charlatans, laws to stop their knaveries, laws to
elevate the medical profession and keep out of it the ill-
educated and the unfitted, you do not help us, but allow
the interested and combined hordes of quacks to so
intimidate your legislators that they fear to vote for de-
cency.
Lastly, you allow the patent-medicine outrage to flourish,
to control legislation, to poison your bodies and pollute
your health, and befoul every newspaper, barn, house, fence,
and field with beastly advertisements.
Some day the darling child of your own life sickens and
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 261
dies, or recovers to become a physical weakling and
sufferer. If you ever come to realize that this was because
you did not guard against tuberculous or otherwise diseased
milk and meat, you then realize that you have shirked a
medical duty or, if you please, a medical self-interest,
because self-interest and duty are often synonymous. If
you find the poison of subtle disease striking down yourself
or friends, you again may come to know of a medical duty
you have forgotten of preventing typhoid fever or other
contagious disease by proper drainage and sanitary meas-
ures. A hundred such illustrations readily occur to you,
now that you think of the question.
It is a strange fact that people cleanly in some things are
filthy in others. The medical motive may come in play
when the motive of cleanliness has been wholly forgotten.
Hence it is that some people who seem to care nothing for
certain kinds of filthiness, may come to care for the possible
disease that often accompanies the filth. For example, I
never go on the street that I am not nauseated and shocked
to see some well-dressed, or rather expensively and poorly-
dressed, woman sweeping the trail of her dress through pol-
lution and indescribable street-deposits. She does not seem
to care for the nastiness of it, but if she could realize that she
may be bringing home with her some of the most horrible and
deadly germs of disease, to be dried and scattered over her
home, to be breathed by her family, and perhaps to fatally
poison bodily life if she knew this as physicians know it,
she would certainly not do it. One other little example :
On coming to Philadelphia, my wife and I were maddened
every market-day by being forced to buy and have brought
home fowls long dead, but with the intestinal filth still
polluting the flesh. Bacteriologists know what a breeding-
ground of pathogenic bacteria and toxic ptomains and
leucomains the digestive organs of an animal are. Why
in the name of decency you will allow your market-men
262 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
to so humbug and doubly cheat you, I cannot understand.
Demand that your poultry be " drawn " before buying it.
You see I am dead in earnest, and propose being as
intensely practical. There is no use in mincing words.
I would like to curse and ridicule the corset, but it's no
use. Why women will do so, is beyond the reason of man.
It is hideous and deadly. Every man whom they think
they are pleasing by crushing lungs, liver, and pelvic
organs, is in reality disgusted by the wasp -waist. With-
out it the medical profession would soon find itself much
out of work, yet, how we do hate it!
And so I could wander on with a thousand illustrations.
Every article of dress, almost every article of food bought,
the water you drink, has a medical significance. The way
food is cooked and the way it is eaten, certainly have. The
way you sit in reading, and how you hold your book, may
mean years of ocular suffering and pain. Out of the
myriad of things I could and would like to scold about, let
me choose more specifically two or three and go a little
into details.
Take the milk brought to your breakfast table. You
may never have thought of this, but there are a hundred
medical problems involved in the milk-supply. In not
one of these vitally important problems have you taken as
much of an interest as you have in two trivial and silly
things. You have been worried and angered by the milk-
man's knavery in watering his milk, but if he used pure
water, it was a small affair compared to other things.
You should have seen to many things before the pump-
handle. The second source of your vexation has doubtless
been the price of the milk. You have been unwilling to
pay ten cents a quart, when a little consideration would
have shown you that the best pure milk from rightly-bred
and properly-fed and well-cared-for cows cannot be deliv-
ered to you for less than fifteen or twenty cents a quart.
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 263
You have forced your dairyman to be slovenly, to give
you dirty, diseased, and diluted milk. Having done so,
you turn about and abuse him for what you have demanded
and commanded. To start and reform in this matter, 25 to
50 families might join together and agree to give some
farmer 15 or 20 cents for milk supplied under proper con-
ditions. In Baltimore a sanitary milk company with a capi-
tal of $100,000 has been formed, rigid inspection of the
herds as to health, stabling, milking, and handling the milk
being the objects aimed at. The herd must not be of the
often tuberculous and diseased monstrosity, the Jersey, or
other highly-bred cows, but the average animal of fair breed-
ing. Many safeguards, all expensive, as to water, food,
stabling, must be observed. The milk is not healthy at cer-
tain seasons of the cow's life. The animal must be bedded,
curried, kept clean with as much scrupulousness as if she
were a blooded race-horse. The cows that now secrete your
milk, live, lie in, and all their lives are covered with filth.
The milker is dirty, often infectiously diseased, and the milk-
ing often dirty. Persons recovering from scarlet fever, in
milking a cow have been known to infect the milk and thus
give the disease to persons using milk. The milk-vessels
often have not been scalded. The milk should be brought
to you, if possible, in an hour or two after the milking,
having been quickly cooled, and kept at a low temperature,
in sweet, hermetically sealed glass vessels, these immedi-
ately emptied, and immediately boiled, dried, and again
scalded until refilled. The diseased, old, and impure milk
you are now using should be sterilized, and you should
look in some day at the cellars and back rooms of your
milkman when he isn't expecting you, and see how the
vessels are cleaned, or not cleaned, and what fine chances
you have to give your babies tubercle-bacilli and poison
them with the impurities of the simplest and most neces-
sary of all foods. A thimbleful of Boston milk contains
*6 4 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
on the average 2,335,500 bacteria, the Charleston samples
over four million, the North-end only three-quarters of a
million. These samples were taken directly from the
wagons. But the average number of bacteria in grocery
samples (when the milk stood longer and was dirty) was
4,557,000 per cubic centimeter. The lowest number in
any sample was 30,600. In Halle, Germany, as many as
30,000,000 have been found. The average of American
cities is estimated to be at least one million. For nursing
infants requiring cow's milk, there are a great many special
precautions and rules to follow to avoid disease.
But you will object that you have no time to attend to
all these matters, and quickly will come the answering
question, " Why don't you hire and commission some one
to do it ? " " Oh ! but we have a Board of Health to
attend to that." " Have you, indeed ? And you don't pay
its members a cent. Would you give your life to attend-
ing to drains, and cess-pools, and diseased milk, and bad
meat, and preventing infectious diseases, and all that, for
nothing, absolutely nothing?" Take milk again; the
only genuine reform will consist in systematic, scientific
examination and ordering of the dairy farms and herds by
public officers, well-paid and intellectually equipped.
Typhoid fever, scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, and
perhaps other diseases, may be and are brought to your
homes in milk. The evil must be attacked at its source.
If the President of the Board of Health should go before
Councils and ask for an appropriation for properly inspect-
ing and regulating dairy farms, would he get it ? You
should not sleep to-night until you write your Councilmen
urging them to make such an appropriation and many
others also. Time and time again Councilmen were asked,
by the Philadelphia Board of Health, for appropriations
for city milk inspectors. There were ten or twenty millions
of dollars for a marble palace for city officers, but not ten
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 265
dollars to protect the lives and health of the people. After
a dozen years of struggle against the milkmen, their
attorneys and friends, a wee-bit of an appropriation and a
half-starved department with insufficient funds have been
secured. The work cannot be half done, but already your
milk is far better in quality, and there is somewhat less
danger of deadly disease being in it. But ten or fifteen
men are needed instead of five, and you should urge your
Councilmen to provide them. If you estimate a human
life at its average value according to average life-length
and average wages, the community would save millions by
appropriating money liberally for inspection of dairy farms,
milk, etc.
The same lesson is taught by the need of meat inspec-
tion. Cattle with tuberculosis and actinomycosis are killed
in this city and you are possibly eating the meat. Up to
now, you, Mr. and Mrs. Public, would not vote a cent for
stopping this. In Berlin they have nearly 300 men con-
stantly employed to examine all meat offered for sale and
pronounce upon its healthiness. In democratic Philadel-
phia, up to a few weeks ago, you had not one man. I
learn that from January ist, appropriation has been made
for three inspectors. At least 25 are needed, so large is
the city, in order to adequately do the work.
To show you how great is the need, let me tell you that
within a month or two a few men, unpaid, and moved only
by the public good, have with little search arrested 25
butchers for selling diseased meat and bound them over in
$800 bail for future trial. A frightfully aggravating fact
about this question is that cattle shipped here for export to
other countries are examined by the U. S. Government
Inspectors, who condemn the diseased cattle, and will not
permit their shipment. These diseased cattle, however, it
seems, are quite good enough for you, so they are killed
and you buy the meat that you are ashamed to ship abroad.
23
266 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
Was ever anything more opera-bouffe and disgusting at
once? If you should ask why, as in the case of milk we
must go to the dairy-farm, we do not again go to ihefons
ef origo mali, and at the West stop the shipment of diseased
cattle altogether, the answer is quick and sharp : Because
you and your servant-masters, your legislators, have failed
in your medical duty. Politicians have no time to attend
to the welfare of the public business ; they have enough to
do to attend to their own vulgarly called, " feathering
their own nest." The live-stock commissioners of Illinois
have tried to prevent the sale of diseased cattle in the Chi-
cago market, but immediately a billion-dollar Whisky
Trust, with its billion distillery-slop-fed cattle, opposes,
fights the commissioners in court, and beats them. The
people must eat diseased meat or the Whisky Ring will not
make so much money.
Frankly, one begins to wonder if democracy is the best
form of government after all.
As to disinfection, you allow for a city of a million of
inhabitants only enough money to pay the small salary of
one man. But every additional agent you would add, say
up to a dozen, would save you money in physicians' fees
and undertakers' bills, and would save ten or a hundred
times the salaries in lost time, lost health, and lost life.
No ward wants the Municipal Hospital for infectious
diseases within its limits, and so there is a tendency to
starve it out, and it is even advised to shut it up. In time
of peace, I mean when no epidemic disease is raging,
it has a limited but still very necessary usefulness, but let
war break out, let an epidemic of small-pox or cholera
come, and without the municipal hospital the calamity
would be appalling. What kind of a general is he that
dismantles his harbor-forts in time of peace?
The allusion to small-pox brings to mind the fact that
during the last ten years (1880-1890) there have been in
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 267
Philadelphia 1950 deaths due to this wholly preventable
disease. When a railway watchman by carelessness causes
a collision, and a dozen persons are killed, you are justly
horrified, but when 1950 people are killed by your careless-
ness, you are not at all concerned about it. Have you
been vaccinated or revaccinated within the last six years ?
Are you seeing to it that every member of your family,
your servants and friends, are revaccinated every few
years ? If you are not, do not blame the brakeman.
You perhaps think measles a slight ailment, that is not
very dangerous, but 957 deaths from it are chronicled in
this city in the past ten years. A large proportion of these
deaths were needless, and could have been obviated by
proper precautions.
Scarlet fever you know as a more serious disease, but
you may be surprised to learn that it has caused 3713
deaths in ten years.
What will you say, then, to the more frightful fact that
in the same time there have been 6583 deaths due to diph-
theria ?
The sad thing about the majority of all these deaths is
that they need not have been. They were so much life
wasted by carelessness. These are typical examples of in-
fectious or contagious diseases, diseases the germs of
which are carried in some careless, negligent way from one
sick person to another well person. Proper foresight and
care would have prevented very many, if not most, of these
cases of sickness and death. When such diseases appear
in your family, you must at once isolate the patient, i. e.,
prevent visits to the house, keep your children from school,
and the entire family from visiting. You should not even
use library books, as these carry to the next borrower the
germs of the disease. Everything coming from the sick-
room must be disinfected, and after the illness is past, the
268 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
whole room and contents must be disinfected according to
the orders of the physician or of the Board of Health.
Typhoid fever, of which in Philadelphia 6607 in ten
years have died, is often communicated by polluted water,
and yet we are drinking water into which the sewage of
several hundred thousand people has been drained. The
wonder is that we have so little typhoid fever and other
zymotic diseases.
It is better to resort to an adequate source of water
where the population is sparse and likely to remain so,
than to spend vast sums of money in removing impurities
by filtration, etc. The tendency is for the water to become
more and more impure as the population increases. Sub-
siding reservoirs and filtration-works are a present neces-
sity, but they should be so constructed as to be utilized
when the source of supply is changed.
All filth should be removed as promptly as possible be-
yond the city limits without becoming a nuisance at the
place of disposal. Sewers should be reconstructed in ac-
cordance with modern engineering practice. They should
be self-cleansing and not depositories of filth. The Schuyl-
kill below the dam, lying between two populated parts of
the city, is the receptacle of a vast amount of sewage. For
hours each day the sewage is held back by the tide, caus-
ing deposits in the bed of the river and foulness of the
stream. At the receding tide, deposits take place on the
low shores in the lower parts of the city, causing unhealthy
effluvia. To remedy this and keep the river pure, all sew-
age now entering the Schuylkill should be carried below
the city and discharged only at the ebb of the tide. Great
sums of money under skilled scientific guidance should be
spent in constructing intercepting sewers. While we are
thus breeding the germs of disease with our wasted sew-
age, the land is being exhausted of phosphatic salts and
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 269
ammonia, the very element that we throw away with sew-
age. The nonutilization of sewage is both a financial sin
and a moral sin. Bacteria, which the Bible calls " the
armies of the living God," are produced by the unutilized
sewage. When we do wrong, God has a multitude of
ways of punishing us, and among these the beneficent
microorganism is most powerful and patent.
The cremation of garbage is a much- needed sanitary re-
form. The present system causes great nuisances by im-
proper disposal, and by collecting swine within the city
limits.
Intramural interment is practiced to a large extent. It
should be prohibited in built-up parts of the city, and after
a number of years an opportunity should be offered to
remove the bodies, and the burial grounds should be
turned into parks.
An important sanitary reform is the establishment of
mortuaries throughout the city for the benefit of the poor
and others. The poor keep the bodies of deceased rela-
tives in their crowded apartments in the midst of the living.
Bodies could be taken to the mortuaries to await the fu-
neral service, and friends could assemble there, dispersing
after the ceremony, and thus save the expense of the fu-
neral procession as well as relieve the home of serious dis-
advantages.
People should be instructed in the management of
infants, especially during the hot season, and such instruc-
tion would be the means of reducing infant mortality.
Such institutions as the Children's Country-week and the
Sanitarium, are of great aid in this direction. More than
125,000 children and care-takers visited the Sanitarium in
the summer of 1891. A great amount of sickness, suffer-
ing, and death were doubtless prevented by this means,
and it is worthy of most liberal support.
A smooth, impervious, noiseless pavement is greatly
270 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
needed. Its advantages would be cleanliness of surface
and soil, comfort in riding, and especially riddance of the
noise-nuisance so wearing on the nerves of most people,
and that beyond question is lessening the average duration
of life.
We have now thousands of acres of parks, miles away
from the crowded city, parks for the rich, or that the poor
can only use a few days of the year. What is sadly needed
is many small parks scattered all through the denser parts
of the city, little parks for the daily use of children, and so
near the houses of the poor that they can be reached in a
few minutes.
Rapid transit should be urged as an important sanitary
measure. Tired workmen and women and children are
obliged every day to stand in crowded cars while breathing
lifeless and even fetid air. Disease is constantly being
propagated under these conditions.
Everybody should protest against the common, disgust-
ing, and unnecessary habit of spitting in public places,
public vehicles, rooms, etc. It is now indubitably estab-
lished that the sputum of consumptives is a great means of
conveying the bacilli to others ; soon dried, the dust is
carried by the wind or by the dress-trail to lungs that are
the breeding-ground it seeks.
Public bath-houses for " the great unwashed " are
urgently needed. Not only bathing pools for use in the
summer time, but especially public bathing establishments,
where the year round the poor can bathe for a small sum.
I do not understand why some moderately rich man does
not immortalize himself, and justly, nobly so, by construct-
ing people's baths after the models so successful in New
York.
There should be established, also, public wash-houses,
where for a moderate sum the poor can take their clothes
and cleanse them by their own labor and with the aid of
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 271
labor-saving appliances. It encourages cleanliness, relieves
the family of the disadvantages under which they labor in
their crowded houses, etc.
I have left, for the sake of emphasis, the consideration of
tuberculosis or consumption. Fix it in your memories
that in Philadelphia, in ten years, 27,142 people have died
of this disease. There are many ways in which the tough
and prolific germs of this most deadly of all diseases are
conveyed from one person to another. There can be little
doubt that the milk from tuberculous cows, or by its con-
tamination in handling, is often the means of the transfer.
I have emphasized the milk-danger enough. The meat
from tuberculous animals may also bring the contagion.
Hence the urgent necessity of the thorough cooking of all
meat. However fashionable it may be to eat under-done
meat, do not you be thus fashionable. There seems to be
little danger of the transfer of the bacillus from the phthisi-
cal patient to another person except by means of the
sputum. This should never be allowed to dry. It should
at once be disinfected or burned.
But the preparation of the soil is quite as important as
the planting of the seed. There are probably thousands
of the bacilli of consumption in the lungs and digestive
tracts of each of us this minute. We are breathing and
eating them every day. But they germinate, grow, or
live only in certain soils ; they develop only in the lungs
and organs of certain persons. Just why this is so, is a
little hard to explain, but beyond question, besides heredi-
tary tendency thereto, it is in great part due to undeveloped
lungs, insufficient chest-exercise and development, inade-
quate oxygenization of the blood. We cramp our lungs
with tight clothes, sit too much, live too much indoors, and
all that.
Almost all wild animals die of consumption in captivity,
but never die of the disease in their native habitat. We
272 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
are all wild animals in captivity to civilization. According
to the researches of Cornet, almost fifty per cent, of all
deaths in prisons are due to tuberculous disease. Outside
of prisons only about ten per cent, die of this disease.
The inference is obvious. A famous old physician never
failed to cure his consumptive patients if he could get them
to take his medicine twenty-five miles of horse-back
riding every day. Consumptives get well when sent to
high altitudes or to mild climates, where they live in the
open air and where respiration with chest-expansion and
exercise is inevitable. The lesson is clear : dress and train
the young in more natural ways of breathing and living;
let there be less schooling, less study, and less reading,
more light gymnastics, more open-air life, and more healthy
animality.
I have hardly time even to mention the evils that are
due to ill-ventilation of houses, of sleeping-rooms, and
especially of the theaters and public halls. I cannot touch
the evils connected with street-cleaning or noncleaning.
I wish I might also pitch into the shame of the adultera-
tion of medicines a large proportion of the drugs of the
ordinary drug-store being impure. I am also prevented
from discussing the harmful effects on health and life of
certain handicrafts, methods of work, etc. ; the subtle and
injurious effects of certain trade monopolies, trusts, and
" combines," in raising the price of many necessaries of
the poor, e. g., of McKinleyed wool, which means shoddy
wool, cotton instead of woolen clothing, which means dis-
ease and increased death-rate. Failure in school hygiene
is accountable for much ill-health in after-life ; the selling
of spectacles by opticians without medical advice and pre-
scription, a thing that should be forbidden by law, is
doing vast injury to the community. And, finally, more
important than any of these things, I regret being forced
to omit discussion of the blood-curdling horror of drink,
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 273
dealing death everywhere, corrupting the bodies, brains,
and souls of men, shortening and hardening the lives of us
all, whether drinkers or not.
The death-rate is the registering index of the whole
matter, though figures of this kind have to be used with
intelligence and judgment in order not to tell lies. In New
York three persons more per thousand die every year than
just over the river in Brooklyn. Other things being equal,
the greater the crowding, the greater the death-rate.
Bearing this in mind, weigh well the fact that with all the
frightful misery and crowding and squalor to be found in
London, a city of five million inhabitants, its death-rate is
nevertheless about four per thousand less than that of New
York. This means that if London had the same mortality
as New York, 20,000 more people would die each year than
do die.
When we come to Philadelphia, we at once find the
excellent results due to the fact that ours is a city of homes ;
the crowd-diseases are lessened, and our death-rate is four
per thousand less than that of New York. If our mortal-
ity were the same rate as that of New York, 4000 more of
our citizens would die each year. Our elation, however,
gets a sharp check when we think of what should be, and
compare our unnecessarily high mortality with London's
splendid record. With five millions of inhabitants, instead
of our one million, and despite all the unsanitary disad-
vantages, London, by heroic sanitary diligence, has brought
her death-rate below ours. It is no exaggeration to say
that instead of our death-rate being 20.66, it need not, in
the present state of medical and sanitary science, be over
17. This put in plain words means that by our culpable,
nay, criminal, neglect we are killing, needlessly killing,
something like three thousand inhabitants of our city each
year.
Let us estimate the financial value of this loss. The
24
274 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
average rate of American wage-earners is about one dollar
a day. This is a low estimate. That is, you can buy the
labor of the average American citizen for about $300 a
year. According to insurance life-tables, the average
length of our life is about forty years. Our working or
productive period is about half that time, and the average
market value of one of us is therefore twenty times 300, or
about $6000. Put up for sale, one of us is worth $6000
in the labor market. Now let us allow of the 3000 killed
by our own carelessness and neglect, one-third of the
number as having passed the laboring age, and therefore
to be thrown out of this accounting. The remaining 2000
Philadelphians sacrificed to short-sightedness are thus seen
to be worth in the labor market $12,000,000.
But this is by no means all the loss ; for every death, Dr.
Farr estimates that two persons are on an average continu-
ously ill, i. e., there are two years of sickness for every
annual death. With the 3000 needless deaths, therefore,
there are also in Philadelphia each year the equivalent
of 6000 years of needless illness. Estimated in money
values, this means in lost time alone $1,800,000, besides the
doctor and druggist bills, etc.
And yet, when the city fathers are asked for a few
thousand dollars for meat-inspectors and milk-inspectors, for
new and necessary sewers, for an unpolluted water supply,
or for other measures of preventive medicine, the request is
refused, or acceded to with such crippling stinginess as to
be ludicrously inadequate.
Had I not been fearful of the charge of exaggeration, I
might have said that if our present knowledge of sanitation
and prevention were only applied, our death-rate might be
reduced by one-half.
Extend our calculations to include the 60,000,000 of
people of the United States, and you will realize that the
General Government needs a great and powerful Department
EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY. 275
of Public Health, with a Cabinet Officer at Washington,
and with power and appropriations to meet the exigencies
and dangers to life and health of our people. Such a
department would at once save the people more than the
entire expenses of the government. Write your represen-
tative to-morrow to help forward its passage. A bill to
provide a department of this kind has been introduced. As
a little example furnished by one of our own States, Dr.
Baker, of the Michigan State Board of Health, estimates
that in his State his Board has saved over 100 lives a year
from small-pox, 400 lives a year from scarlet fever, and
nearly 600 lives a year from diphtheria, besides many
more from other diseases and not capable of accurate
estimation.
Are you shocked that I should estimate the value of
human lives and suffering in dollars ? It is quite as little
to my liking, I assure you, but it would seem necessary in
order to arouse attention to the truer consideration of the
inestimable spiritual value of life, health, and happiness.
By this means I only wish to make it plain to the crudest
and most brutal motive that preventive medicine "pays."
The splendid wisdom of the English, displayed in the con-
tinuous decline in the general death-rate (now about 18
per thousand), always exactly proportioned to thoroughness
of vaccination, sanitation, drainage, pure food and water-
supply, etc., this indeed is proof beyond question that it
pays. These financially shrewdest of all men would not
spend money like water for these things if the return in
hard cash as well as life were not indubitably evident.
In every city a thousand times more necessary than a
City Hall is an Institute of Practical Preventive Medicine,
an organization wherein should be brought to a focus the
best science and the most devoted zeal to guard the health
and physical well-being of the people, bending every energy
to stamp out zymotic and unnecessary disease, to alleviate
276 EVERYBODY'S MEDICAL DUTY.
and render less tragic unavoidable suffering, to brighten
and beautify and lengthen the lives of all. Since pity and
religion awakened in men's mind, the aim has been to
relieve the existing and produced evil, but science and intel-
lectual prudence now dictate that we stop evil causes,
forefend bad results, and strike at the sources of ill. If
Christ, who according to the Gospel healed the sick and
brought the dead to life, should come among us to-day, he
would be an exhorter and helper in the work of preventive
medicine. To prevent a death is just as great a work as
to bring the dead to life ; to prevent sickness even greater
than to cure it. Civilization demands of us prevention of
evil by all the methods of social cooperation, scientific pre-
cision and prevision. If you do not take a living interest
in these things you are no Christian, you do not love your
fellow-men and the coming generation. The religion of
civilization must add intellect to sympathy. Science is not
antagonistic to religion, it gives it eyes and hands and
machinery, whereby to realize its desires. True pity, intel-
ligent pity, means prevention. Up to now the physician's
work has been to cure sick persons, but from now on our
greater and sublimer task is to prevent sickness. In this
you and I must aid. This is " everybody's medical duty."
THE POWER OF WILL IN DISEASE.*
After a hundred years of history and education in scien-
tific medicine, and in a country where shrewd common
sense has been developed in the most backward-looking
mind at such time and under such circumstances it would
have seemed impossible that the incurably sick, the par-
alyzed, and the maimed should by thousands flock to a
priest to be cured of their diseases. The newspapers say
the immense depot at Pittsburg has of late seemed like a
hospital, filled as it has been with the poor, unfortunate in-
valids seeking Father Mollinger's supernatural aid to make
them well. The Father anoints and blesses, and the young
man who " had not walked since childhood " upon com-
mand goes unassisted " from the altar-rail to the rear of the
church, to the amazement of the vast audience." Though
the report says the great majority are sadly disappointed
the squarely impossible cannot be done in these times
a number are found that, with functional affections, under
strong emotion, exhibit a change, or an increase of
strength, so that the belief in " the power " is kept living.
What is it that makes Father Mollinger, Christian
science, faith cure, medical spiritualism, and to some ex-
tent homeopathy possible in the nineteenth century ?
Were there absolutely no element of truth in these re-
ported " cures," even the dullest dupe would come at last to
some consciousness of the hocus-pocus. The manure of the
soil nourishing these delusions is a truth too often ignored
and neglected by scientific medicine. It is the truth of
* From the Medical News, June 27, 1891.
277
278 THE POWER OF WILL IN DISEASE.
the power of the emotions, of the will of the spirit, if
you please over the flesh ; of life over the beginnings of
disease, and even over disease and death itself. Races and
nations differ greatly in their power of resisting and over-
coming disease, simply by reason of the characteristic
attitude of the will and the disposition of the patient to-
ward the physical illness. Just so do all, even brothers,
differ in the same way. Thousands are physically sick
because mental resolution and spiritual domination is weak
and illogical. This is strikingly true in reference to the
beginnings of disease. The secret of continuous good
health does not always consist merely in physical resist-
ance or robustness, but in sharply conquering the subtle
beginnings of corporeal abnormality by pure will-power.
There are two homologues of this power that illustrate it
exactly. Who has not seen whimsicality, crankiness, and
oddity by self-indulgence slowly degenerate into mono-
mania, and even into downright insanity ? And, again, who
can doubt that in the commencement many such persons
are perfectly conscious of the abnormal tendency, and are,
moreover, perfectly capable of not doing the ridiculous or
self- forgetful things. They are at first driven by no impe-
rious necessity. It is precisely so when one gives way to
immoral courses of life. At first the voice of conscience
is clear; by and by control is lost and the voice is entirely
silent. The analogies obtain in the matter of health. The
adage, " Resist the beginnings of evil," holds also here.
All disease begins subtly, almost insensibly, as chill, lassi-
tude, malaise, etc. Caught at this stage and fought down
by a virile volition, that which by self-indulgence would
have proceeded to genuine fever and illness may often be
resolved into routine normality of health. A brisk walk
of five miles in the teeth of exhaustion and weariness has
saved many from severe illness. And so in types of dis-
ease that are, if one may so speak, more organic. The
THE POWER OF WILL IN DISEASE. 279
fact cannot be disputed that many who have believed them-
selves incapable of walking, under powerful emotion, their
own will being supplemented and " relayed " by that of
another, do really find that they can walk a little. Our
confutation of the priest's supernaturalism consists pre-
cisely in this proved power of the will. Doubtless ortho-
pedic appliances are often given patients who need only
resolution, encouragement, and repeated trial in order to
develop by exercise the strength that the crutch really
conceals or neutralizes. In the sick-room every experi-
enced physician knows how much depends upon the
morale, the resolution of the patient, and how even death
and life may depend upon the will. All this, when we read
it, seems trite enough, but its significance is lost sight of in
the battle of rival theories of disease, and to some it must
seem the froth of nonsense. But the practical lesson of
the very obvious truth consists in the simple duty of
arousing the will to self-confidence and corporeal domina-
tion. As has been well demonstrated, the best cure for the
most outrageous hysteria is mental and volitional control
supplanting the patient's diseased imagination by a
healthy one true faith-cure in a legitimate and genuine
sense. The puppets of fashionable automatonism are
prone to run to the doctor for every ache, real or sus-
pected. To indulge them in their folly sometimes seems
to the physician not without a certain worldly excuse.
But if a higher ethical ruling is adhered to, duty will
counsel encouragement of prophylaxis and hygiene ; and
among the means of forefending disease an energetic
domination of will over the body is often the most vital
and important.
THE APOTHEOSIS OF HYSTERIA AND
WHIMSICALITY.*
One of the functions of a medical journal is to notify its
readers of the appearance of new and important medical
works, and so deeply are we impressed with the transcend-
ent importance of one such book recently issued, that we
believe we are doing a great service to medicine by a some-
what extended and free advertisement of it. It is by W. A.
Dewey, M.D., a late professor of materia medica, an editor
and associate editor of numerous medical journals, an author
and associate author of several medical works, a member of
many medical societies. The last title the learned author
gives himself on the title-page of his book is simply this :
" Homoeopathic, etc., etc.," which reminds one of a drug
catalogued by the New York homeopathic druggist, Swan,
as " Omnia." The book to which we call especial atten-
tion is entitled: " Essentials of Homoeopathic Therapeutics,
being a Quiz Compend upon the Application of Homoe-
opathic Remedies to Diseased States," and is published by
Bcericke & Tafel, Philadelphia, 1895.
" One of the grand cardinal features of homoeopathy,"
says the author in his preface, "and one little understood
by the allopathic school, is the fact that any drug in the
entire homoeopathic materia medica may be a remedy in
any diseased state. It is, therefore, evident that the prepa-
ration of this work entailed no little difficulty," etc. In
view of the infinite multiplication of" remedies," and of the
numerous different " potentizations " of each, together with
* The Medical News, March 9, 1895.
280
APOTHEOSIS OF HYSTERIA AND WHIMSICALITY. 281
the literally bewildering multiplication of " symptoms " or
" provings," this modest qualifying reservation is very ap-
propriate, as otherwise all the books that have ever been
printed could not contain the possible " Application of
Homoeopathic Remedies to Diseased States."
Before passing to the subject-matter of the volume we
cannot forbear a word of criticism as to the strange fatality
that makes it impossible for our homeopathic friends to
write sentences according to the fundamental rules of
English grammar. In reading this remarkable work, for
example, we seem to hear the echoes of some half-forgotten
patois in which philologic crudities, barbarisms, and gram-
matic impossibilities vie in vain with pseudoscientific
whimsicalities and medievalisms. The very contractions
used of the names of drugs make one smile, as, e.g., croton
tig., carbo veg., Lye., carbo an., Kali bich., etc. How can
one who knows that the word blepharospasm itself means
twitching of the lids speak of " a blepharospasmus twitching
of the eyelids " ? To one not conversant with occultism,
the works of Mme. Blavatsky, or the strange use of lan-
guage by the homeopaths, a large number of the sentences
are absolutely devoid of meaning. One wonders how
symptoms can be called " female symptoms " or " male
symptoms," what sentences without verbs can signify, what
the personification of drugs betokens, etc. Of these gram-
matic peculiarities, of which certainly every second sentence
is an illustration, we quote a few examples that have
attracted the attention :
The sensations are throbbing, which is intense and sudden,
and the pains are apt to cease as suddenly as they appeared.
Stramonium has visions of animals coming toward him from
every corner.
It is a hoarse, croupy cough, but withal a loose edge.
The patient clutches the air ; sometimes a stupor, which, if
aroused out of, they strike people.
282 APOTHEOSIS OF HYSTERIA AND WHIMSICALITY.
The child appears to have but one bowel extending from
mouth to anus.
The diarrhea of Thuja is a chronic diarrhea traceable to vacci-
nation, forcibly expelled like water from a bunghole.
What drug has nausea at the thought of food? even mention
food and he vomits.
Gulping up of burning water.
The patient is excitable, restless, and fidgety. They are awk-
ward and clumsy.
Where does Kali bich. come in ?
What drug has a great deal of depression about his chest, is
tearful and discouraged, and fears that he will go into decline?
Patient thinks she will go crazy, is suspicious, has visions of
rats, etc. ; is conscious, but can't help it.
Stannum has characteristically falling of the womb during hard
stools.
In glancing through this volume one is struck by the
almost maniacal reveling in the nasty. Every possible
discharge or excretory product of the body (our author
would call it " a secretion from the body ") is described,
with a vividness of language and with a fond enumeration
of the morbid varieties and of their unexampled filthiness ; '
the catalogues of Rabelais pale before the telling word-
pictures of our author. This is undoubtedly due to the
habit of treating symptoms rather than to a distinctly
Rabelaisian type of mind, however. This fact may also
explain why spermatorrhea has the consideration of nearly
three pages, whilst peritonitis has but half a page ; why
diseases of women require nine pages, whilst tuberculosis
and " phthisis " combined require but three.
But this enumeration of symptoms what awful absence
of the sense of humor does it show, the perfect solemnity
with which this apotheosis of hysteria is set down ! A
person, we suppose, has taken an infinitesimal amount of
" carbo veg.," and whatever morbid whims pass through
APOTHEOSIS OF HYSTERIA AND WHIMSICALITY. 283
his fancy for days are supposed to be " provings " of the
drug, although any amount of carbo veg. in the shape of
toasted bread may be eaten at other times.
Thus "phosphorus has evening hoarseness, while Causti-
cum has morning hoarseness," " lilium is worse in the after-
noon, sepia in the forenoon." One drug produces a sensa-
tion in the right arm, another in the left arm. One pro-
duces headache over only the left eye, or pain in the left
ovary, headache upon one side of the head (" the pains
following the course of the sun "), etc.
The explanation of a number of national traits is sug-
gested by the assurance that among the mental symptoms
of gelsemium is mentioned, " does not seem to care whether
school keeps or not ; " among those of Platina, " the patient
is proud and haughty ; looks down upon everybody with
disdain ; everybody seems beneath her ; " among those of
Baptisia, " he thinks he is scattered about, and he must
move to get his pieces together again ; " in children cha-
momilla produces the very human trait : " want to be
carried about, and want different things, and when they get
them throw them away dissatisfied." Our neighbors, the
Britishers, have often wondered why we Americans " like
to sit with the feet on the table." They may now under-
stand that it is due to " the effect of carbo veg. on the liver."
Profanity, it would logically seem, might be lessened by
restricting the sale of nitric acid.
In private practice we have often been told by patients
that they had been given medicines for cataract for years
by homeopathic practicers, and lo ! here, Anno Domini
1895, is phosphorus commended therefor!
It is little wonder that the animosity against the " allo-
path " is so great that a drug having a general exorcising
or purifying effect is recommended as " the first remedy to
use if the case comes from allopathic hands."
Quotation is better and more just to the talented author
286 APOTHEOSIS OF HYSTERIA AND WHIMSICALITY.
What is the Graphites temperament in general ? Sad, fat, fair,
and constipated.
What drug has the symptom that the soul feels as though it
were freed from the body?
What drug has special action on the right wrist ?
The Natrum carb. patient gets very nervous during thunder
storms and hides in the cellar. This nervousness is said to be
due to the electrical condition of the atmosphere acting on such
patients.
Pulsatilla is mild, tearful, and whimsical. Sepia is depressed,
easily excited, and irritable. Pulsatilla blondes. Sepia bru-
nettes.
Medicine is a serious study and the medical life is pro-
verbially a solemn one. Perhaps we have quoted too ex-
tensively from our valued author, but his teachings we trust
may be found at least temporarily a good " regular " dose
antidotal of the gloominess of our calling. The richest and
most perfect humor in the world is the unconscious variety,
that wherein the most profoundly earnest joker dreams
least of all things that he is producing a work that will in-
spire most uproarious laughter in thousands of readers.
But after the laugh the return to work ! After the fun
the payment of the bills ! Thereupon come the indigna-
tion and the disgust the thought that it is for the encour-
agement of this sort of nauseating drivel that our aristocratic
society gives "charity balls;" for this that our legislators
vote hundreds of thousands of dollars of the people's
money ; this gibbering ghost of medieval medicine it is that
an intelligent and discriminating people call the " new
school " !
CHARACTER*
In a general way, it is doubtless true that the great
mistake of men, of all men, consists in the failure to
estimate the value of character. Everybody is prone to
put the good of life in something gained or done, in
knowledge, in some objective thing, as wealth, power over
men, ability to make much of self, etc. But apart from
this general injudiciousness of mankind there are certain
ages or peoples which thus err especially and grievously.
It is an error, for example, markedly common in a young
nation or people, when great public works are to be carried
through and tremendous energy is to be put forth or
utilized. The man who can win battles, who can plan and
build a railroad, who can procure needed legislation,
organize and manage manufactories, he is the man people
want, and they care little or not at all whether he be
honest, pure, high-minded, unselfish, or whether he be the
reverse of these things.
By and by, however, with a better civilization, there
comes the knowledge, gained by bitter experience, that
the emotional and moral make-up of a man, his character,
as contradistinguished from his ability to do things, have
as much, or more, to do with our trust of him, with his
" success" even, as his ability to do things. As more and
more men compete for the same office or work to do, it
is found that the larger type of personality, the man who
has character as well as ability, is the better man to endow
with trust and power.
* From the Medical News, December I, 1894.
287
286 APOTHEOSIS OF HYSTERIA AND WHIMSICALITY.
What is the Graphites temperament in general ? Sad, fat, fair,
and constipated.
What drug has the symptom that the soul feels as though it
were freed from the body?
What drug has special action on the right wrist ?
The Natrum carb. patient gets very nervous during thunder
storms and hides in the cellar. This nervousness is said to be
due to the electrical condition of the atmosphere acting on such
patients.
Pulsatilla is mild, tearful, and whimsical. Sepia is depressed,
easily excited, and irritable. Pulsatilla blondes. Sepia bru-
nettes.
Medicine is a serious study and the medical life is pro-
verbially a solemn one. Perhaps we have quoted too ex-
tensively from our valued author, but his teachings we trust
may be found at least temporarily a good " regular " dose
antidotal of the gloominess of our calling. The richest and
most perfect humor in the world is the unconscious variety,
that wherein the most profoundly earnest joker dreams
least of all things that he is producing a work that will in-
spire most uproarious laughter in thousands of readers.
But after the laugh the return to work ! After the fun
the payment of the bills ! Thereupon come the indigna-
tion and the disgust the thought that it is for the encour-
agement of this sort of nauseating drivel that our aristocratic
society gives "charity balls;" for this that our legislators
vote hundreds of thousands of dollars of the people's
money ; this gibbering ghost of medieval medicine it is that
an intelligent and discriminating people call the " new
school"!
CHARACTER*
In a general way, it is doubtless true that the great
mistake of men, of all men, consists in the failure to
estimate the value of character. Everybody is prone to
put the good of life in something gained or done, in
knowledge, in some objective thing, as wealth, power over
men, ability to make much of self, etc. But apart from
this general injudiciousness of mankind there are certain
ages or peoples which thus err especially and grievously.
It is an error, for example, markedly common in a young
nation or people, when great public works are to be carried
through and tremendous energy is to be put forth or
utilized. The man who can win battles, who can plan and
build a railroad, who can procure needed legislation,
organize and manage manufactories, he is the man people
want, and they care little or not at all whether he be
honest, pure, high-minded, unselfish, or whether he be the
reverse of these things.
By and by, however, with a better civilization, there
comes the knowledge, gained by bitter experience, that
the emotional and moral make-up of a man, his character,
as contradistinguished from his ability to do things, have
as much, or more, to do with our trust of him, with his
" success" even, as his ability to do things. As more and
more men compete for the same office or work to do, it
is found that the larger type of personality, the man who
has character as well as ability, is the better man to endow
with trust and power.
* From the Medical News, December I, 1894.
287
288 CHARACTER.
It is just in such a condition that we Americans now
find ourselves. We have heretofore been content to give
over our cities, States, manufactories, banks, and institu-
tions of a thousand kinds to the persons who by hook or
crook could get hold of them, or who could do the work
required. Now at last we are finding out that upon the
quality of a man's personal character, in a word, upon his
morality, will depend the success or failure of the thing
done, quite as much as or even more than upon executive
ability, knowledge, or will-power. It is not the most expert
bookkeeper or cashier that is the best one to put in charge
of millions of dollars, but it is the most loyal and honest.
It is not the best, most successful administrative ability
that now makes the best administrator. In every walk of
life, from governing the nation, the city, or the push-cart,
we are daily admonished that the perfection of a man's
work depends upon the honor and honesty of the man's
character. The power of the mere doer, the knowledge
of the knower, the skill of the executor, are growing less
important, and are coming more and more to depend upon
how the thing is done, upon honor and conscience in the
doer. In the long run nowadays the man, honest but
stupid, if we must drive the comparison to its rather absurd
extreme, gains upon the brilliant scoundrel. But as almost
no American can be called stupid, so it follows that the
combination of conscience with ability now constitutes the
highest type of man.
These rather trite truths have their apt and striking
application to medicine but with the proviso that we are
hardly yet beyond the first stage of the evolutionary pro-
cess. We have hardly begun to be more than half-con-
scious of our barbarism of caring nothing for a physician's
character, providing he is said to cure disease, or wins
" success." The consequence is* that we have plenty of
medical Tweeds and Tammanies, our thousandfold quack-
CHARACTER. 289
cries, etc., all dependent upon the custom of not consider-
ing a man's character, but only considering his ability to
get official position, or a big practice, to write a book, to
deliver lectures, to attract the public eye, etc.
Now we contend that it is high time that we undertake
the real work of genuine medical civilization. Sincerity
and honor are as much needed to make a good physician
as trickiness and smartness. The smart man, who is also
a trickster, however infernally smart he may be, is hence-
forth to be more and more avoided. Whatever he says
or does he is only after self, and medicine is his ladder
and tool. The man whose laboratory-experiments are
untrustworthy, who is always appearing in the daily papers
under some pretext or other, whose language is habitually
a nasty mixture of slang, oaths, or vulgarity, whose private
life is filled with trickery and politics such a man, how-
ever " sharp " and " able," is no longer fit to be a teacher
of young men ; patients should not be sent him, and office
should not be given him. A man who makes, derives pro-
fit from, or indorses secret preparations should be practi-
cally disowned by his fellows in all ways by limiting his
power. A man who fleeces the public, and thus injures
the reputation of the profession by charging fees farcically
outrageous for inconsiderable operations needs to be
incontinently squelched. The man "with a pull," who
hoggishly gobbles up and uses for selfish purposes dozens
of hospital-positions, excluding other quiet, modest men
of equal ability, nay, even holding them in menial subser-
viency such men should be avoided by trustees and other
dispensers of power. The ringsters who unite into a clique
for mutual advantage and profit by all the scheming and
politically vile means in their power they also need dis-
gracing. The huckster, the schemer, the politician (usually
he is one person), is to-day the worst enemy of medicine.
25
290 CHARACTER.
He corrupts at the source; he is the big quack in the better
disguise.
In many ways we need to begin the task of discrimina-
tion and of rewarding men of modesty, honor, gentleman-
liness, and conscience, instead of neglecting them and fill-
ing positions with the schemers, the self-puffers, the news-
paper-doctors, and all the " pushers " who use medicine as
a mere tool to further self. This is because the method of
learning a diagnosis, or of treating a patient, or of doing
anything, is often as important as the thing itself, and is
indispensable to correct results. The best therapeutist, the
best curer of disease, is not he who only knows best, but
he who is most conscientious, sympathetic, and self-forget-
ful ; the best surgeon is not the most expert operator, but
he who will not operate when operation is not necessary.
The most successful physician is not he who has most
patients and makes the most money, but he who most suc-
cessfully cures disease. The best teacher is not necessa-
rily he who talks the glibbest or who is the most " popular,"
but he who helps his pupils to learn the best and most
accurate knowledge, and who inspires them with the enthu-
siasm for knowledge and for the relief of human ills.
Are you a trustee or a dispenser of office or of power of
any kind? There are hundreds of self-respecting, earnest,
capable, honest, quiet men who deserve your consideration,
and who will fill the position you have to give far better,
more to the honor of the profession, more to the good of
humanity, than the " hustler," the famous infamous fellow
who fills your mail with splendid testimonials of his attain-
ments and capacity, and who cronies with newspaper-
reporters, " works the club-racket," and is as careless of
medical ethics as he is careful of self-advancement.
If you are no appointment-giver you at times require a
consultant. Do you believe you or your patient will
CHARACTER. 291
secure better advice from the business-doctor, the con-
sultation-hunter, the man with much fame, savory or
unsavory ? Or, is it not more likely you will do better by
consulting with one who studies deeply, who is most
scrutinizing, accurate, in other words, whose acts and life
bespeak intelligent conscience as the ruling characteristic,
and not egotism, " business," or love of fame. At least,
you are a member of some medical society. Can you not
help to refuse office to the office-seeker and the politician ?
Can you not detect and estop the ringsters when they try
to refuse membership to the worthy, and when they try
to "run in "the unworthy? Blackballing the good man,
receiving the bad man, are too common as they are too
frightful mistakes.
In no way can we mold the future and make the world
better for our children, freer from disease, than to encourage
the formation of noble medical character by helping to
office and by rewarding and consulting with those who are
seeking to keep their characters pure and clean. In no
way are we more recreant to our trust than by giving
attention to the advertiser, by helping a despicable char-
acter to power simply because he has enormous effrontery
and egotism coupled with more or less of flashy superficial
medical knowledge and fame.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.*
Some time ago I was present at a lecture wherein the
speaker, in alluding to a certain skull, incidentally spoke
of it as belonging to " the criminal type of crania." A
brain that had been hardened either by world-wear, by
chemical action, or by the lecturer's logic, was also alluded
to as belonging to " the crime-class." There was in all
this a sort of " taken-for-granted " air of assurance that
aroused in me a multitude of questionings and doubts.
The gentleman was an adept, I, a novice, and I felt I ought
also to adopt the " already settled," " it-goes-without-
saying " air with which he calmly put aside what I had
supposed the inexorable laws of nature and of sociologic
evolution. Have we indeed " changed all that," I said to
myself, and I went home seriously to ask myself when a
man becomes an embezzler or " boodler," kills his mistress,
guzzles too much whisky, gets cranky or clean daft, or
kicks his wife, if it is all because his " atypical " skull or
brain determined his atypical conduct. It is, indeed, true
that we must always hold ourselves ready to reconsider
the truth of such old bits of bigotry and dogmatism as
that two and two make four, or that it is advisable for most
of us to take food in order to live very long. In this
modest and submissive mood I asked for instruction. I
read without prejudice whatever I could find on the ques-
tion by alienists, neurologists, cerebrologists, craniologists,
and penologists, and I regret to say that I have found in
* Read before the Medical Jurisprudence Society of Philadelphia, May 14,
1889. Published in the Open Court, 1889.
292
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 293
my reading that the medical profession is pretty generally
leaning toward the view that not only insanity but also
crime is the result of disease. All through this literature
I have found the terms, " Homicidal Mania," " Moral In-
sanity," " Inheritance of Criminality," " Insane Criminals,"
" Moral Anesthesia," " Negro, Simian, and Fetal Peculi-
arities," etc., etc.
One writer says that " inebriates are grown and manu-
factured, as much so as cotton and wool, and the machines
to work them into fabrics;" another says, "the true thief
is born, not made." " The passion for gambling may be
acquired by the fetus in utero" is another dictum of a
famous writer. " The brains of criminals exhibit a devia-
tion from the normal type, and criminals are to be viewed as
an anthropological variety of their species," says Benedikt,
the Moses of this " peculiar people." The popular plebifi-
cations of so-called " Science " concerning " A Family of
Criminals," " The Famous Jukes Case," and the everlasting
reappearance of the six-fingered and six-toed gentry in
the devil's popular bible, the Sunday newspaper, such
things as these make us wish that sterility had also been
an inherited quality of the mothers of certain newspaper
" scientists " and writers. To be brief, let us crowd the
matter into a sentence and say, that the tendency of this
school is to wipe out the distinctions between morals and
medicine, obliterate the line between sanity and insanity,
and exonerate every criminal from responsibility on the
assumed ground of a special neurosis or a defective brain.
This is the tendency, more or less plainly expressed or
implied, but, at least, necessitated by the premises and
by a frank logic.
But is it either a good tendency or a true conclusion ?
Is it either good science or good sense ? Is it good
morals ? I believe it is neither, and these are some of my
reasons for so disbelieving :
294 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
I. It is asserted that criminals and the insane have " de-
fective, retarded, and aberrant brain development," and
that therefore their crimes and follies are anatomically or
pathologically necessitated. The common conclusion of
the studies of Benedikt*, Badikf, Ten Kate and Pavloskyf,
Corre and Rousel, Marro and Lombroso||, Lombroso^f,
Varaglia**, Millsft, Tenchini||, etc., is that the brains and
skulls of these classes are atypical or unsymmetrical.
This statement is both true and untrue. I mean that as an
abstract statement it is probably true and may be willingly
admitted. But I wish first to illustrate the spirit of many
of these inquiries by a quotation from Benedikt, who
frankly says of his observations that " they were collected
as the result of an a priori conviction that the criminal is
an overloaded individual having the same relation to crime
as his next of blood-kin the epileptic, and his cousin the
idiot, have to their encephalopathic condition." Others
have been less blunt in avowing their prejudice, but it seems
to have governed the studies of most. Moreover, if you
look for atypism you will certainly find it. Why ? Be-
cause it is to be found in criminals and the insane just as
well as in other good folk. It may reasonably be doubted
if there is a perfectly symmetrical skull or perfectly typical
*" The Brains of Criminals."
f Summary in Phila. Med. Times, Vol. xv, 1884, p. 50.
\ " Sur quelques Cranes," etc., Rev. d'Anthrop., Paris, 1881.
%" Etude d'un Serie de ttes," etc., Rev. d'Anthrop., Paris, 1883.
|| " Reflessi tendinei," etc., Arch, di Psichiat., Tornio, 1883.
f " La pazzia Morale," etc., Arch, di Psichiat., Tornio, 1882. " Fosso
occipitali," etc., Arch, di Psichiat., Tornio, 1883. " Sul mancinismo motorio,"
etc., Gior. d. r. accad. di Med. di Tornio, 1884.
**" Note Anatom.," etc., Arch, di Psichiat., Tornio, 1885.
ft " On Arrested and Aberrant Devel.," etc., Jour. Nerv. df Ment. Dis.,
September, 1886.
JJ"Notesur la crfite," etc., Actes Cong. Internal, d'anthrop. Crim.,
Rome, 1886.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 295
brain in the world. What do we mean by typical ? Cor-
respondence to an ideal perfection and symmetry. But
such actualities nowhere exist. No man ever saw a sym-
metrical leaf or tree, a symmetrical skull or brain. And
yet despite their determination to find it, if possible, Badik
and others are forced to confess that but a part of their
criminal skulls and brains were " aberrant," " unsymmet-
rical," " negroid," or " simian." It may be said that the
contention of the more moderate is that in the classes
considered there is greater atypism than in the average
member of the community. But that is not proved. The
conclusion of the investigations so far proves only that a
certain number of criminal brains and skulls are atypical.
Very well ! But what about those that, so far as discover-
able, are normal ? And what about those sane folks with
atypical skulls ? The Greek skeptic shown the offerings
of rescued shipwrecked mariners who had in the hour of
peril devoted these presents to the god, calmly asked,
where also were the offerings of those not saved. No
large, careful, and scientific measuring of the sane and
moral has been made and compared with that of the insane
and criminal. Clevenger doubts if any differences could be
found in such a comparative examination. Science means
prevision, but if the brains and crania of the ten last dead
from the State Prison, the Insane Asylum, and yesterday's
railroad disaster were gathered, there is no expert or set
of cerebrologists in the world could either put the thirty
brains back in their proper cases or designate with any
certainty to what class of the three any one belonged. No
man from the criminal history of the life alone can tell you
in advance a single peculiarity of the brain of the man hung
to-day. The cranium and brain of Pigott are said to have
been of exceptional symmetry and perfection, and yet he in-
vented Pigottry, having first practiced it all his life. The
skull of an excellent physician of this city has, on account
296 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
of its astonishing asymmetry, been noticed and marveled at
across the amphitheater. It is needless to say he belongs
" sans phrase " to the nonanatomical school of cerebrolo-
gists.
Thus not only is the so-called fact not proved, and so far
utterly without significance, but the interpretation of the
fact is a non sequitur. It does not follow, nor is it proved,
that defective, aberrant, atypical, or simian brains and skulls
imply immorality or insanity. Functional defect there may
be, but neither scalpel nor microscope has proved any other
to exist. If he does not know from what animal it came,
no expert could tell whether a sheep's brain or that of a
tiger were the more crime-producing one. Post hoc is not
propter hoc, as philosophers have to be warned a hundred
times a day. How tired we get hallooing at these propter
hoc hunters to call them from the way their game has not
taken. Away they go again after their post hoc, whilst all
the time their Reynard, their propter hoc, sits calmly on the
fence watching and chuckling at them. " Deficient gyri-
development and asymmetry " may necessitate the poor
owner to be a thief or a lunatic, but I think the shape of the
pisiform bone should also be considered. Artemus Ward
said he knew a man in Oregon who hadn't a tooth in his
head, not a single tooth, and yet this same man could beat
the bass-drum better than any other man he ever heard.
I cannot forbear to impale another and related pleasantry
of these logicians: this is the unjustifiable humanity-con-
ceit that like a hideous Jack-in-the-box springs at you in
the sneer of the words " simian," " negroid," " reversion to
the animal type," etc., when speaking of these atypical
brains. I ask in all sincerity and seriousness, if we are a jot
more moral than our remote simian forefathers ? Nay, are
we not even less so ? Take a thousand members of the
New York and Chicago Stock Exchange, and a thousand
monkeys in a cage or in their native woods, which set of
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 297
gentlemen will break the eleven commandments the greater
number of times Anno Domini 1889? As to the shame-
less " negroid," who was the greater sinner, the white slave-
holder or his victim ? Or read the astounding and horrible
record revealed in the official statement of the pardons
granted convicts by the Governor of South Carolina, also in
the year of our Lord 1888.* Such facts as this last, and
such theories as we are discussing, almost make one say, as
the joker did of life, it is one-half if, and three-fourths lie.
2. In the second place, this theory is contradicted by
the law of biologic evolution. Throughout the countless
ages of organic development, life has preceded function,
and function has preceded morphology, f
Habitual action creates peculiarity of structure ; desire
begets its own instruments. Character is inherited before
its organs, if it have any, appear. Nay, more ; character,
in truth, creates its organs. How in the name of common
sense could it be otherwise?
Hunger existed before stomachs, eating produced teeth,
fighting begot horns, the snake's enemy existed before his
fangs and poison-sacs. In precisely the same way, if crime
and crankiness have an anatomic basis, it is because ras-
cality and folly preceded any structural instrumentalities or
peculiarities. If we are seeking the origin of crime, we
cannot, in the name of reason, expect to find it by the cart-
before-horse logic of supposing an organ can exist prior to
the desire and function of which it is the instrument.
* See The Nation, April 4, 1889.
f Hydra viridis, for example, has no eyes and is yet sensitive to light ; no
brain or nerves and yet lies in wait for prey, pursues and fights, or flees from
danger. Turned inside out it lives and digests as well as before. It holds live
worms down with an arm when they try to get out of its stomach. Any part
reproduces all. Cut off the bottom of its stomach and it goes on eating the
same as ever, the food, of course, falling out of the bottom, in this last respect
not unlike certain fact-gatherers without a logical stomach-bottom to digest
their large eating.
26
298 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
3. A sound metaphysic, psychology, and cerebrology,
each, also drives a nail in the coffin. The morality or
sanity of a man is his action and nature as a unit; these
qualities relate only to conduct as a whole. There can be
no conceivable localization of function of morality or
reason. These things consist in the use the mind puts all
its centers to ; they refer to the animus of the soul itself
that inhabits and uses all organs as its instruments. Inter-
ference with the action of a part or the whole of the brain,
nay, even nondevelopment of the brain as a whole, cannot
change the true quality of the action of the mind ; it can
only lessen its effectiveness. The hand of a liar and the
hand of an honest man do not differ. It is the liar and
the honest man that are different. If the hand do not
differ, neither can the brain-centers that mediate between
desire and function. I know very well, to speak before
modern scientific men of " the soul " and as if there were a
somewhat behind cerebral ganglia using them as a master
does tools, is quite certain to raise many smiles, and secure
one the pitying contempt due to the stupid worshiper of
some semibarbaric image when the newer and more elegant
faith is the vogue. The fashionables enjoy the sweetness of
their supposed superior wisdom ; the poor dolt the sweet-
ness of his fetich and his faith. But in crying, " Great is
Diana," the fashionable worshipers of Materialism should
remember that the walls of logic and of fact that shelter the
old spiritualistic boobies and their altars are quite as firm
as ever. Omne vivum ex ovo is the legend of the doorway,
and Archebiosis is the myth. Many of the supposed
arch-priests of Materialism are in fact traitors in this
respect, Spencer and Huxley,* for example.
* (See Spencer's Biology, Vol. I, pp. 222, 253, etc.) Spencer's position is
well known. Here is a gem from Huxley : " Cells are no more the producers
of vital phenomena than the shells scattered in orderly lines along the sea-
beach are the instruments by which the force of the moon's gravity acts upon
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 299
4. But the happiest of the funeral-attendants will be
ethics. Determinism is the ally of Materialism. The step
from this belief in the anatomic nature of crime and loss
of self-control to absolute fatalism is a small one indeed.
If we lie because a gyrus gets kinked or is wanting, rob
the till because of our simian kind of brain, and choke the
girl to death that jilts us because of our cerebral asym-
metry, then it follows that every sane act and thought
and emotion is predetermined by our neurologic anatomy.
The delight in which certain logic-choppers revel in break-
ing down the barriers of self-dependence and the belief in
individual freedom is quite wonderful. It is hardly explain-
able except upon the somewhat insulting assumption that,
themselves feeling and desiring no moral freedom, they
prefer the tyranny of structure as an excuse for not follow-
ing the higher law. Benedikt has a funny story that he, of
course, tells in all seriousness. He says he asked an " in-
telligent counterfeiter " if, circumstances permitting, he
would again repeat his crime. For a reply the intelligent
counterfeiter said : " When I die, I will you my skull and
brain." The old Dryasdust sagely observes that this
answer was more correct than any given by philosopher or
criminalist as to the psychology of crime. I could not help
thinking I would like to have seen the glittering leer of
the counterfeiter, evidently a fine joker, as, " flattering his
humor to the top of his bent," his victim turned away.
The curb-stone logic of the matter is that if asymmetry
produces crankiness and crime, then, in the future, all that
embryonic cranks and criminals will have to do to excuse
their depraved desires is to consult a professor of this new
phrenology, and, the diagnosis of " atypism " once settled,
they will hasten home to indulge their " inherited neuro-
the ocean. Like these, the cells mark only where the vital tides have been
and how they have acted."
300 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
sis " and " moral anesthesia " by crack-walking, wife-beat-
ing, intelligent counterfeiting, or the innocent pleasures of
" homicidal mania."
If Guiteau had known his brain was " congenitally asym-
metrical," the disappointed office-seeker would probably
have tried his marksmanship on an earlier President. It
may be that fatalism is true, but if so, this universe is a
stupendous and horrifying failure and farce, and the theory
that premises fatalism had better pause before thus giving
the lie to both God and man.
Are we not indeed fully conscious, we who are honest
and true, that within us burns a light no trick of matter
can quench, a power to resist the weaknesses and the
tyrannies of flesh and desire, and that in all our lives there
is, or may be, a moral force and an intellectual prevision
to which heredity is the obedient slave ?
5. Moreover, just as inevitably as this theory leads to
fatalism and hence to immorality, it also leads to economic
injustice. All things, good or bad, are measurable by the
tally-stick of financial justice. I protest that the general
tendency of this hypothesis, and of its corollaries, is to cre-
ate lunatics and criminals and to shield criminality with
the cloak of insanity. As a result, the expense of main-
taining the defective and criminal classes, and of keeping
up both the sham and the reality of legal justice, is increas-
ing faster than the population. This expense has to be
borne by the producer. Who is he ? The producer, whom
present methods do in reality punish, is he that quenches
in himself the beginnings of folly and unwisdom ; is he that
throttles in their inception the promptings of over-indul-
gence and disregard for others' rights ; he that works for
himself rather than scheme and cheat others out of their
earnings. In other words, the popular practice and theory
punishes a man for preserving his sanity and honor by
burdening him with the support of the thriftless and the
depraved.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 301
6. Lastly, this wearisome absurdity is to be condemned
because it is contrary to God's law pardon me, I mean
the law of natural selection and unavoidably creates the
evil it deplores. It is no more nor less than a reward held
out to all neurasthenics and hysterics, all lazy-bones and
cheats, to indulge their criminal leanings and inordinate
appetites. Since time began wise and kind old Mother
Nature has found that, loving the many as she does, rather
than the few, the only true love of all is the law, Vauriens
and vicious to the wall ! Civilization has suddenly grown
wiser than the divine or cosmic source whence it sprang
and thinks it has found a better way. But is not a man
to be written down as an ass that scorns his father and
mother ? The modern conceit, that we know better than
God and nature, seems but simply more egregiously and
more impiously long-eared.
It is the glory of fine minds and hearts to bear as their
secret motto, socii Dei sumus ; but the modern paraphrase
is, socii diaboli sumus. By our brutal pity and by our cruel
sympathy we are piling up the burden of the future, in our
coddling of debility and in our nursing of deceit, both of
which easy is the descent to hell hasten to full-fledge
into slum, asylum, and prison problems. Pity without
justice is itself crime. There is no greater sinner against
society than the indiscriminate alms-giver. By encourag-
ing self-delusion, and discouraging self-control, this theory
of anatomically necessitated crime operates to deteriorate
the average virility of the race and so immensely increases
suffering. There is always a vast horde of incarnate canine
appetites in human society restlessly awaiting the slipping
of the leash of law and labor to rush baying after the temp-
tations of indulgence, vice, and crime. That society and
that science are the better assured of perpetuity that tighten
rather than cut both collar and leash.
It will have been noticed, and you doubtless have mar-
302 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
veled, that I face and treat this problem in a novel way ; it
may be thought that I have allowed feeling rather than
reason to dictate, and that my tirade were better addressed
to the vulgar many rather than to the scientific few. But
it has been with "malice aforethought" that I have thus
written, believing as I do that the present so-called "scien-
tific " attitude of the profession as to this matter is, in truth,
inexplainable otherwise ; I mean to say that this tendency
to erase the word responsibility from the dictionary of law
and sociology is itself the unreasoning, unscientific voice
of our age and generation. Unconsciously, but none the
less truly, it is flattery of the Zeitgeist, and flattery of that
capricious and greedy goddess is for clear-thinking and
straight-seeing people the one unpardonable sin, the sin
against the Holy Ghost. The Zeitgeist and the Heilige
Geist are two quite different things. The Zeitgeist is never
in the right. Vox populi is never vox Dei.*
We have, for example, to close the book from sheer
shuddering when we read of the malignity and diablerie
with which criminals and lunatics were treated in the past.
It seems impossible that so-called criminals were slowly
roasted for hours or days while the spectacle was made
the gayest of all festal occasions by laughing maidens and
flirting cavaliers. The smell of burning flesh and the
writhings and cries of the agonized victims were sweet to
these strange fiends. We can hardly believe that idiots
and madmen were chained in filth for years, kept immersed
in ice-water for days, whirled in rotating machines till their
tormenters were tired, etc., etc. We flatter ourselves, how-
ever, when we think we are wiser. Our present lachry-
mose barbarism is in the first place quite as cruel to some
one and is explainable only as the contrary swing of the
pendulum to the opposite extreme.
* " Maximus erroris populus magister." Coke.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 303
One extreme always begets its opposite in the fickle,
passions of popular feeling. Physicians should at least
know something about the law of action and reaction. It
is quite as true law in history as in pathology. We have
only substituted an indirect and weak maleficence for a
direct and brutal malevolence. Never for a moment have
we thought that our feelings should have had no voice in
the matter, but that justice, utility, and prophylaxis should
have been the rules. This question cannot be studied
apart from its relations and historical connections. It is a
sociological question, and all such questions and theories
must be judged by their results, logical or actual. A thing
may be true in itself but false in its relations and pernicious
in its consequences. Many true things are untrue. Es-
tablish foundling-hospitals, where the brats of lubricity are
cared for better than the sweater-babies, and at once con-
cupiscence doubles and trebles the number of illegitimate
and syphilitic starvelings. The world's greatest statistician,
Dr. Farr, stigmatizes the shame of race-deterioration that
we permit in allowing the imbecile, idle, criminal, and defec-
tive classes to breed ad libitum. Prof. A. Graham Bell *
says by permitting intermarriages we are actually produc-
ing a deaf-mute variety of the race.
And this brings us to the essence of the whole matter :
the origin of criminals and the mentally diseased. Sup-
pose, for argument's sake, we admit that some lunatics
and even some criminals are what they are by the force of
organic and anatomic necessity. What then ? Only this,
that we are then bound to ask how the " moral anes-
thesia " and " cerebral atypism " came into being. In
obedience to what necessity or desire, in response to what
peculiarity of the environment, did these defective brains
and skulls arise ? The bat's wing, the seal's fin, a cat's
* Science, April 17, 1885.
304 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
paw, a horse's foot, a man's hand, these modifications- of
one primal organ were molded by the needs of the crea-
ture and the actions of the environment into their different
shapes. These two things, then, we have to consider : first,
the rascal or fool per se, his needs, desires, tendencies, etc.,
and, second, the environment that creates and encourages
the rascal and fool.
As to the first inquiry, I again assert that if law-breakers
or wrecked minds are such by the stringent necessity of
their inherited cerebral defects a fact I by no means
admit, then it follows that we must go to the parents. It
cannot be argued that heredity forces us back ad infinitnm,
either to the biblical Adam or to our simian ancestry. In
this case we are not " bound to go the whole ourang,"
because, on the one hand, the old myth, wise as it was, was
not science; and, again, because old Mother Nature, left to
her own grand wisdom, soon cuts short both crank and
criminal with summary kindness. At the farthest we shall
only have to go back but one or two generations to find
the criminal and the lunatic in the making. The eye that
pierces shams sees it all about every day, this subtle secret
manufacturing. However heinous and horrible, all lunacy
and all iniquity began at some time with slight and repeti-
tive, but always conscious, departures from right living and
right thinking. * The duty of sound minds, sound medi-
cine, and sound science is to check and stop these depar-
tures. Withstand beginnings, is the logic of all health,
mental or moral.
Like a bear by the ears Materialism always lugs in this
question of heredity wherewith to frighten the children of
the spirit. But with amazing illogicality it begs the whole
question in coolly assuming that only matter can inherit,
* Justice Stephen recognized this when he says in reference to crime that
the excuse of defective mental power, etc., does not hold " if the absence of
the power of self-control has been produced by his own default."
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 305
whilst every fact of embryology and organic evolution
shows it is the soul, the spirit, the character, that inherits
and that molds the organs of mind into shapes consonant
with its own immaterial heritages. It may be asked : If
structure is not inherited, what then is inherited ? and I,
in turn, ask : If structure is inherited, when is it inherited ?
Is there any recognizable atypism in the fetus ? No, it
only exists some 20 or 40 years after the tendency has been
inherited, and after conception has taken place. Tendency
was inherited, and tendency, if you please, produced the
atypism or the criminal. The ovum or spermatozoid, a
structureless cell of the most primitive protoplasm, so
small that it is invisible to the naked eye, contains the sum-
mary of millions of past lives and the possibilities of mil-
lions to come, for each bearing numberless inherited
peculiarities even to the curl of hair and peculiarity of
speech. Where is the inherited structure in this tiny speck
of matter ? The inheritance of power to make structure is
NOT the inheritance of structure. The liar puts his brain to
lying uses ; the same brain could mediate truth quite as
well. The lie is not in the brain ; it is in the liar. If you
please, the liar and his brain are two quite distinguishable
somewhats. Moreover, this so-called " iron law of her-
edity " is very flexible steel, aye, is utterly limp in the hands
of evolution. " The instances in which accidental deform-
ities are not transmitted," says a great biologist, " out-
number those in which they are inherited." Did Shake-
speare, Caesar, Bismarck, Washington, and thousand such,
draw their genius from an ancestry ever growing and
straining to the culminating bloom ? Not at all. The
imps of determinism have not yet caught all the birds of
freedom either with the lime of a whipster's logic or with
the net of assumed facts.
Among the causes tending in the individual to produce
slight, oft-repeated, and conscious infringements of moral
306 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
and psychological laws, not a few must be laid to the
charge of the biological laws under which we have arisen
and exist. The presence of the grinning death's head
behind every smile and at all our feasts; the incertainty of
the modern mind as to life's continuance, and even as to
the goodness at the heart of things ; the stupendous and
execrable tricking of every personality by the duperie of
sexual passion ; the subtle and inscrutable diseases lurking
everywhere to pounce upon us ; the earthquake, storm,
cold, and pest bringing palsy to endeavor and ruin to
labor ; the hunger and the animal appetites always to
satisfy or conquer all these are but indications that life is
a warfare, and that our cosmic father has designs and facial
lineaments very different from those of Christian benig-
nancy. Sunt lacrima rerum. In the struggle of life, the
weak, the unlucky for what else can you call many such ?
give away mentally or morally, give way under these
diabolical teasings or downright thunderbolts of destiny,
and man answers nature's inhumanity and brutality and
trickery with the same arguments : 6 ^oq adp* ty^ero, the
word became flesh ; the criminal and the shattered mind
are in these cases the products of nature's inscrutable in-
ethicality, children of a strangely cruel parent, which the
remaining strong and honest have to care for. And thus
burden begins.
But this part of our burden is a small one in comparison
with that chargeable to society's wronging of the individual.
It is the oldest, truest of truths : man is man's worst
enemy. When one looks out over history, through the
long catalogue of bloody and iniquitous centuries ; when
one looks among the present nations, with their standing
armies of professional killers, their protective tariffs, their
monopolistic laws and laissez-faires, their crime-breeding
and lunacy-nursing deviltries, one almost feels like the
old pessimist, who wished he could go to the moon
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 307
in order to be able to spit upon the whole human race
at one time.
Now, the moral of all this is that these things, one and
several, by the consent of all statisticians, economists, and
psychologists, are profound, persistent, and necessary
causes of crime and insanity. The maxim of Quetelet, that
society prepares crime whilst the criminal only executes it,
is of course but a partial truth, but it is a great, a solid,
and an unconquerable truth. There is no escape from a
social or communal responsibility in the production of law-
breaking and mental wreckage. And it is precisely this
secret, subtle, haunting sense of guilt in the public con-
science that lies at the bottom of the disgusting tendency
at which medicine has simpered and ogled, to cry, " Poor
fellow, he was crazy; he shouldn't have brained his baby,
but he was not responsible. Let's build him a nice big
asylum, and feed him, and hire attendants and doctors to
wait on him." If he amuse himself knocking the attendants
over the head, and tearing their clothes off, the black-eyed
attendant must only smile and say, " Poor fellow ! "
We shall soon illustrate in a large historical way the
medieval story of the peasant and his son, who returning
one evening past the gibbet noticed that one of the
wretches that had been condemned " to die upright in the
sun " was wriggling about not dead. In pity they cut him
down, resuscitated him, and took him home. He soon
proved such a worthless, workless, thieving lout that ' i'
the dark o' the moon ' they took him back in disgust, and
strung him up again on the gibbet.
The expert on the witness-stand prostituting the name
of medicine and of science to cover some scoundrel with
the tear-proof cloak of insanity is a sorry sight indeed. He
may be sincere and honest ; if so, our verdict would be
that of the Welsh jury : " Not guilty ; but we recommend
him not to do it again." It reminds one of what the joker
308 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
said of a glass-eye : Everybody can see through it except
the wearer. In considering the subtileness and intricacies
of their diagnoses, so well as the contradictoriness of the
testimony of rival experts, one thinks of the cannibal chief's
reply as to what had become of the missionaries. " Alas !"
he said, " they gave us so much good advice, we had to
put them to death mercifully."
In the old days of the childhood of the race the troubled
conscience got rid of communal responsibility by heaping
its sins metaphorically on a poor little goat or sheep, and
shoo-shooing it over a precipice. It was crude ; it was a
funny bit of psychological legerdemain ; it was hard on the
goat, but it was satisfactory. Modern scape-goat worship
is a poor substitute. It also is crude, and it is jugglery,
but is unsatisfactory. The future will see through the
trick and will find it horribly expensive. The Chinese way
is doubtless a little of the opposite extreme, but it doesn't
load up the future : they regard insanity not as an extenu-
ating but as an aggravating circumstance in connection
with crime.*
There is another reason why the communal conscience
and responsibility cannot be downed. Not only do we
make bad laws, fail to make good laws, and leave good
laws unexecuted, but we are more or less conscious that
the community is full of unarrested, unpunished criminals
and insane. As every brain and skull, rigidly considered,
is atypical to some extent, so every one is guilty of more
or less scoundrelism ; we are all a little daft. Often, too,
the difference between the criminal behind iron bars and
the criminal behind social custom is only a difference of
intellect. The first simply got caught. Maudsley well
* With its 300,000,000 inhabitants China has no asylum for the insane. At
the Shanghai hospital, where 22,000 patients are treated annually, there were
but eleven cases of insanity among the number.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 309
says, " There is a sort of tacit conspiracy in the social world
to believe itself more virtuous than it is." This also coin-
cides with the common impudence that tries to make crime
and mental disease the result of ignorance and humble
social position, the fact, of course, being the exact reverse.
Modern education and modern wealth are at last but a sort
of taking down the bars, or a training in jumping, whereby
selfishness may get into forbidden clover. The sharp,
educated, superrefined urban population would rot in its
weakness and corruption if the stupid, honest country lads
and lassies did not transfuse their blood and virtue and
health into its veins every day.
To sum the matter up : Is the origin of crime and mental
disease to be sought in the individual or in the influence of
the environment ? Undoubtedly in both, but it agrees
with what evolution teaches as to the origin of faculty, and
it corresponds with what we learn by a study of the laws
and customs of our modern life, to lay by far the larger
burden of responsibility on forces outside and beyond the
government of the errant one. In unison with this comes
also the thought that toward this view tend the lessons of
a true religion and a large kindness. To see how outraged,
groping, suffering, and enduring humanity clings to right-
ness of conduct and sanity of mind, leads us to the pro-
foundest honor and reverence of our kind.
All of these considerations are of the greatest interest
and far-reaching value, so far as concerns the origin and
the prophylaxis of crime and insanity; but my contention
would be pointless and my logic most lame if I did not at
once add, that so soon as the overt act, that is, the proved
criminal or mentally incompetent, stands before you, his
judge, the whole question of responsibility or irresponsi-
bility sinks at once and wholly out of sight. No judge or
jury or expert should have anything whatever to do as to
the prisoner's responsibility for his act. The whole Gor-
310 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
dian knot is cut at one quick stroke by the staring, evident
fact that nothing less than divine omniscience is in the least
capable of deciding the question, or of meting out the
punishment according to guilt It is a bald, hideous, and
stupendous absurdity, this ridiculous assumption either of
power or of right on the part of any human being to ex-
plore the hidden recesses of the mind, and to decide how
far sanity has been driven out, and how far that strange
mystery of individuality has sinned against its own light
and by its own consent* Every good, modest, and large in-
telligence knows this is so and mourns the barbaric shame
that keeps the enormity upon our statute books.
As a necessary corollary you will have foreseen that, in
my view, the death penalty should be abolished. Words
fail me to express the hideousness of this last relic of
savagery in an age of so-called civilization or even of good
sense. There is not a single thing that can be said in its
favor that is not at once annihilated by a spark of common
sense or common justice. Whilst private retaliation and
vengeance were allowed, an eye for an eye and a life for a
life were excusable ; but in taking away from the wronged
man the right to kill his injurer, you have left retaliation
and vengeance behind as unworthy and useless examples of
barbarism. Lord Bramwell's deterrent theory of punish-
ment collapses like a soap-bubble when you probe it with
fact or logic. It is on a par with Niemeyer's approval of
the dictum of the wife of a Prussian general that whoop-
ing-cough is only curable with the rod ; and also Prof.
* A ridiculous example of this is to be seen in the April, 1889, number of
the Journal of Menial Science, where a believer in his own power to penetrate
the mystery of mind and crime gets sadly tangled in his own nets. A poor
hectored and starving workman, finding the sorry farce of life a bitter tragedy,
kills his own beloved baby, rather than permit self and child to continue the
bootless struggle. As if " enteric fever " or the " span of his arms " had
anything to do with it ! Such " science " is enough to make the angels weep.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 311
Ruble's recommendation of the shower-bath and birch-rod
in certain cases of chronic vomiting. It is said that
Quinet's mother used to hire a strapping fellow to come
every Saturday and thoroughly thrash all the children,
just on general principles! The courts, judges, and experts
should act in the same way with the whole human race, for
we are certainly all guilty. If the deterrent theory is the
right one, then why do we not execute children and the
insane ? There is not the least doubt that both children
and very many insane love their lives, and are even more
keenly alive to the fear of punishment than most criminals,
and yet, hang a child, and outraged society would justifi-
ably rise in horror and mob sheriff, jury, and judge. In-
deed, it may with much truth be urged that the so-called
deterrent effect often has a stimulative effect. Dr. Guy
tried to show that the execution of a lunatic was always
followed by a crop of new murders. Bramwell asserted
that many lunatics relied on immunity from punishment
for crime on the ground of their own lunacy. Every resi-
dent or nurse in an insane asylum will acknowledge that
there is more deviltry than insanity about many of their
cases, and that if the fist or some equally serviceable but
less brutal means could be used in return, much of the
combined diablerie and lunacy would disappear. Human-
ity, recognizing the incompetency of the deterrent theory,
has turned from it with the bungling make-shift and stop-
gap of insanity, and at the present rate every villain will
soon be excused as a crank.* The mere financial aspect
of judicial murder is enough to condemn it. A man com-
mits a crime; you spend thousands and hundreds of
thousands of dollars to try him (because of your deterrent
and punishment-theory it is of infinite importance that no
* " Society, having manufactured its criminals, has scarcely the right to
treat them in an angry spirit of malevolence."
312 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
mistake be made), and then after this you spend thousands
more to kill him. But his life is certainly of some financial
value. It is worth $14,600 at the age of 21, according to
the present average rate of wages and probability of dura-
tion of life. You have spent several thousands of dollars
to procreate and raise him to manhood ; he is capable of
working for you all his life ; you have the right of making
him work for you ; and yet you kill him in the most
expensive way possible. I call that very lunacy of justice
and the most egregious of follies.
The whole modern idea of punishment is a relic of bar-
barism and should be eradicated from jurisprudence, since
by its very nature it can neither be just nor prudent. *
The essence of the English law consists in the statement
that " to establish a defense on the groundofinsanity.it must
be proved that at the time of committing the act the accused
was laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of
the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act
he was doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know
that what he was doing was wrong."
The essence of my protest consists in this :
1. No human power in a specific case can decide as to
either point, and it is folly to pretend to do so. f
2. The tendency of both theories is to increase the evil,
not limit it.
3. If we do our first duty, deprive both classes of liberty
and of power to reproduce their like, and try to cure them,
* Lord Justice Frey said that " Punishment is an effort of man to find a
more exact relation between sin and suffering." I would say that civilized
jurisprudence should have nothing whatever to do or say about sin, suffering,
or the relation between the two.
f It is gratifying to see that a halt is called by the Supreme Court of New
York. According to a late decision the expression of an opinion on the part
of a physician that a man is insane on any other ground than that he is dan-
gerous to himself or others renders the physician liable to a suit for damages.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 313
it doesn't make a fig's difference which theory is right, be-
cause both must then be ignored. The only sensible posi-
tion is simply this : when a person either by crime or
incapacity to care for himself has forfeited his right to free-
dom, then the people must take that freedom away. We
have no earthly right to kill in return for crime done. We
should reorganize the treatment of criminals and lunatics
upon the sole principles of protection of the community and
reformation of the law-breaker and mind-breaker, to the
utter exclusion of the idea of punishment or of deterring
others, the whole upon the most economic basis possible.
Protection, reformation, economy ; it is self-evident that
these should be the ideals aimed at ; but it is just as indubi-
table that present methods, except bunglingly and partially,
neither aim at nor secure either, but instead do often seem
as if devised to secure the reverse. They certainly do not
protect the community in hardly any imaginable way ; they
exaggerate and create both crime and lunacy, and no dozen
of prize boodler aldermen could have invented a more ex-
pensive system of not doing justice and of fleecing the tax-
payer. As illustrative of the financial aspect : it is costing
Great Britain something like twenty millions of dollars a
year to care for her insane, and the amount will rise to thirty
millions within ten years. It is simply impossible to esti-
mate the bills of the police, the judge, and the jailer in the
cause of crime.
As to social protection, every one knows it is a farce only
equaled by the pretense that it does protect. In the recoil
from the old heathen judicial murder, and in lacrimose
snivel, we adjudge most criminals lunatics, or if we can't do
that, we put them in a pandemonium that, with caustic
malevolence, we call a penitentiary, and a little later, with
full powers of reproducing their like, and with hate, not
penitence, in their hearts, we let them slip back into the
bosom of the community, by the mysterious fatuity of a
27
314 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
discharge from an asylum-superintendent overburdened
with his load, or a pardon by a possible political bummer
miscalled a Governor. Then if Dean Swift were turned
deity he could not have instituted a more sardonically bitter
stroke than that now perpetrated by the greatest State of
our civilized and Christian America : that of supporting in
enforced idleness her malefactors who beg for work, and
who from want of it are going mad at the rate of 37 in the
past six months.
If we turn to the idea of reformation a still more remark-
able spectacle is offered us. So far as the " penitentiary "
is concerned, it is more apt to make everybody else peni-
tent than the criminal. Even pretense at reformation has
long ago passed into a joke of the chaplain, and if, while
working out his sentence, the poor devil of a criminal do not
lose the last ray of morality and hopefulness, it is no fault of
the system. If, on the other hand, we look for a therapeutic
zeal commensurate with the dogmatism of the school that
holds mental diseases to be wholly physical, we are astounded
to find that cure * and cause are things of little interest. It
is no less an authority than Tuke that says f " we seek in
vain in our asylums for any evidence ofthe systematic inquiry
into the treatment of these conditions. The public thinks
that madness can be eliminated by entertainment, and the
superintendent is bound to work up to this theory. These
great establishments, instead of developing into great
hospitals for the cure of disease, have done little more than
maintain a high character as model lodging houses for the
insane." This indictment is nailed with the fearful charge
* In 1870 Sir Arthur Mitchell found that out of 1297 patients admitted into
Scottish asylums in 1858, 474 died in the asylums, 412 were then alive as
chronic lunatics, and 411 had died, or were alive, sane. This is a worse mor-
tality than hydrophobia.
f Nineteenth Century, April, 1889.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 315
that but one contribution to the pathology or therapeutics
of insanity worthy to be called scientific has appeared as an
offset or rival to the giant strides of progress in every other
department of science and medicine. In fact, what
ingenuity could devise a better method of making, exagger-
ating, and confirming madness than to huddle hundreds and
thousands together suspected or convicted of mental
defect ? That this is so, even Tuke admits, and says
further: "What every case demands as the primary condi-
tion of recovery is separate and individual treatment and
consideration." *
In olden times the pianoforte-tuners used to have an
octave in which all the dissonances and discords of the
whole keyboard were gathered that they didn't know how
to distribute and harmonize. They called this octave " the
Devil," and the player, of course, had to avoid it as much
as possible, or touch it very gingerly.
The pith of the whole matter consists in the fact that in
our life the sociological tuner cannot confine his " Devil "
within the limits of one octave. By dint of an unmorality
that is only equaled by the development of sly cunning,
the modern intellect has got ahead of the antique conscience
and is fast leaving criminal jurisprudence as a curiosity of
" ye olden time." That is to say, like the modern piano-
tuner, we have, so far as true criminality is concerned, suc-
ceeded admirably in distributing " the devil " throughout
the whole seven octaves of society. But as regards lunacy,
the old plan of the single octave has been rigidly adhered
to with the inevitable result that the devil is overrunning
his octave and threatening to absorb a big part of the key-
board. In 1879 Professor von Krafft-Ebing, the well-
known alienist, estimated that in the most civilized peoples
* Walford says the mortality in public institutions is ten times as great as
the general mortality.
316 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
there was one insane person to every 500 of the popula-
tion. More recent statistics show the proportion to be
more nearly one to every 300 or 400. All statisticians are
agreed that the greater the civilization, the higher the ratio
of the insane, and that without exception the increase is far
higher than that of the population. * In less than a dozen
modern nations there are to-day about a million lunatics.
While the general population doubles, the number of the
insane increases three-fold or four-fold. The number is
kept much lower by what may be called the obverse of the
medal, the fact of suicide, that is also growing three or
four times faster than population. The number of idiots,
blind, deaf-mutes, and criminals, is likewise increasing more
rapidly than the people who have to support and care for
them. We have now probably six or seven, perhaps eight,
hundred thousand such folk as one of our burdens in this
country.
In view of the rapidly increasing load, would it not be
advisable'to remodel our penal laws and those regulating
the treatment of lunatics in some way that shall accomplish
the decrease and not the increase of these classes ? Would
not this end be sought more rationally by the following
means :
1. The complete eradication from legislation and juris-
prudence of all ideas of punishment and of the deterrent
effect of the same, sentence to loss of freedom being given
upon certain proof either of criminal act or incapacity of
self-support or self-control.
2. The establishment of a nonpolitical, highly paid
State Board of Control of the highest Medical, Legal, and
* In Great Britain the average annual increase of lunatics in asylums has
been 1580, and the gross registered increase 45,881. In Paris the number in
1872 was one lunatic to 1212 of the population. In 1886 the proportion was
one to 1091.
THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN. 317
Administrative ability, which shall have charge of the com-
bined Defective, Dependent, and Delinquent classes, the
discharging or pardoning power to reside in this Board
alone.
3. The Treatment of these classes to be organized so
far as possible upon an economic basis, but always with the
sublime and steady purpose of Cure in view.
4. The Protection of the Community, and the safe-
guarding of the future against the inheritance of criminal
and unsound taint, by the euthanasia of idiots, monstrosi-
ties, etc., the interdiction of marriage of paupers, and of the
physically unsound, and by the asexualization of the law-
breaker and the mentally unsound.
The thoughts underlying this writing might be summar-
ized as follows:
1. The unvarying testimony of statisticians and students
of sociology is that the defective, dependent, and delin-
quent classes and suicide, as a whole, are, in all civilized na-
tions, steadily and continuously increasing much faster than
the increase of the communities supporting them ; this
shows that something is radically wrong as to the causes
and the societies producing these classes ; it is, indeed, a
wrong that cannot fail in time to bring society to a very
literal reductio ad absurdum, sen ad lunaticum.
2. Though not wholly, this wrong is found to consist
chiefly in the vicious structure of society, economically
and morally, in a perniciousness of ideal and custom that
can but yield a fruitage of criminality and mental wreckage.
3. The half-conscious, half-smothered feeling of this
communal responsibility, cooperating with the criminal's
efforts by legal technicality and by medical aid, has served
to the same end by legalizing and excusing crime in the
community, or by covering it with the cloak of insanity.
4. The aid rendered by a certain school of medical
writers and experts to this morbid tendency has been based
318 THE MODERN FRANKENSTEIN.
upon the theory that crime and mental disease are simply
the effects of criminal or cerebral atypism and brain-dis-
ease, and therefore anatomically necessitated. This theory
is not only not proved, but is disproved by a number of un-
answerable facts and considerations, and is a stultifying
argument to use by those whose field of medical study has
shown the least progress, and in which therapeutics has
hardly entered.
5. Our legal sentences should be divested of all thought
of punishment or of deterrent effects, the asylum and peni-
tentiary combined and put under one management, the
clinical examination and study of the pathogenesis of these
conditions furthered, and all with the sole end of cure and
of prophylaxis.
To hasten the flow of dreary hours a gifted woman once
wrote a gruesome tale of how a cunning but short-sighted
delver and experimenter in life's mysterious genesis got
together many old and foul gatherings from cemetery and
from dissection-room, and created a living monster of
wonderful growth and power, but without a touch or breath
or divinity. Love arid sympathy of a certain kind it
indeed sought and hungered for, but the miserable wretch
was shunned by all. It soon became conscious of its own
moral deformity and hideousness, and in detestation of its
own life it came to hate the author of its being. Growing
ever more powerful, it restlessly and viciously plotted the
injury and ruin of its unfortunate creator.
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.*
A PSYCHOLOGIC STUDY.
I. Prefatory. The design of this paper is to study the
nature of consciousness and of its origin, from the facts of
sleep and dreams. But although one's own dreams are
vague and elusive, those of another person must be par-
ticularly so ; it therefore seems necessary to depend mainly
upon one's own dreams for data. Hence the apparent
egotism of the references to follow.
The facts supposed to be known are, some of them, as
follows : A sensory, afferent, or centripetal nerve is one
that conveys an impulse from an outlying or peripheral
point toward the spinal cord and brain. In some gang-
lionic center it becomes an efferent, centrifugal, or motor
impulse, that is conveyed by the appropriate nerve to the
muscles of the part first stimulated, and this part is accord-
ingly moved or becomes otherwise functional. Stimulus
of the nerve leading from the skin, at any point in its
course, produces the same motion, and an electrode, thrust
into the cortical center, also produces it. But the action of
this center is also directed by the consciousness or will ;
we can move the foot without its having been hurt. Con-
sequently, commissural, or associate fibers, must proceed
from the motor center to the organ of consciousness to
convey its impulses to this organ, and yet others to convey
mandates from consciousness to the motor center. It is
the same with every sense-center ; it must have afferent
* Published in The Open Court of January 24 and 31, 1889.
319
320 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
and efferent fibers, uniting it with the higher center of
consciousness. These facts necessitate a localization of the
organ of consciousness. Such cases as " The American
Crowbar Case," and a thousand observations in vivisection
and pathology, show that this organ is located in the frontal
lobes of the brain. The theory of sleep and dreams now
assumed is that in sleep all the subordinate centers of
sensation and motion are nonfunctional, neither influencing
the activities of the organ of consciousness, nor influenced
by it, and that dreaming is the mimic play of the organ of
consciousness without the stimulus, the inhibition, or the
data material habitually furnished by the subordinate
centers.
II. What Is Sleep ? So long as physiologists have not
accurately determined the physiological conditions of sleep,
we cannot be dogmatic in our definitions. But whatever
else it may be, it is essentially a condition of rest. Our
waking life is characterized as a life of action, that is, of the
outlay of force. We picture to ourselves the great motor
centers of the brain and cord as undoubtedly recouping
themselves, even during waking activity, from the great
manufactory of force, the digestive and assimilative system ;
but it is also necessary to suppose that, during waking, we
are, as it were, " running down," trenching closer and
closer upon both the store in reserve and the power of
ready manufacture, so that a time at last arrives when all
expenditure must cease and the process of restorage and
restoration must have sole sway. Nervous phenomena are
plainly phenomena of the discharge, guidance, and distribu-
tion of force. Functional activity everywhere exhausts,
and necessitates periods of rest, regeneration, and restorage.
It is this dynamic aspect of the question that is certain and
suggestive. Sleep may be thus partly defined as the
cessation of the functional activities of the sensory and
motor centers that habitually consist in the reception or
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 321
the discharge of force. Organs, whether of motion, sensa-
tion, or coordination, are not now pushed into action by
the messages of command from the resting or sleeping
centers. I am aware that this does not account for the
difference that undoubtedly exists between the rest of
sleep and that of waking. There is, of course, some
mystery here, though I do not believe it a profound one.
When awake, whether resting or the origin of muscular
contractions, a motor center is probably the source of
continuous discharge. All muscles have tone, many are
required to be persistently innervated, and any or all may
instantly require power. But in sleep the function of
regeneration of nerve-force predominates over the discharg-
ing function. One organ cannot at the same moment
perform two totally different acts or functions equally well,
and hence one must be paramount. Now, unless discharg-
ing, a center cannot affect either muscles or consciousness.
If it do not affect muscles, it rests. If in addition it do
not affect consciousness, it sleeps. When, in all motor
and sensory centers the regeneration or restorage function
predominates over the discharging function, and when,
therefore, the organ of consciousness receives from them
no discharges, we have the general condition of sleep.
Permanent predominant discharging constitutes the waking
condition of centers, single or general ; permanent pre-
dominant regeneration of nerve-force constitutes sleep. In
this, as in many other respects, it is highly interesting to
find, as has lately been done,* that the renal secretion of
the sleeping-hours is distinctly stimulant and convulsivant,
while that of the waking-hours is soporific and narcotic.
We thus see that by some not-understood method nature
eliminates during wakefulness the material of the blood
that would, if kept in it, dull the keen edge of action,
* Lefons sur les auto-intoxicants dans les maladies. Par Ch. Bouchard.
28
322 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
whilst, on the other hand, there is during sleep, strained
out of it, material that would spur the centers into wakeful
activity. This fact is very suggestive.*
III. What Is Consciousness? A simple reflex act is
one that proceeds from a single stimulus without the impli-
cation of other possibly-related centers. The subsidiary
center intermediating the motor response is sufficient to
effect the objects of the act. If the act is more than reflex,
if more than one center has to intermediate the complex
act, the impulse must proceed from a higher coordinating
focus that uses the subordinate centers as its media or
instruments. The center of a simple reflex act may be
called presentative, that or those of others placed over
them, representative. Consciousness may tentatively be
considered as the single and highest coordinating focus
of all the representative centers, or the unique rerepre-
sentative one. Hither proceed the centripetal lines of
stimuli from all points of the periphery. But a moment's
consideration shows us it is not only a focus, and one
exercising a rerepresentative function alone. The primary
object of all stimulation is reaction; hence, like all its sub-
ordinates, it is also, and in fact largely, directional, execu-
tive, governmental. In sleep the subordinate or repre-
sentative centers are not functional, no peripheral stimulus
reaches it, and it issues no orders to underlying centers of
motion.
IV. Does Consciousness Sleep? Sometimes we have
dreams in sleeping, sometimes we do not. Strict exami-
nation of our waking consciousness shows it is not a matter
of memory ; we do not dream all the time when asleep ;
* It is also curious to find the popular belief that relatively more births
occur in the small hours of the night is scientifically true. See Dr. Swayne in
Bristol Medico-Chirurgical Journal, September, 1888. One wonders whether
the common belief that more deaths occur in these hours is also true.
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 323
we sometimes forget our dreams. Upon waking, we
sometimes clearly remember our dreams, at other times
our memory is confused ; or, again, we are only certain
that we have dreamed, but without a trace of what it is we
dreamed ; and, lastly, we are often perfectly sure we had no
dreams. Moreover, as all vital functions must have their
rhythmical periods of rest, even the heart and lungs being
no exception, so the organ of consciousness must sleep.
In this fact lies the explanation of what must be considered
the pathologic character of the consciousness of a vivid
and continuous dreamer. An organ of consciousness, if
kept by its own hyperesthesia, or by the fevers and abnor-
malities of its subordinate centers, or by the unremitting
bombardment of multiform sense-stimulation, in a condi-
tion of unrest, must exercise an irregular and poor waking
control of the body. If the general never slept, his army
would soon sleep the sleep of the vanquished. Forced
wakefulness was the most horrible of ancient tortures. The
physician well knows that his prognosis often depends upon
the effect of his hypnotic.
V. The Difference Between the Dreaming and the
Waking Consciousness. The waking consciousness, as
we have seen, is the highest unifying center of the whole
organism. It is the focus wherein memories of all past
experiences are correlated with all present stimuli or
motives, and whence the command is given that is best to
subserve the preservation of the organism. The dreaming
consciousness,* in the first place, is evidently deprived of
the great body of present incitants to action ; all stimuli
are wanting, all subordinate centers are functionless.
* Unless specified, and especially now, I mean by the dreaming conscious-
ness, the placidly, reflectively, dreaming one, not that peculiar one in which
the suffering, struggling consciousness is vehemently endeavoring to arouse
subordinate centers, a condition strangely called " nightmare."
324 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
What material has it to work upon ? From what data
must it now proceed ? Plainly, those of memory only.
But in dreams it is a striking fact that remembered things
are not orderly, they do not correspond to reality, but are
fantastic and untrustworthy. Why, then, does the waking
and sleeping memory differ in such a highly important
matter as correspondence with reality ? Evidently because
in sleep the control of reality is not present ; because
memory is a function of subordinate centers as well as of
consciousness. No more satisfactory conception of mem-
ory can be given than that its physical basis consists
in a faint reproduction of the same ganglionic discharges
that took place in full force at the time of the origi-
nal sensation or action. If, therefore, the subordinate
sensori-motor centers are not discharging toward the
consciousness-center, all that is left in this center is the
memory of a memory, and, in fact, such a designation alone
conveys a conception of the unreal and ghost-like nature
of the memory of the dreaming consciousness. This cen-
ter in dreaming acts weakly and faintly in the same way
that it formerly acted strongly when fed by the full forces
of its waking subordinates. But in sleeping it remains
without the control of reality, which is always logical or
obedient to the law of causality ; and hence, in so acting,
it must be illogic and fantastic.
VI. Origin and Nature of the Waking Consciousness.
The organ of consciousness is single, specialized, and
localized. Dreams show us that while the habitual sensori-
motor functions and all stimuli are absent, consciousness
may be intensely active. Its essential functions are pre-
served in sleep, and this, were it a cerebrally diffused organ,
would be impossible. From of old consciousness has been
compared to the constriction of an hour-glass through
which the sand must pass grain by grain. But one train
of ideas can occupy consciousness at one time, and it is
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 325
always a train, a line, a succession of single stimuli, to
which it reacts. This is equivalent to saying that it reacts
to the strongest stimulus presented at any one instant.
This is its simple form, best illustrated in the conscious-
ness of the dog, where it is always and, as it were, mechani-
cally responsive to the presented object. However
obedient and engrossed by a duty or demand upon its
attention, let there suddenly appear another stimulus,
another dog, a physiological need, etc., and previous ob-
jects of attention are, as it were, annihilated in the total
engrossment of consciousness with the new object. It is
the same with almost all animals. Remembrance of past
danger in all hunted animals keeps consciousness keenly
alert to the signs of danger, so that the appearance, even
the thought, of such signs at once floods the organ of
consciousness with powerful stimuli, to the exclusion of
all others. Indeed, it does not seem absurd to suspect
that the escape from danger has been the strongest factor
in the development of consciousness. It would certainly
emphasize the quality or ability of differentiating self as the
object of consciousness, and setting it clearly forth as the
chief object of solicitude. An animal rises in the scale of
intelligence just in proportion as it is capable of preserving
clear memories of past experiences, individual or racial,
and of fusing these with the present stimulus so that the
resultant action shall most successfully secure the preser-
vation of himself and his species. The essence of the
matter consists in this fusing process, and the conscious-
ness of man differs in no essential characteristic from that
of animals except that, at the instant of fusing, a wider
sweep of possible results, a more reflective weighing of
more diverse experiences and complex motives, enters into
the count. Extension of the weighing time, complexity
of the pondered objects, and delicacy of the balancing
mechanism these are but differing degrees of the same
326 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
powers that belong to both alike. The first to be evolved
must have been the extension of the weighing time. The
mechanical jumping from one presented object to another
with unpondering rapidity is naive but primitive. That
the serpent in all antiquity has been worshiped as the
wisest of animals, may have been because we catch in the
restrained glitter of his eye the ability to ponder conflicting
motives and stimuli longer than others. Action does not
follow stimulus with the celerity of a mechanical force. In
the struggle for existence, that animal would rise above
his mates which, other things being equal, could at will
prolong the time between the reception of competing
stimuli and the resulting action. With this ability would
go, pan passu, the ability to handle more varied stimuli and
motives. Delicacy of equilibration of multiform forces
held long in suspense is only possible to the highest
human consciousness and is its superb characteristic.*
Thus, to hold in suspense many competing stimuli, and
weigh them accurately, would require a large and com-
plexly organized center such as the frontal lobes, whose
human development has been exactly proportional to the
growth of intelligence. After a period of imaginative
excitement or creative intellectual work I have a sense of
constriction and tension in the frontal lobes, and especially
of the right side.f
* Discriminative attention is a human faculty, and appears to be either a
selective receptivity of the organ of consciousness, an exclusive reception by
it of one kind of stimulus, or the exclusive direction of its innervation upon a
single or a special set of subordinate motor centers.
f Still another indication is the fact, daily observed by ever)' physician, that
eye-strain is a frequent and persistent cause of frontal headaches. It may be
worth noting that, like the center of articulate speech, the organ of conscious-
ness must, by its very nature, be a single organ. Bilateral symmetry is the law
in most other functions of the body and its nervous mechanism. Speaking
evolutionally, articulate speech is an accidental after- thought, and so must be
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 327
VII. Origin and Nature of the Dreaming Conscious-
ness. It is of the very nature of the waking conscious-
ness that it must always be responsive to some stimulus ;
that it must be equally responsive to either of the many
and varied possible stimuli ; and, lastly, that it must re-
spond to a stimulus of low intensity, however delicate it
may be. It is this delicacy of action that I wish to empha-
size. Irritation at extreme or unnecessary noises ; esthetic
pain at crude and loud colors ; sensitiveness to differences
of stimulus of any kind, these distinguish the highly organ-
ized personality. There is no bolometer or other instrument
of precision delicate enough to measure the inconceivable
minuteness of the force that is sufficient to influence con-
sciousness. This quality proves of profound service in
sleep. When the animal or man lies down to sleep, I think
that, at first, consciousness also sleeps, since to some extent it
also must yield obedience to the general law of the rhythm
and rest. When sleep is permitted, it is because it is safe
to permit it. Hence sleep may at first be dreamless with
less danger to the organism. But, since the struggle for
existence began, the sleeper has needed a sentinel to stand
watch over him, and be on the alert for any one of his
thousand enemies. When one thinks of the manifold agen-
cies of harm, such as fire, robbers, impure air, malposition
of the body, too great heat or cold, physiologic needs or
pathologic conditions, etc., etc., to which the best pro-
located upon one side or the other of the two-sided brain. Upon -which side
is not only not invariable, but it is even found to follow or cause ? the educa-
tion of the opposite hand for intellectual work. In a recent very interesting
case the speech-center was proved to be localized upon the left side, because,
though the man was left-handed for everything else, the one intellectual act of
writing was done with the right hand. Arguing from analogy, it might be
supposed that the organ of consciousness for right-handed people would be
found in the left frontal lobe, since the right hand is the one most generally
used for intellectual things, as writing, gesturing, etc. There are other con-
siderations that would argue the reverse.
328 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
tected and most civilized people are liable, and how inse-
curely most of us sleep, and when we add to all these all
the dangers and enemies and perplexities of the savage or
the higher animals, we can then vividly realize how neces-
sary such a sentinel is for the preservation of the organism
and the species. That the period of the exhaustion of
consciousness is more brief, that its resumption of function
would be more speedy, than with other organs, goes with-
out saying, and especially since its function is mainly equi-
librational, directional, mirror-like, rerepresentative, not
creative, remolding, motor, or representative. I am cer-
tain that my dreams grow more vivid toward the time of
awaking, just as I have no dreams in the first hours of sleep.
My own dreams also show plainly the sentry-like function
of the dreaming consciousness. I am very sensitive to
malposition of the body in sleep. Pressure upon a nerve-
trunk is with me extremely prone to produce the phenom-
enon popularly known as " sleep " of a limb. For this
reason I sleep upon a hard bed, and I can sleep in but one
position, upon my back, without pillow and without flexion
of any limb. If by accident these conditions are broken
during sleep, I have as a result a peculiar experience that
has happened to me repeatedly and all through my life.
My dream at first takes on a tinge of impending danger
until I become aware that I must awaken myself. The
labor of doing this is both powerful and painful. I am
truly conscious of my effort, of a struggle with my dormant
members. The energy spent in endeavoring to arouse my-
self is tremendous. At first I can perhaps move but one
finger, then I can bring other fingers into the control of the
will, finally the alternate flexions and extensions include
the hand, and I may have to wave and thrash the hand and
arm for some time before arousing a sufficient overflow of
stimulus to reach other motor centers and spur into the
condition of " awake " all the sensory and motor centers of
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 329
the body. Sometimes the head is the movable part, and this
is rotated from side to side with ever-increasing extent and
quickness, until the general arousing is attained. All this
is to me an indication of the sentinel function of conscious-
ness during sleep, of its quick response to slight stimuli, of
its directional control of subordinate and representative
centers directly intermediating muscular action. It also
shows that it is executive only through its agents. Its mo-
tor-commissural fibers must end in the direct motor-centers
about the fissure of Rolando. But it also implies that its
sensory fibers are, in part, direct, and warrants our belief
that the great bundles of centripetal fibers proceeding from
the periphery split, and whilst the greater number proceed
to the direct sensorimotor or representative centers about
the Rolandic fissure, a limited number proceed directly to
the organ of consciousness. Such an anatomic arrange-
ment would explain the sentry-like function. It would thus
become clear why a peripheral stimulus, as a malposition
of the body, could arouse the light-sleeping organ of con-
sciousness, which, in turn, could arouse the representative
or direct motor Rolandic centers. As will be noticed, the
dynamic aspect of the question is always decisive, since the
control of subordinate centers is only at first of the small-
est or most easily moved muscles, such as the fingers, a
hand, or the head placed in unstable equilibrium. And not
only this, I have often had the sense of weight and dis-
comfort of a limb before I had succeeded in awakening the
center that controlled that limb. The argument for direct
sensory fibers to the organ of consciousness is still further
strengthened by the frequent phenomenon of my sleep that
follows: Upon being aroused by a very sudden noise I
have often clearly recognized the fact that I hear the sound
with my consciousness, if I may be pardoned the seeming
absurdity, before I do with the auditory center. The vibra-
tory impact arouses consciousness a moment before it
330 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
arouses audition. The safe-guarding function of conscious-
ness in sleep is thus again exemplified. In Science,
November 2d, a correspondent describes an interesting phe-
nomenon of his dream that also throws light upon this as-
pect of the question. The strokes of a wood-chopper were,
in the early part of the dream, irregular and without order.
They then became rhythmical for four strokes, and then the
sleeper awoke to find the clock striking midnight. After
awaking he counted four beats, and thus he knew that the
clock-strokes brought into the dream their rhythm at about
the fifth stroke, and made the axe-strokes coincide with the
clock-strokes. In other words, the sound and its rhythm
reached consciousness directly, impressing upon it their
own peculiarities, which persisted for a time until the
stronger stimulation of the auditory center aroused all the
mind into " awakedness." * Finally, there is one other
curious illustration of the question that also shows the del-
icacy and the independence or the action of the sleeping
consciousness. I allude to the ability possessed by some
* In a late dream my fancy took on a musical remembrance or coloring, and
the same may have been aroused by the miaulings of a cat below the window.
Before awaking, the music of the dream was consonant with that of Thomas,
and was exceedingly grateful and musical. When the caterwauling became
loud enough to awaken me, the pleasure of the dream was suddenly changed
into disgust at the unmusical noise of the cat, that an instant previously had
been one of delight. In this it is also possible to suppose the stimulation
of consciDusness was from and through the auditory center, but that too faint
or imperfectly worked-up material was furnished. It seems more probable that
the stimulation was directly from the external sense-organ without the inter-
mediation of the sound-center. Just as fibers proceed from the cochlea to the
cortical auditory center, where neural vibrations become sound, so it would
seem that other fibers proceed from the cochlea to the consciousness center
intermediating its direct stimulation. If, in my dream, consciousness had been
fed from the auditory or musical center, it could hardly have mistaken the cat's
misery for music. The same may be said as regards my dream of being in-
tensely " tickled " by a hand beneath the chin to awake with the thought that
my neck is not the least " ticklish."
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 331
people of, as it were, winding up the alarum of their men-
tal mechanism so that they shall awake at a given hour. I
have known people that sleep soundly and awake habitu-
ally within a few minutes of the time they had, upon going
to sleep, determined to awaken themselves. My own at-
tempts to do this always result in lying awake the most of
the night. My alarum goes off at a soupgon, entirely too
soon, and keeps on rattling at a great rate !
Hypnotism, it may parenthentically be remarked, would
seem to be the reverse of the dream-state. In the latter
there is no centripetal stimulus, the subordinate motor
centers being quiescent. In the hypnotic state the senses
are alert, the sensori-motor centers actively functional, but
the center of consciousness is resleep, or, what is the same
thing, supplanted or enslaved. How this can be done is a
mystery. However well attested, one is inclined to think
it impossible, and that it does not happen, except in the
natural way, that a pliant, weak mind finds satisfaction in
acting a role, called the hypnotic state.
VIII. Insomnia. In passing we may note the influ-
ence of the kind of waking life upon the dreaming conscious-
ness. Work, especially physical work, but even normal
mental work, is usually followed by refreshing and com-
paratively dreamless sleep. Worry, solicitude, and vexa-
tion, bring troubled dreams and even pronounced insomnia.
Why is this ? In normal exhaustion of the nervous centers
there is no conflict or unwonted excitation of the center
of consciousness. There is a low reserve, and investment
or action must cease until interest or income accrues. In
long-continued anxiety, however, consciousness is stormed
by a multitude of conflicting and continuous stimuli, lead-
ing to no definite resolve and action, and hence ending in
a surcharge of energies, probably a real hyperemia and
febrile excitation of the organ, that do not cease at night
332 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
or with sleep. I do not doubt that the frontal lobes of a
man dying, finally worn out with years of care and dis-
appointment, would, under the microscope, show a different
condition from those of a healthy and happy man. On the
other hand, if hyperesthesia is pathologic, anesthesia is cer-
tainly indicative of a poor type of consciousness. That must
be a vegetative sort of consciousness that sleeps as soundly
and as long as the lower centers. No nimble-witted man
can fail to be a dreamer. My friend must be a dreamer of
interesting dreams ! One that does not dream is not ex-
ceptionally sympathetic, responsive, alert; he has not
highly keen sensibilities, is not nobly religious, or chari-
table, or aspiring.
I have always been subject to insomnia of the following
kind, I am likely to have periods of paroxysmal, emotional,
and imaginative excitement : If I am pursuing an object of
study, trying to solve some scientific or practical problem,
or if greatly interested in some work of art, etc., I habitually
awake in the night after a short sleep, and at once the
whole machinery of intellect, imagination, and conscious-
ness is in full cry ! The heart is aroused, and by the spur
of excitement is put into the field at full speed. It is clear
that this organ of consciousness requires the best of blood,
and a deal of it ! All this would appear to be the overflow
of nerve-force from the center of consciousness along the
centrifugal lines of its habitual discharge to the subordinate
centers that are thus kept in a state of activity though
really needing rest. All the devices for wooing sleep are
but tricks to prevent the outflow. None of the methods
commonly employed help me, and they appear to be based
upon a false principle. They generally consist in a repeti-
tion of the same discharges, or an exercise of the same
subordinate centers. However often we count or repeat
the letters of the alphabet, or in thought walk up and
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 333
down the same path, the mimic and weak outflow is by the
same commissural fibers to the same subordinate centers.
If I am ever able to succeed by any device at all, it is by
deflecting, derouting, and subdividing the outflow in such
a way that it does not flood any single subordinate center.
No single train or repetition of thought is allowed, the
stream is divided so that each subsidiary center gets such
a minimum of excitation that it can resist it, and thus all
are calmed. For example, I think, for a passing moment,
of each part of my body in succession, and of each function
of the same, of each sense, with the origin, course, and
result of each sensation. Thus traversing the round, I, as
I believe, drain off and subdivide the superabundance of
innervation to every possible outlet. Instead of persistently
doing something, or constantly exercising motor-centers
exclusively, it is better to trust to a mimic sensational ex-
ercise. Thoughts of personal motion are outgoing and
stimulating, thoughts of visual and auditory sensations are
receptive and calming. Another device I have success-
fully used is to imagine myself in midocean, becalmed,
alone, not frightened, and looking out over a monochro-
matic ocean to all points of the compass successively,
thinking of all the strange life in the depths below me
whose bottom leads on and on to distant isles, watching
also the starlit space above, as it pales into magical sun-
rises, and the ever-changing phantasmagoria of cloudland
flows ceaselessly by.
IX. General Characteristics of Dreams. Most of my
dreams are of actions. I do things, or try to do them, or
am the object of the acts of others. Very few are con-
templative, intellectual, or purely sensational. This shows
that the mimic stage of dreamland, in a general way, is the
same as that of the waking life. Consciousness is most
habitually employed in the direction of the activities of the
334 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
motor centers.* Historic man, even more than at present,
has been an active, not a contemplative, reflective, or recep-
tive being. The mimic exercise of motor function by the
dreaming consciousness produces for me two types of
dreams : First, the clogged, heavy, and impeded, in which
the feet are stuck fast or weigh a thousand pounds, etc. I
think this is a familiar sort of dream, and finds its rationale
in the resisted efforts of the organ of consciousness to
arouse the subordinate sleeping centers of motion. In the
dream we do not know why we cannot lift the feet, or reach
the succoring hand ; we are only intensely conscious that
the foot or hand are sluggish and benumbed as in truth
they are. Consciousness sends its mandate to the Rolandic
centers, but there is no response. Hence the genesis of
the so-called "nightmare." Resisted and unresponsive
effort arouses fear and further effort. Bodily malposition
may also serve to beget the endeavor to arouse subordinate
motor centers. A correlated fact may be bracketed here.
A familiar dream-experience consists in dropping or step-
ping off some high place, or falling through the air, and
with the drop, or the crash, we awake in fright. If our
conception of cerebral action is correct, this would find its
explanation in the loss of the habitual checks and control
of the lower sense-centers. When awake, consciousness
exercises control of the muscles and saves the body from
falling. When asleep, the command is also given, but the
lower centers and their muscles do not obey and we fall.
* A dreaming dog presents a suggestive picture: The paws jerk, the lids
quiver, the jaws snap, he barks little, short, spasmodic barks, or he growls and
whines. I picture the consciousness-center intensely active, the chase in his
dream is wild. The subordinate centers are partially aroused by the overflow
from the higher center, but not normally functional until such a pitch of ex-
citement is reached that, in the culmination of the dream, all and several are
" awakened."
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 335
Not only this, but the danger of falling, the predicament
we are in, is aroused by the fact that the inhibition and
checks of sense-control do not exist in sleep to keep us
away from heights and dangerous places. Consciousness
records the efforts of will we make, as if they were registered
in action, and it sees no difference between willed act and
motor fact.
The second class of movement-dreams, or action-dreams,
is the reverse of the first, and consists in movements not only
unencumbered, but of transcendent ease. The glorious
pleasure of supernatural power and action is indescribable.
I often awake quivering with the intense pleasure of free,
swift, and confident activity. Sometimes it is a sort of
skating or gliding across countless miles of country or
ocean ; sometimes it is a giant-like striding from mountain-
top to top ; sometimes the perfect eagle swoop through the
blue of space, effortless and superb ! May this be thought
of as either a normaLplay of the organ of consciousness
with its own forces, or as a healthy mimic outflow of inner-
vation along the usual routes to the subordinate centers of
motion, which, in comparative exhaustion, absorb the in-
flow without themselves being aroused to an active outflow
of innervation ?
It has been a source of wonder that in the classical
hashish dream of the De Quincey type an eternity of
time is compressed into a moment, and to the rioting con-
sciousness that moment is indistinguishable from the actual
detailed facts of a thousand years. In the same way, space
broadens, and the body itself, or the room it dwells in,
becomes wide as the starlit night. Personality may even
seem to double, and thus again enlarge the boundaries and
possibilities of experience. Is not all this also a corollary
of the anatomic and physiologic conditions of the organ
of consciousness ? We have memories of waking life only
as things and events transpire that memory records : but
336 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
the evolution of a tree, or a world, or a life, is a slow pro-
cess. But, to the mind, in the condensation of thought, it
becomes an instantaneous thing. We can think the evolu-
tion of a solar system in the flash of an instant. It is fact
that draws this out to ages. In sleep, let us again repeat,
facts and all their qualities are lost in the loss of the lower
centers of sensation and motion. Hence the mental review
of time-stretches and the multitudinously-linked chain of
facts becomes temporarily as much of a reality to the
dreaming consciousness as if the law of causality were truly
operative. It does not suspect that its phantasmagoria is
not real, because, so far as itself is concerned, it is real.
We must remember that consciousness is never directly
touched by reality. It only receives the echoes and repre-
sentatives of reality. In the hashish-dream it is not sus-
pected that the thousand years are not actually passing.
It is only when we awake and compare the dream with the
slow and droning march of casually-linked things that we
recognize that the thousand years were condensed by the
wizard of consciousness. Memory is in truth only the
memory of psychic happenings, and as these, essentially,
are almost, if not absolutely, timeless and spaceless, it fol-
lows that the passage of a cycle of material events may be
swept through the hour-glass constriction of consciousness
in a brief moment. Or again, we may in dreams wish or
will to do a thousand things in a flooding instant of bound-
less desire, that a world and an eternity could not realize
under the conditions of causality. But it is apparent that
to the dreaming consciousness this crowded rush of desires
and willings is as real, apparently as subject to time and
its laws, as if the lower centers were not asleep. It is these
lower centers that give to it the term of comparison and
enslave it in the treadmill of reality. In sleep the noble
slave is temporarily set free ; sleep seals the eye-lids of its
masters, the spirit rises out of the chains that bind con-
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 337
sciousness to reality, and the divine slave at once comes
into possession of the universe as its absolute plaything,
whilst over its fancy hovers the superb child's hallucination
that the paltry nothings of its imagination are real suns
and stars and worlds, the actual march of cosmic events
and the pomps of eternal time ! Its mimic play and light-
est wishes instantaneously become incontrovertible and
unquestioned facts. Had they reasoned of the world of
dreamland, those philosophers that resolved the world,
with its laws of time and space and causality, into mentality,
would have been wiser than they were.
A pronounced characteristic of all dreams is their great
lack of logical correspondence with the laws of the real
world. In dreaming this is not recognized. The most
intolerable absurdity seems perfectly natural. One face
or person fades into another, we take hundred-mile steps,
we do things outrageously mal-a-propos, without a sus-
picion of their incongruity. I gather from this that the
waking activity of the organ of consciousness is regulated
and governed by the multiform stimuli of the subordinate
centers. In a certain sense and in the light of evolution,
the organ of consciousness is an outgrowth and product
of these subordinates. In the waking life their messages
must continually be sent to the higher unifying center.
The product of their combined influence must be inhibitory
and regulative. In this way there is produced the sanity,
the correspondence with reality, that marks the orderly,
mirror-like function of our waking consciousness. The
essential characteristic of sleep is the nonactivity of the
subordinates, and hence the unregulated and fantastic
mimic life of the organ, acting without data or content.
The restraining checks and the completing fullness of the
influences of the lower centers are removed, and hence the
inevitable result is inconsequentiality, illogicality. Another
reason for this fantasticalness lies in the fact that even in
29
338 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
waking the work of consciousness consists in no exclusive
occupation with one set of stimuli. Strictly speaking, there
is no habit of consciousness. It must remain at the instant
service of any or many orders and kinds of control, whether
of sensation, memory, or various motive. When removed
from the inhibition and control of reality, consciousness
could not be supposed to show an order and logicality of
succession it had never had in real life.
Depriving it also of content or material would all the
more emphasize its whimsicality. In dreams the sense of
the incongruous or the ludicrous is with me of the extrem-
est rarity. The humorous is the incongruous, and this is
a failure of correspondence with the real. If the compari-
son with reality be excluded, then, though every dream be
incongruity itself, recognition of the fact by the dreaming
consciousness is infallibly excluded. I have sometimes
been awakened by my own laughter at .some apparently
highly absurd thing, but when awake I have been just as
much disgusted at myself to find the plainly-remembered
dream in reality contained no vestige of the humorous.
X. Differences Between the Dreaming and the "Wak-
ing Consciousness. I preserve in my dreams most of my
stronger esthetic, deeper moral, and passionate feelings or
emotions, but with noteworthy differences. These differ-
ences may perhaps be summed up by saying that in dream-
land the factitious elements and refinements of a super-
posed civilization fall away, leaving in relief the nude
realism of primitive and disingenuous personality. For
example, the occasional prevalence of generative instincts
might alone convert one to the doctrine of biology covered
by the adage, omne vivum ex ovo. Assuredly, restraint and
scruples concerning such matters are not known in dream-
land. The chastest do not blush there. I rarely have any
care for clothes or nudity there, and the bizarrerie of my
dream-plights in this respect often amuses my waking con-
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 339
sciousness. In one way I think it remarkably confirmative
of my general thought that, as the savageness of the brute
and the selfishness of the animal come out in intoxication,
it is not so in dreamland. Rage, destructiveness, tyranny,
delight in power these are almost never present. The
reason is that the power-producing or motor-centers are
asleep. Neither is hypocrisy known in dreamland. False-
hood is largely a product of civilization. There are few of
us that are not forced into subterfuge, peccadillo, and even
cowardly lies, by the conventionalities and disguised war-
fare of civilized life. Consciousness is in truth ethical and
unselfish : it holds the balance between the selfish greeds
of the lower centers. In sleep these last are forced to stop
their wranglings and their competition for place and recog-
nition, and it therefore never occurs to dream-conscious-
ness to lie or deceive for selfish reasons. Morally, dream-
land is a brighter country than our noisier world. If
dreams tell us anything about our essential personality,
they argue against our innate depravity. I think I am
more kind and careful of others' rights in dreamland than
in awakeland. In the last country I have to endure many
grievous hurtings of my feelings in the matter of cruelty
to animals. In dreamland my indignation at it is constantly
aroused. I may see nothing absurd in a fireman compel-
ling his beautiful horse to pull the fire-engine by a three-
tined fork thrust through the animal's nose, but I awake,
boiling with rage and vowing to arouse society to a recog-
nition of the shame of it all. Unless feelings of profound
pity, contempt, indignation, etc., are aroused, I find that in
dreamland I am, not immoral, but unmoral. Unless a lie
hurts somebody in a way to arouse fervidness of feeling, I
do not greatly hate the lie or the liar. But if the lie pro-
duce injustice or wrong, I hate that, and the author of it,
though not because of the falsehood.
In my dreams I have even killed others with utterly no
340 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
compunction or regret, but with satisfaction that I had
righted some wrong, or vindicated somebody, or succored
the weak. I remark always the most unquestioned and
enthusiastic acceptance of the fundamental passions of pity,
love, justice, indignation at wrong, etc. These great
forces of mental life have stamped their impress so deeply
into the structure of the organ of consciousness that, even
when the stimulus of the fact is absent, when the subor-
dinate centers are hushed in sleep, and sensation is non-
existent, there still remains the play of nervous activity
along the old lines, and with sufficient intensity to light up
again the emotions that once blazed forth at the touch of
the real.
As to the reasoning power, I find my dream-conscious-
ness wholly devoid of it. I have heard of mathematicians
working out incomplete problems in their sleep, or the key
to some scientific mystery or financial vexation reaching
one at that time. To say the least, such cases must be very
exceptional. Judgment, weighing complex probabilities,
induction by close lines of logic from manifold details to a
single cause or principle, all this presupposes a converg-
ence of myriad nerve-currents of many and disassociated
points, the focalization of many sensations, memories,
past and present, etc., etc. To think is to ponder, and
weighing is the essential characteristic of all judgment.
But the dreaming consciousness is without judgment. It
is always the incongruous with which it deals. Its work-
shop turns out good work only if good material is fur-
nished it. It is fancy, imagination, feeling, sentiment, but
never ratiocination. The subordinate centers that furnish
it with material, that give it legality, and hold it to reality,
are sleeping. The factory is without " raw material," and
the hands go holidaying.
In matters esthetic my dreamland is a revelation to
me, and in this respect alone frequently transcends reality.
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 341
I have never taken a dose of cannabis indica or other
cerebral stimulant. I have no need of such things. Re-
leased from the bonds of the actual, my imagination
wanders in dreamland among supersensual delights and
basks in the light that never was on sea or shore. I note
this peculiar fact : in my enjoyment of dreamland-beauty
there is an element of fervor, an implication of the feelings,
that I can but barely remember, not experience, as I stand
before the most beautiful of real things. May the reason
of this be, that in addition to the real being always far
from perfect, there is in no waking human life utter ob-
livion of its painful and tragic elements, past or present ?
Every sense has been outraged, every center of the brain
has suffered, and even whilst these may send their most
exultant peans of major joy to the higher center of con-
sciousness, there must ever intermingle the minor notes
and discords of want, insatisfaction, and pain, that keep its
harmony from being perfect. But when all sources of such
discords are hushed, when these lower centers are asleep,
the freed consciousness can revel in joyousness under the
fleeting illusion that its mimic life is real.
XI. Preponderance of Visual Sensations. Motion
and vision are the two great factors of mental life, and it
is suggestive to find that those animals that so long as
possessing motion, keep their eyes and the intelligence
that coexists with vision and motility, when they attach
themselves permanently to one spot the eyes and intelli-
gence are lost. Parasites are usually eyeless, and vege-
table parasites are without chlorophyl. The whole wretched
order of microbes, molds, and fungi, the curse of the
physician and of the world, are parasitic and without
chlorophyl. The insane, the idiotic, the weak-minded, the
epileptic, have, relatively speaking, very subnormal vision
and a defective ocular mechanism.
342 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
Above the motor element, the predominant characteris-
tic of my dreams is that they are made up of things seen.
I do not remember ever to have dreamed of an odor,
pleasant or foul, though often dreaming of perfumed or
malodorous things. In the same way, though I have
dreamed of eating, I preserved no remembrance of im-
pressions of taste. The apple I ate I cannot now tell if
it were sweet or sour. Tactile sensation is somewhat fre-
quently a component of dream-phenomena, but generally
only in conjunction with another sensation or feeling that
smothers it. If I am struck by another, the feeling or
pain, if existent, is at once lost in some psychic emotion,
of anger or fear, etc. Pain cannot enter dreamland, be-
cause the centers that feel pain are asleep. I never re-
member to have remarked in dreams that a thing was ex-
ceptionally and peculiarly smooth, or hard, or sticky, etc.
I shrink less from touching a foul thing in dreams than in
real life. I cannot remember ever to have been cold or
oppressively warm in dreamland. If I shiver from cold or
am too near a fire I note especially the motion, or sight,
or perhaps the feeling of the shivering instead of the cold,
and I remember the danger, or the vision of the fire, not
the pain. All of this is consonant with the rerepresenta-
tive function of consciousness. The senses are represented
in it only when awake. As to hearing, few or none of my
dreams contain any distinct records of sounds. I can
express it no better than to say that the results of hearing
are manifest, but not the sounds themselves. I speak and
am spoken to, and act accordingly, but I am never able to
recall any timbre of voice, any inflection, emphasis, or
pitch that causes the voice to be, at the time, thought of as
remarkable, or that gave its noteworthiness, if it had any,
enough vividness to project it across the bridge of awaking
into a work-day memory. When awake, nothing so fires
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 343
me with uncontrollable emotion as the music of Beethoven,
Wagner, or Franz. I cannot remember ever to have heard
music in dreamland.
But how different it is with the sense of vision ! Every-
thing not motion and that is largely so is a thing seen.
How empty and destitute must be the dreamland of the
congenitally-blind! To me vision gives dreamland all its
beauty and most of its interest. It could hardly be other-
wise, since the same is true of the waking consciousness.
Intellect, indeed, is almost entirely formed of visual factors ;
every component of what we call psychic life and civiliza-
tion is largely the product of vision. Language and the
letters of the alphabet themselves are the records of things
seen. Vision is at once the most metaphysical of real,
and the most real of metaphysical things. Astride a ray
of light Puck passes in a flash from matter to mind. The
library of the soul, memory, is a picture-gallery. An
absolute monochromatic world would force the spirit to
suicide. Had all eyes been absolutely color-blind Psyche
would not have been born. It is the associate fibers from
and to the visual center that bind together the world of
mind and the world of matter, and that loans life its value,
and crowns it with -its one unalloyed delight. We sleep at
night when the eyes, the great awakeners, ministers and
producers of intellect and life, are least utilizable. Few
people, and only those of stolid and blunted sensibilities,
can sleep in the light, even with what darkness closed lids
give. It is interesting to see how all living forms, both
animal and vegetable, dwindle to wretched caricatures of
life, when, eyeless and colorless, they keep up existence in
caves and in the sea-depths.*
XII. Character, the Soul, and Consciousness. In
* See Packard, " On Certain Factors of Evolution," the American Natur-
alist, September, 1888.
344 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
a superb story of Gautier, a lover, by his power of magic,
is able to lull into a death-like trance the being of his
successful rival. This lover then steals the body of the
young husband, his rival, and, leaving his own soul in the
entranced body to care for it, the passionate lover plans
to trick the faithful wife. The conception is a proof of
genius ! Think of it ! The lover stole a body that thereby
he might steal a love, that, in the absence of his own body,
was of course not carnal. On the part of the husband
one meets a multitude of questions, principal of which
would perhaps be, How far would he have been cheated
had the thief been successful ? On the part of the lady
strange trials and mystic queries also arise. Remember
that if only her husband's soul were absent, there were
present every trick of motion, play of expression, timbre
of voice, nay, every habit of mind and body, that is in any
way controlled by the laws of corporeal and nervous
organization or by heredity. What would be different ?
Both lovers would be equally kind, lovable, and loving.
Both would express their inner feeling by the same acts
and by the same mechanism. Some one said that the
Yankee worked badly where soul and body touched.
Would you suppose the thieving lover's soul could not
avoid an awkwardness in handling the mental centers and,
through them, the body he had stolen ? I bring the idea
forward here to illustrate, firstly, how far " character " is a
matter of flesh and nervous organization ; and, secondly,
how little there is in the so-called " soul " but an imper-
sonal force. If two of your best friends could change
" souls," would you ever find it out ? I confess that after
a rigid exclusion of the elements of character that neces-
sarily inhere in the action of the body and of all subor-
dinate motor and sensory centers, I find, if anything be
left, it is a very impalpable and impersonal somewhat. Now
this is precisely what sleep does. If, therefore, the dream-
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 345
ing consciousness could have its photograph taken, it
would have no recognizable or distinguishing trait of ex-
pression. We should never know our disembodied friends.
Dream-personality has no individuality. And thus, through
physiologic psychology, we catch a glimpse of the pro-
found truth that, at heart, we are all the same. One com-
mon unity lives in us all, and our jealousies, bickerings,
differences, and hates are but the expression of the acci-
dents of body ; our love and kindness, the expression of
the one life that feeds all our lives. Dream-philosophy
teaches religion and sympathy. There is nothing more
noble or more philosophically demanded of us all than, to
one another, simple kindness. It is at once the most
human and the most divine thing in this sorry world.
It is evident that a cluster of nerve-cells in the cortex of
the brain whose function it is to receive stimuli and answer
the same with messages, e. g., to a muscle to contract, it
is clear, that such a mechanically acting center is not the
"soul," or even a part of it. A paralyzed man is just so
much a man spiritually and mentally as before the ather-
omatous blood-vessel drowned the Rolandic convolution.
Paralyze every bodily muscle, and the fact remains essen-
tially the same. But it is not so with the frontal lobes of
the brain. Render them functionless by trauma, disease,
or the hypnotic enslaver, and consciousness, mind, soul,
give no evidences of existence. Slice off the frontal por-
tions of the brain of the poor pigeon, and life, power, habit
continue, but not what it had of mind. We may be thank-
ful that it is impossible and useless to slice from behind
forward and leave only the living organ of consciousness.
But this is almost exactly what sleep does, harm-
lessly and lovingly, however, and it is of the greatest
interest to see what a world is left after all peripheral stimu-
lation and subordinate centers are stilled into temporary
death by its kind hand. Dreams show us how great is the
30
346 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
world, how shadowy a thing is the essential ego. The
soul, deprived of the body, seems quite as unreal and
phantom-like as any of Charon's passengers. It is so pro-
foundly dependent upon the crude senses and experience,
upon memory and motion to give it regulation, order, and
reality. As, one after another, sleep strips us of these
things, that at best are but supplies of soul so paler and
ever thinner, ever less individual, grows the ego. Picture-
making in its last analysis is not strictly psychic, and yet
a visionless world would be absolutely a soulless world.
Dream-consciousness is consciousness without adventitious
aids, physical props, content, and checks, it is conscious-
ness, per se ; it is, in truth, a fluttering memory of a memory
of past experiences ; its life a mimic play ; its phantasmal
existence is upborne upon the ghostly wings of past sorrows
and joys, and tied to reality by the tenuous thread of a
momentarily interrupted sensation. Its master, the body,
suddenly tugs at the silken cord, and from freedom it swiftly
descends and slips into the yoke of reality, attentive to the
thousand demands of its imperious and all-precious
sovereign !
POSTSCRIPT.
To the Editor of The Open Court :
Among many interesting communications to me regard-
ing my paper in a late number of your journal there is one
of peculiar interest from one of your subscribers in Eng-
land. He states that he has been able to conquer an in-
somnia of long standing by the device of looking down-
ward when trying to go to sleep. He was prevailed upon
to try the device of, in fancy, watching the breath escape
from his own nostrils. He found this successful, but con-
cluded that the rotation of the eye downward was the
essential factor. Thinking of this, I have wondered if this
were not something more than an individual idiosyncracy,
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 347^
if, indeed, it were not founded upon a true basis of cerebral
habit and necessity. That the eye is the most easily react-
ing of all sense-mechanisms is a truism, and that of all it is
the most intimately connected with all cerebral and psy-
chologic processes. Not only this, but the facts of func-
tional amblyopia from prolonged exposure to light, such
as moon-blindness, snow-blindness, etc., show how injuries
to the eye is such continuous stimulus. Neither for the
objects of shutting out the external world of light nor for
protection to the eyes is the darkening of the lids sufficient.
Sound sleep and retinal safety demand either a complete
external darkness, or a rotation during sleep, as my corres-
pondent says he has found in his own case, of the eye-ball
upward beneath the arch of the eye-brow. I believe it has
been experimentally found that in sleep the globes do
rotate upward. It may, however, be true that the necessity
was greater and the fact more constant in primitive or
savage man than in the civilized man of to-day. The
savage slept more frequently in the open air. But if true
in either case, the mechanism whereby this act was done
required a constant expenditure of force to effect it, and
therefore a watchfulness, an activity of nerve centers some-
where, that rendered the whole cerebral machinery less
passive than if it were not compelled to keep up such con-
tinuous functional output. Somnolence was therefore less
complete, the restorage function more drawn upon, the
" sentinel " was more alert. If, therefore, such continuous
innervation of the superior recti serve to keep the cerebral
organism from sinking so speedily or completely into
slumber, then relieving it from such duty of out-going
stimulation would thus serve to becalm and quiet it. Re-
versal of the habitual bulbar rotation would thus serve to
relieve the centers of the superior recti and divide the
stimulus to the inferior, thus setting up a sort of relief and
rest for the too continuously acting center. It is true that
348 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
during waking the superior rectus has the least work of all
the muscles, and therefore is better able to take up the
continuous work of the night; it is also true that excessive
innervation of the inferior rectus would be as arousing as
that of the superior, and, finally, it may be said that the
habit in the civilized man, sleeping as he does in closed
rooms, might be dropped ; but there remains as answer
that continuous contraction of a muscle means waking
activity of the center and its correlates ; that the lower
rectus will only be kept functional while the would-be
sleeper is consciously making the effort ; and lastly, that
old habits of nature or man are not soon stopped. Would
not a better plan than that of my correspondent be that of
slowly and rhythmically putting all the muscles of the eyes
into alternate function, each for a few minutes at a time ?
To the Editor of The Open Court :
The scholarly article entitled " Dreams, Sleep, and Con-
sciousness," which appeared in a late number of your
paper, recalls a reminiscence of my own which seems to
confirm Dr. Gould's opinion, that sensory communication
may be had directly with (the organ of?) consciousness
without connection or communication by means of the
ordinary senses of perception. Perhaps Dr. Gould's theory
of the manner in which this takes place may be modified
by subsequent research, but the fact itself can scarcely be
questioned.
Some years ago I was living in a California mining-town
of several thousand inhabitants. The greater part of the
town consisted of frame buildings packed closely together,
offering the most favorable conditions for the rapid spread
of fire, and the total destruction of the town should fire
once gain a headway. This fact was fully appreciated and
several volunteer fire-companies were equipped by the
citizens. It is hardly necessary to say that every ear was
DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 349
alert for the clang of the fire-bell, and at its first sound
there was an instant gathering of volunteers.
One night in midsummer, after I had been several hours
in bed, my usually dreamless sleep was suddenly disturbed
by a vivid dream of fire. I saw the flames break out from
the roof of the building, and, in my dream, ran to the
engine-house and pulled vigorously at the ropes that
sounded the alarm-bell. The resulting clangor was so
loud that it awakened me, but the sound which I heard in
my dreams was not a dream-fancy, it was the actual ring-
ing of the bell, and my first act of consciousness was the
perception of this fact.
Now, it is incredible that a chance dream of fire could
have occurred at such an opportune moment. Such a
coincidence is, of course, possible, but as improbable as the
chance coincidence of certain Fraunhofer lines with the
spectrum of iron. It is far more reasonable to suppose
that the strokes of the bell reached my consciousness first
by some other channel than the auditory nerves. The
vibratory impact aroused consciousness, perhaps imper-
fectly, but still more faithfully than in the case of Dr.
Gould and his Thomas cat. In the latter case conscious-
ness was lured into the belief that the discordant cater-
wauling was the sweetest of music; in the former there
was no deception. The first alarm struck upon my con-
sciousness was the alarm of Fire ! In this instance
consciousness was in the wrong as to locality and sur-
roundings, for while the dream-fire was consuming the
school-house on the hill, the real fire was in an unoccupied
building some distance away, but it was not deceived as
to the fact.
Dr. Gould mentions also another peculiar feature which
perhaps may be reckoned among dream-phenomena
namely, the dream of impending danger which leads to the
conscious necessity of awakening. This condition, which
350 DREAMS, SLEEP, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
is usually brought about by an interruption of the function
of some nerve-trunk, is one of which most people have an
experience at some time or other in life, and all who have
passed through it can bear testimony to the energy spent
in rousing the body into action. Dr. Gould premises his
description of this phenomena with the statement that he
lies prone upon his back, and then says he can at first move
only one or two fingers, or perhaps sway his head. In my
own experience, while the general conditions are the same,
the manifestations are different. I invariably sleep on my
side, and in the process of awakening, begin by moving
the foot of the upper limb. I am not able to move head
or hands in the least, and the reason is the same as in Dr.
Gould's case. The stimulation of the motor nerve-centers,
although to consciousness the result of a tremendous ex-
penditure of energy, is but a slight one hardly more than
sufficient, in fact, to perform its work. Directed by con-
sciousness, it must therefore exert its effort in that part of
the body which, because of its position, is most easily
moved, or in the least constrainment of position.
In both of the instances noted, the facts show that con-
sciousness may act and react without the intermediation of
the lower centers. In the case of the fire-alarm, conscious-
ness was aroused and received a message through the
sensory fibers ; in the nightmare, it was on the qui vive,
putting forth almost superhuman efforts to stimulate the
inert and irresponsive motor-centers into action.
J. W. REDWAY.
HUMAN LIFE UNDER DENIED SENSATION.*
The writer once experienced an odd series of feelings
that brought vividly to mind the fact that life and emotion
and happiness are compatible with great differences in and
deprivations of ordinary mental stimuli. A social gather-
ing was going on in a large hall, 'and the sounds of excel-
lent music, dancing, laughter, and gayety came from this
room where a hundred or more happy folk were passing
happy hours. Upon opening the door and being ushered
into the hall the room was found to be as dark as midnight
Not a thing could be seen. It was the social hour of the
inmates of an institution for the blind ! The first uncanny,
creepy feeling was soon dissipated by the thought of con-
gratulation that indomitable mind and spontaneous emo-
tion, though deprived of light and vision, could still find
satisfaction and play through the medium of indirect
sensation. Soul still conquered sense !
The same thought is exemplified and emphasized by a
consideration of the report of the Convention of Deaf-
Mutes, lately held in Allentown, Pa. One is apt thought-
lessly to pass over the beginning of the report, that says,
" The meeting was called to order by the president, who
rapped vigorously on the desk to attract the attention of
his audience." An audience of deaf-mutes called to order
by a noise ! Those who see a blind man tapping the street
in front of him as he walks are likely to think that this is
solely to avoid objects that the cane may strike. It is also
to avoid objects that the cane does not strike because to
* From the Medical News, October 24, 1891.
351
352 HUMAN LIFE UNDER DENIED SENSATION.
the blind man's ears and hand there is a timbre from blows
upon the pavement near its edge, near posts or steps, that
is very different from the resonance when the blow is not
near such objects. It is said that blinded bats are able to
fly unharmed, avoiding objects in their flight by means of
the perception of an increase of barometric pressure of the
air close to those objects so sensitive to variations of
pressure is the expanded interdigital membrane. (The
experimental blinding of the bat, however, was not neces-
sary, because millions of bats winter in Mammoth Cave,
miles from the faintest ray of light.)
A suggestion is indirectly aroused by this fact as to the
" relaying," if one may so speak, of crude and faint stimu-
lation by the mechanism of the nerve-ganglia and centers.
There is a nervous device that reinforces and transforms
whilst also repeating the subtle, weak, and in themselves
meaningless, hints of the external world that we call
sense-impression. It is the living prototype of the electri-
cian's " relay " and microphone combined. Thus all man's
mechanic devices are but poor imitations and repetitions
of what Life's vital forces have long ago brought to won-
drous perfection.
In the Deaf-Mutes' Convention prayer was said, the roll
called, addresses made, business conducted, and long
sessions held all in the sign language all in silence !
" The amended constitution and by-laws were adopted
after a lively debated If present, our blind friends would
certainly have thought the meeting very strange and
stupid. But the success in raising funds for a proposed
home for aged and infirm mutes, and the discussion of
other worthy objects, made the gathering a very interesting
one for the attending delegates.
According to the Paris correspondent of the London Times
the method of analyzing motion by the chronophotograph,
which has been so happily applied by M. Marey in the
HUMAN LIFE UNDER DENIED SENSATION. 353
case of moving animals, such as horses running or birds
and insects in flight, has recently been employed by M. G.
Demeny, a preparator at the physiologic station of M.
Marey, to examine the movements of the lips in speaking.
He has obtained results which show that the form of the
mouth is quite different for the different articulate sounds.
With these photographs combined in a zoetrope he has re-
produced the movements of the lips by synthesis. An
ordinary person finds it difficult to read the words by the
animated pictures ; but a deaf-mute who has been accus-
tomed to read from the lips of a speaker found it easy to
do so from the photographs. A young pupil of the
National Institute of Deaf-Mutes in France could read the
vowels and diphthongs as well as the labials. The first
experiments were, of course, not all that could be desired ;
but, in bringing the matter before the French Academy
of Sciences, M. Demeny expressed the hope that in con-
tinuing his researches he would be able to develop a new
method of educating deaf-mutes by sight from more per-
fect photographic images. Obviously a magic-lantern
lecture might be delivered to an audience of deaf-mutes in
this way.
The encouraging and deeply suggestive fact of rescuing
the faculty and power of speech in these deaf-mutes is one
that must command the sympathy of all. There is no
limit to the ingenuity of Life and to her triumphs over
adverse circumstances and deprived stimuli. We have all
read of another striking example very different in kind,
of course, but illustrating the same great truth. One of
England's greatest statesmen was blind ; so was a great
numismatologist ; and another of her great men, a hunter
and rider of unexampled daring, a peerless sportsman, an
excellent business man and active administrator, had
neither arms, hands, legs, nor feet. One is reminded of
Emerson's cool answer to the Millerite who excitedly told
354 HUMAN LIFE UNDER DENIED SENSATION.
him that the world was to come to an end that day: " Oh !
well," said the philosopher, " we can get on very well
without it."
It would seem that if loss of sight were added to loss
of hearing and speech, naught but tragedy and melancholy
could be left, or that the routine life of the lowest func-
tions of nutrition, etc., would persist. But there are few
happier and brighter-minded people than Laura Bridgman
was and Helen Keller is. Another, a man likewise de-
prived of these great avenues of influence from and
communication with the external world, without which
life to us would seen so barren, traveled all over the United
States alone, raised a family, and lived out his period of
brave and satisfied life. He could talk to anybody by
means of the ingenious device of tattooing the English
alphabet upon different parts of his hand. Words and
sentences were spelled out and recognized by the positions
of the letters touched.
The emotional life of these imprisoned souls, cut off
from so many relations and avenues of interchange
with the external world, must be all the more vivid
and hypersensitive. A coarse jar of the hyperesthetic
receiving end-organ of sense is transformed into a
rude thunder by the highly attuned and delicately re-
sponsive microphone of the inner sensation-making
mechanism. Thus the possibility of causing sharp sorrow
is a necessary concomitant of the ease of eliciting joy. It
is the glory of civilization to care for such and shield them
from pain, and it is the delight of medicine to minister to
them its healing. It is hard to sympathetically understand
and realize the inner life of these almost windowless minds.
How strange must seem to them the dreams and somnam-
bulisms of never-to-be-awakened emotions, the dumb
reaching out toward reality of denied possibilities, the
unsatisfied hungerings of imprisoned sensibilities. Their
HUMAN LIFE UNDER DENIED SENSATION. 355
minds must be thrilled by dim hereditary echoes and the
far-away caresses of ghostly ancestral hands. With what
pathetic half-responsiveness do these shut-in souls catch
the shimmer of long-departed life, that comes to them like
the last faint evening flushings reflected from distant moun-
tain-tops to valley-dwellers that are in the night.
IMMORTALITY.*
If you sit down in the quiet of your own room and
calmly ask yourself what it is in reference to a life after
death that you really desire and what you may reasonably
expect, you will probably be surprised to find what a blank
your mind is upon the subject. I doubt if you will find
that you inwardly desire it, in the same manner, for exam-
ple, that you desire wealth, or fame, or beauty. You have
grown up in the belief that it is right to desire and believe,
but that, you know, is quite a different affair from actual
yearning.
Nearly every one puts the thought aside as beyond solu-
tion. One says, " My thinking will not change the fact,
nor my longing bring it about. The duty of the passing
day is all I can fulfil." Under this cover of postponed
examination the world has grown as indifferent to the
question as it was formerly engrossed by it. Fear of
offending delicate sensibilities and established beliefs keeps
the doubter and modifier silent ; whilst the extreme of the
omnivorous believer is set over against the out-and-out
denier. But the great majority of people are neither
believers nor disbelievers, but indifferentists slowly set-
tling toward an agnostic noncommittalism that is destructive
of all intellectual and moral earnestness.
It is my conviction that this abrogation of curiosity and
examination is a most culpable and dangerous fact. If we
live after death it is of tremendous importance ; if we do
not, it is of no less vital import, and the belief, the disbelief,
* From The Monht, April, 1891.
356
IMMORTALITY. 357
or the evasion is of the most constant influence, uncon-
sciously, subtly, upon every thought and act of every day's
living.
Suppose now we divest ourselves of the creeps and
shudders usually accompanying a discussion of death and
immortality, and fearlessly test the common dogma with a
little analysis in the light of scientific research and reason.
Let us suppose you are a believer : what is it you believe ?
You desire : what is it you desire, and how far is your
desire feasible ? You are convinced : but what is the
truth ? If possible, in what way and to what extent is a
future life possible? If attainable, by whom and by what
means ? Moreover, the kind of belief makes all the differ-
ence in the world. I have read somewhere about an African
chief who killed his wife's lover, and was defeated at last
by his wife's unswerving belief in immortality she com-
mitting suicide in order to join her lover. But the chief
was equal to the emergency, and he in turn killed himself
in order to follow the pair and break up their tete-a-tetes in
the other world ! It all depends upon what you propose
doing with the future life after you get it. You might
just as well be digging clams on this earth as " singing
Hosannas around the throne " in heaven.
Do you believe in or fervently desire what, with splendid
bravery and abandon, the old creed called " the resurrection
of the body " ? Terrible counter-queries arise : At what
age in your life would you choose as best representing the
ideal body for your resurrection ? Would you prefer
your body as it was when you were a child, when youthful,
when mature, or when old ? Moreover, it is changing
every minute, this body. It is estimated that something
like five million blood-corpuscles die every second of your
life. Even the two or three pounds of minerals in one's
bones are only a little more permanently fixed. All com-
ponent parts are undergoing change every instant : they
358 IMMORTALITY.
soon become grass, grain, or tree, passing again into others'
bodies, and so on forever. Is it the form and feature you
desire to preserve and not the constituent particles ? But
form and feature change every day or year, and are as im-
possible to fix as the atoms themselves. Indeed, is not the
whole matter put beyond choice by the evident fact that un-
less by the fiat of an extramundane deity the only moment
possible to fix the bodily form in the mold of eternity
would be the death-moment? And yet this were the most
undesirable of all seasons, since at that hour the body is in
the weakest, most useless, and most wretched condition of
all the hours it has served us. Supposing, therefore, that
you are so in love with your own body that you would
wish to call it into life again and forever ; we see at once
that no moment or phase of development could be chosen,
except perhaps the dying moment, the least desirable of
all, and that the particles of one's body have served their
turn in myriad other bodies, each having an equally valid
claim to his "property." Besides this, the absurdity of the
whole is emphasized by the crushing fact that all the
organic matter of the world has been used over and over
for bodies, and the earth has not enough hydrocarbons to
fit out again with bodies a small fraction of the souls that
have lived upon it. Doubtless the combined weight of all
the organic bodies that have lived on the earth would be
many times the total weight of the globe, including its
minerals, elements, and gases. It may be frankly admitted
that no bodily resurrection is possible.
And it is as certainly undesirable. The old dogma
was the crudest materialism, wholly unworthy of the cred-
ence of those who pretended to believe that God was a
spirit, and that they were his children. The belief in
bodily resurrection was a natural concomitant of the age of
sensualism before the mind and spirit had risen to their
modern heritage. The desire for such a resurrection
IMMORTALITY. 359
stamps the person with a self-confessed imperfection of
mental and moral development. The impossibility of such
a resurrection is one of many proofs that life is no sensual-
ist at heart and that ideality is the final outcome, the trend
of actuality. Nature compels us to take wings, though
the sluggish Psyche lingers lovingly in the pretty little
cocoon of materiality she has built about herself.
Is it perhaps your understanding, reason, or intellect that
you desire to perpetuate forever ? Frankly, now, are you
so in love with your mental outfit? In your more modest
and sane hours are you not sadly conscious how very im-
perfect it is ? While we are young and very conceited we
may be filled with self satisfaction and trust in our own
judgment, but as the years drag by, we, looking back over
the past, grow more and more conscious that our intellect
is not to be trusted. Think of the interminable series of
blunders of which your life is the record ? How poorly
you have misjudged people and circumstances ! How your
reason has fooled you many times and again ! How many
illusions and delusions have you lived through ! With
what sad clearness you now see your former stupidities,
and with what blindness you fail to see your present ones !
Looking about you, you find others equally as gifted as
yourself holding your opinions as loathsome. Looking
above you, you see the most intellectual and the most
educated diametrically opposed in their opinions of God,
man, and nature. Two great men, two brothers, learned
and trained in dialectic and logic, soon grow apart. One
becomes a cardinal of the Romish Church, accepting Papal
infallibility and a thousand such absurdities, the other as
firmly convinced that the fallacies of the English Church
are God's gospel. Looking below you, you see the great
mass of men wrecking their minds and lives upon a thou-
sand outrageous beliefs and prejudices. There is no sadder
spectacle in the world than this that the people love error.
360 IMMORTALITY.
But each one, with imperturbable conceit, is convinced that
he sees better and plainer than another. Every partisan ?
Democrat or Republican, has no sort of doubt that he is
right about every financial or governmental measure,
though he has never studied finance, history, or political
economy five minutes. He does not dream that he is a
dupe of the politicians and of his own lack of intellect.
All history is a tangle of such poverty-stricken intellec-
tion. One can but be amazed at the proneness of every-
body to see things and do things every way but the right
way. And this is the kind of a mental equipment you
would stamp with the seal of eternity !
Possibly you may protest that it is a more perfect and
purified intellect that you wish. Ah, yes, but that would
not be your intellect. You want to be made over, made
into another person. That would not be your immortality,
but that of another. That would imply that it is pure in-
tellect and perfect, in the abstract, that you are interested
in. Have you shown much interest in that sort of intellect
in the past? If you wish such an immortality of a per-
fected intellect you must certainly possess it before it can
be made everlasting.
Perhaps, again, you will say that it is the ever-progressive,
ever-growing intellect you desire. This is subterfuge.
That is not what you wish but what you would take in de-
fault of your first choice. Lessing said that if God held
out to him absolute truth in one hand and in the other the
everlasting search for truth, he would choose the latter.
But the condition of everlasting search would be the con-
dition of everlasting imperfection of intellect. Lessing's
choice seems to me impious.
I therefore conclude that at heart you do not wish to
eternalize your crude, imperfect intellect, and that the sole
method of getting an exalted and perfected intellect is to
cultivate it here and now. Have you in the past obeyed
IMMORTALITY. 361
reason and not passion or self-interest? Have you studied
logic, history, and science with a sincere desire to do your
political and social duty, and to free yourself from preju-
dice, error, superstition, and conceit? If not, why should
God suddenly endow you with a perfect intellect ready-
made? Is it God's way in this world to give excellencies
unasked and unearned? Rest assured He will not do it at
your dying hour. It is no particular merit in you to die ;
why should you be rewarded with a new intellect then ?
Or, again, you may say that it is not so much your in-
tellect that you wish to make immortal as it is your
emotional nature, affection, etc. Love and friendship, you
complain, are cut off by death, and the tendrils of the heart
die because they find nothing to cling to or rest upon.
You would like to renew beyond the grave the love and
sympathy that has made the earth-life endurable, and even
beautiful. Now is this, in very truth, just so? Are you
really satisfied with your devotion and love ? Have not
your outgoings of the heart been quite fickle, illogic,
selfish, and calculating? Has not your love and gratitude
been often a lively sense of benefits to come? Has your
love to woman not been of the " Kreutzer-Sonata " type, a
little better and more subtly-concealed, perhaps, but at
heart the same ? If you are a woman, have you been seek-
ing to get or to give love, and has your little affection been
but payment for protection and a home? Have you
chosen true and noble friends and been true and noble to
them ? Has your charity been but alms-giving without
kind sympathy and helpfulness ? Have you as married
folk, perhaps, been, as the cant phrase has it, " devoted to
each other," but oblivious of the duty of affection toward
the rest of the world grinning examples of egoisme a
deux? Is your family a fetich, an enlarged sort of selfish-
ness ? Do you at heart care much for anybody except
your own precious self? And a too exclusive love, even
3'
362 IMMORTALITY.
of the purest type, may be sin in God's eyes. If you bind
all your affection upon one weak life you risk a precious
value upon too single and narrow an object, and deprive
others of the sympathy that need it more. " Just wrapt up
in one," as the sentimental jargon has it, is often, if not
always, a pleasant way of great sin. Affection may become
morbid a disease quite as well as any abuse or exag-
geration of any other characteristic.
I take it that they who are the most satisfied with the
strength, purity, and constancy of their love and emotional
nature are precisely they that have neither actual strength,
purity, nor constancy of sentiment, and are thus accurately
they that should not have immortality.
Lastly, if neither body, intellect, nor the affectional
nature are such as you wish made eternal, are you any
better contented with your moral nature? The question at
once raises a smile. The feeling of our own ethical
unworthiness has crystallized into the great Christian
dogma of Christ's vicarious sacrifice : in the words of the
old hymn, " Jesus died and paid it all, all the debt I owe."
No man hoped to get to heaven on his own merits. Much
of the zeal of religion has consisted in the joy of the belief
that by a sleight of-hand trick a big sponge of forgiveness
was wiped over the ethical debit and credit account by the
lacrimose deity, whose occupation, as Heine said, was to
forgive. History is one long, monotonous list of man's
sins and inhumanities. I think it probable that you will
not urge the ethical aspect ; I would leave that plea aside.
We all know that we are very much like a lot of pigs, each
after the most and best corn and the warmest bed. The
amazing immorality of trying to get to heaven on another's
merits was the most brazen example of how little heaven-
liness there was in the heaven-hunters and heaven-sealers.
Of course, too, the desire for heaven itself, the desire for
one's happiness, was immoral when conditioned upon the
IMMORTALITY. 363
misery of others. Nature in this respect is better than
man, denying him his childish materialistic desires and
forcing him to wait for immortality until he can learn to
live in the spirit and seek no selfish heaven.
Just as the body is ever changing, and it is impossible to
seize upon any hour when we could eternalize it, except at
the undesirable death-hour, so it is the same in reference
to intellect, love, and morality. There are no two days in
life when we are the same. As to intellect, we have little
before adult life is reached, and most people have little
after fifty or sixty years. It is proverbial that no one
changes his opinion after that age, but lives on old preju-
dices and ideas. The mental powers get into ruts and
habits, true reason being abrogated. As to love, we laugh
at our fickleness, and our habits and ideals of friendship
get sordid as each year strips off the freedom and expan-
siveness of youth and the dear, cold ghost of self is more
exclusively worshiped. And our ethical standards change
with each day's passing. We have at every hour to clutch
ourselves by the throat and cry, " Stay ! Who art thou ?"
And lo ! while we ask our protean self the question, we
have become another. We seek perpetuity of existence
for something ever becoming other. We seek personal
identity after death, but we have no personal identity before
death how then can we have it afterward ? Do you not
see that what makes you recognizable, different from other
individuals, and what would make personal immortality
possible depends upon the accidents of organization,
depends firstly upon the bodily peculiarity, and secondly
upon imperfections of mind that you do not wish to per-
petuate ? Twins sometimes wear knots of ribbon as sig-
nals whereby their friends may recognize them. Our faces
and bodies are but such little symbols or signals that our
souls have hung out for the day. Divest your best friend
of his body, and would you recognize him ? Have you
364 IMMORTALITY.
ever thought how the photograph of your friend's soul
would look ? If bodily form and imperfections make up
the most of what we call individuality, it becomes evident
that in casting off imperfection we become less narrow,
less individual. As you become freed from the cramp-
ing littleness of self-love and the bonds of self-gratifi-
cation, as you rise into the life of the spirit, you find
yourself less individual. One fitted for a true heaven
would not care for the old immortality. What is good to
carry over into the future life is not so much personal
identity as personal nonidentity, not so much the imper-
fections that make us individuals as the perfections that
free us from individualism. We must lose our life to find
it. We have overestimated the value of individuality.
Self-consciousness has become hypertrophied, and the
suinmum bonum of life is held to be the preservation of a
little puckered-up individuality. This over-development
of individualism is doubtless due to the fierce struggle man
has had to elevate himself out of savagery. It has been
possible only through excessive carefulness and love of the
ego. The struggle for existence is now taking on class
and corporate characteristics, so that the common weal is
an ideal quite as much as individual satisfaction and safety.
Hence the exaggeration of personality may now return to
something like a healthy normalism. As a natural out-
growth and consequence of this over-development of the
individual consciousness, there came the absurd attempt to
carry over into the after-life the same sort of existence that
had been developed here, consisting in a neglect of the
actual world of one's descendants, an ignoring of death
that ends the body and products of organization, and a
failure to see that a future life after death must be a life of
the spirit, of perfections, and of the common life, not of
peculiarities and imperfections.
If this seems an aery height and a too rare air, it argues
IMMORTALITY. 365
against your preparation for the only desirable as well as
the only possible kind of immortality. It argues against
you just in the same way that your horror of death does.
It is only participation in the divine life of the spirit that
can see death as right and good. Death comes to shatter
our baseless trust in the evanescent physical, and teach us
dependence upon the everlasting spiritual. They dread
death whose life is of the physical type. God never gave
to man a greater blessing, after life itself, than death, and
nothing more strikingly proves the divine government of
the world than the certainty of its coming to us all. If
death is your enemy, life is not your friend. The brutal
attempt to ignore the fact, the belief that the body, with its
pack of heathenish appetites and needs, could push through
death and come out fresh and renewed on the other side is
the very insanity of individualism and the intoxication of
materialism. The mourning, shudder, gloom, and horror
of death God-sent if anything is is practical pessimism
and reckless atheism. Death's one lesson is that we must
love and cultivate what he cannot touch. One who has
lived a life of kindness and spirituality has no horror of
death, and to him it has little mystery. But to him whose
divinity has been self and whose religion the worship ol
his physiologic senses, death must be the ugliest of enemies
who is to rob him of his all. Did you ever notice how life
is plastic and free when first fashioning for itself a body ?
" All heaven lies about us in our infancy." In youth we
are unselfish, aspiring, and noble. As the years go by the
power of the organization, the material, grows, and limits
more and more the freedom of the spirit. Frankenstein
turns upon its maker. With age men get narrow, cold,
calculating; women snaky, scheming, cruel. The soul
finds itself more and more the slave instead of the master,
and by and by when the slavery becomes unendurable, it
takes flight, and this you call death. It is the body's re-
366 IMMORTALITY.
ward for insubordination. I think we deserve little sym-
pathy for dying. Most of us have well-merited death
before it comes I speak, of course, only of the death of
those in life's afternoon. Few keep the young life pliant
and free beyond the age of fifty. If people could see that
life is the maker and molder of organization, and if they
would seek immortality upon earth, I believe men might
come to live a hundred years. Trees learn, to live thou-
sands of years, but they keep youth, and spring, and trust,
and love forever nestling with the birds among the rejuv-
enescent leaves of spring. We die not because the body is
weak, but because it has become too strong. We die be-
cause there is no real continuance and strength in anything
but the nonphysical, and we have trusted in the physical.
Matter without free life is inert, moved only from without :
the dead body is simply matter without life. It is not the
blacksmith's arm that is strong: without nerve-force it
cannot raise an ounce, cannot raise itself. Whence the
nerve-force ? From the ganglionic gray cells of the spinal
cord and brain. And whence these little gray cells ? The
dear, stupid physiologist has now reached his limit, and
you can confidently answer for him that it was Life created
these things, Life that existed before muscles, nerves, and
cells, and that slowly fashioned them ; Life, an order of
existence in no imaginable way analogous to, or to be
confounded with, matter or mechanics. There is in the
history of thought no more ludicrous and dismal failure
than the attempt to explain life in terms of mechanics. The
hope of the materialist that science would prove his preju-
dice is torn to tatters. The children of the spirit are
amazed at the bat-blind inability to see the fact, to see
that life is more certain and enduring than matter, soul
than sense. The organs of the body are changed, diseased,
die; the body itself dies; generations of bodies die, but
like a containing cord of silk, on which all the glittering
IMMORTALITY. 367
beads of flesh are strung, there is the soul, the life, ever the
same, persisting unchanged through all change, giving
unity to diversity, molding, making, discarding, choosing,
healing, working to far-away ends with blind, and dead,
and obstinate materials. You love the flesh over-much,
and jealous life says to you, " Take it then, this so loved
and wondrous flesh ; me you have not loved," and lo !
the dead body, useless, decaying, lies before you. Let no
materialistic misreading of science hoodwink you into any
blurring of the outlines between matter and life.* The
two are as far apart as heaven and earth, are as dissimilar
as thought can conceive, perhaps, in a final analysis, are
the only two things of the universe. There is no fact of
science showing the faintest warrant for confounding the
two. Even Huxley calls materialism the most baseless of
all dogmas. It will probably be found that there is but
one element, of which all others are duplications and com-
binations, atoms being but centers of force. But life is
irresolvable into any form of matter or mechanical energy.
It is not only unthinkable that matter could originate life,
but it is demonstrably absurd. No scientist to-day believes
in spontaneous generation. Omne vivum ex vivo is an
axiom. The plant has no nervous system and yet has
every physiologic function possessed by the human body.
It has contractility, irritability, respiration, anabolism, cata-
bolism, and reproductivity, that is, it has spontaneous
movement, it responds to stimulation, it breathes, it assimi-
lates, it excretes, it begets its like, and physiologically
this is all you can do. Nay, more than this, even a drop
of the jelly-like protoplasm that makes up the basis of all
cell-structures, animal or vegetable, has also all of these
* Those who think this view is the voice of faith and not of true science
may profitably read a little book that has come to my notice since writing these
pages, " Life Theories and Religious Thought," by Lionel S. Beale.
368 IMMORTALITY.
qualities or powers. There are bundles of wholly struc-
tureless, unorganized jelly that exhibit these capacities in
a wonderful degree. There is, for instance, Hydra viridis,
that has no eyes and yet sees, no brain or nerves and yet
lies in wait for prey, pursues and fights, or flees from
danger. Turned inside out, it lives and digests its food as
well as before. It holds live worms down with an impro-
vised arm when they try to get out of its stomach. Any
part reproduces all. Cut off the bottom of its stomach and
it goes on eating, quite untroubled by the little accident,
and so on. A great, wise, blind man has defined evolution,
or life, as the integration of matter and the dissipation of
motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite,
incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogene-
ity, and during which the motion undergoes a parallel
transformation. Some one else improved upon this by
saying that it was " a change from a no-howish, untalka-
boutable all-alikeness, to a some-howish and in general
talkaboutable not-all-alikeness, by continuous something-
elsifications and all-togetherations." Schelling said that
life was the tendency to individuation. But the crystal or
the planet shows that, and they are not living. As the
hand cannot grasp itself, neither can life define itself. All
definitions I have seen miss the essential and primal char-
acteristics of spontaneous movement. But all definitions
begin by begging the question, assuming the thing ex-
plained. The truth is that there is no definition or expla-
nation possible. The dualism of matter and life must be
accepted. There is no monism can bridge the gulf between
mechanics and life. Inorganic matter with its inherent
forces and laws cannot be conceived as ever coming into or
as passing out of existence. From all eternity it was as it
is, and so it will remain. The physical universe shows no
hint of design, no glimpse of freedom, no trace of intelli-
gence, no suggestion of a maker or God. It has no power
IMMORTALITY. 369
of choice, no spontaneous motion. But the merest speck
of living matter is utterly and absolutely different- It may
have eyes or no eyes and yet it sees, ears or not and yet it
hears, nerves or not and yet it feels and reacts, brain or not
and yet it thinks and plans, and acts in accordance with
intellectual resolves. The dead body of your child is most
inconceivably different from the living body of an hour ago.
The one fundamental mystery of the explainable world is
why life seeks objectification in material forms, and why it
seeks it with such vehemence and ardor. Life seems to
bite at matter as if with famishing hunger. One wonders
if from some other planet life is being suddenly starved out
or banished by some catastrophe, and as a consequence
there is thence an over-emigration of the hungry Huns
upon our earth. Certain confused and confusion-breeding
philosophers in the interests of a theoretic monism or
pantheism pretend to find or to believe that the organic is
born out of the inorganic, that the physical world shows
evidence of design, that life and mentality were implicate
and latent in preexistent matter. Yet they will accept the
evidence against spontaneous generation derived from the
fact that if you kill all organic life by intense heat and then
exclude life from without you will never find life to arise.
But it is plain that in the condensation of the dust of space
into suns and planets all organic life was killed in the hottest
of all conceivable heat. But as the planets cool, life appears.
It must have come from without, and must therefore be an
universal self-existent power. Why, or how, or whence
life comes to us we do not know now, but the transcendent
miracle is ever before our eyes : infinitely rich and free, life
is filling, thrilling, surcharging every molecule of matter to
which with wondrous power and ingenuity it can gain
access. It covers every thousandth of an inch of the
earth's surface, dives into the deepest ocean depths, fills the
air as high as the mountain tops, ever unsatisfied, ever
32
370 IMMORTALITY.
grasping up a million million renaissant forms, never rest-
ing, never baffled. Before this omnipresent god one stands
in rapt amazement and worship. To matter, then, life first
brought, and still ever brings, the power of organization, of
adaptation, of spontaneous energy, and of movement. But
when the death of the organization takes place, the life that
preceded and formed it is not lessened or affected. When
the watch wears out does it prove that the watchmaker is
dead ? It is more rational to suppose that the watchmaker
has kept on with his work, that he has made and will make
many more watches, and I therefore judge that the life of
each of us, that existed before our bodies, that formed our
bodies, will still form other bodies after ours. The Oriental
doctrine of the transmigration of souls is not to be accepted
in its crude details, but it is doubtless a great truth. It is
more rational and more consonant with what we know of
life, than the theory of wasted life implicate in the barbaric
notion of sending numberless millions of souls to hell to do
nothing but suffer useless pain, and other millions to heaven
to suffer (I use the word advisedly) useless pleasure. Any
theory of immortality that rests upon the assumption of
uselessness and waste may be quickly set aside. Just as
matter and force are indestructible, various forms of force
being interchangeable, so it must be with life. There must
be a conservation of life-energy just as rigid, and this truth
must remake and remold the whole conception of immor-
tality. When a mechanic force disappears in one phase, it
at once reappears in another aspect. So vegetable, animal,
and mental life are but different aspects of life-force, and
suffer no loss when transformed one into the other, or when
the body disappears altogether. And as it is the inherent
nature of force never to rest, so there is no rest for life.
Banishment of life to a heaven of inaction is as impossible
as it is absurd.
This extension of the law of the conservation of force to
IMMORTALITY. 371
things biologic and psychic is a two-edged sword : it offers
conclusive evidence of the fallacy of the materialist and
believer. There is no annihilation ; your life, at death, not
only may not stop but cannot stop. Life is as inextin-
guishable as physical force. On the other hand, this
sword deals the death blow to two equally shallow fallacies
of believers. Just so sure as it insures the preservation of
your life, of all that is worth preservation, just so sure it
denies the possibility of preserving what was bound up
with and produced by organization, that is individuality
and personal identity. These things, if not entirely, are
certainly largely the products of your peculiar physical
and physiologic organization. Whatever is born of the
flesh must perish with the flesh ; what is born of the spirit
shall inherit eternal life. But the profoundest and most
distinguishing rebuke is given the unscientific, puerile, sel-
fish assumption of the waste, loss, and uselessness of life
involved in the old theory of heaven and hell. When from
a chemic compound you take away and liberate one ele-
ment or compound radicle, does it then shoot off into
space, to " flock all by itself" for eternity ? By no means !
It at once rushes into a new combination with its nearest
neighbor, quickly picking up again the round of its duty
and function. The curious notion that after having done
work in one body, life or souls should at once rush off to
some far-away star, there to sing or howl for eternity, was
a childish absurdity. One wonders where even an omni-
potent God could get material for such an amazing manu-
facture and loss of souls. The theory also forgot that logic
demands that what should live forever in the future must
perforce have lived forever in the past. A rope, if it have
one end, must have two ends. What, therefore, have our
souls been doing during the past eternity ? The truth is that,
absolutely speaking, there cannot be souls, but only soul.
Life is a unit, and indivisible. The tiniest bit of bioplasm
372 IMMORTALITY.
holds and represents all of life. Neither you nor it are separ-
able from the whole. There may be education and progres-
sive evolution of life as a whole, but there can be no indi-
vidual and selfish salvation apart from the salvation of all
other souls. The idea that release from the body at once
releases a soul from action, duty, and the work of life, is an
illogicality that could have arisen in no mind conversant
with the demonstrated law of the nonwastage of force in
any work of energy elsewhere. Life is never tired ; it is
the body that requires rest, not the spirit. The old doc-
trine of heaven, an eternity of laziness, was the sigh of the
sluggish flesh whipped to ceaseless work by the unresting
life. The desire of heaven was the desire of eternal death.
This extension of the idea of the nonwastage, the rigid
conservation and interconvertibility of force to things of
life, gains a new significance and grandeur when we con-
sider that whatever proves the immortality of man proves
the immortality of every other animal or vegetable form.
The tree and horse have a soul quite as well as you, and
must live after death quite as surely as you will. It is the
flimsiest of conceits that makes men think they are en-
dowed with a special sort of soul or divine life, different
from that of animals or plants. Don't flatter yourself.
God takes quite the same loving pains and care in the
elimination of a leaf that he does of a brain-cell. Man is
but a small part of the animal world, and the whole animal
world is but a small part of the total life of the globe.
Don't despise the vegetable kingdom : it can do something
you cannot do make living matter out of mineral sub-
stances. You could not live a day without the food fur-
nished you by " your brothers, the plants." Hence if
human life or souls cannot be sent off into space to do
nothing, neither can the souls of animals and plants. If
we are to have our heaven, they must have theirs also.
Does not this tangential theory begin to be clumsy and
IMMORTALITY. 373
work with huge creakings and difficulties ? It looks like
reductio ad absurdum.
Not only is the tangential theory contradictory of all
physical analogies and all known laws, but it is positively
immoral, it is but a refined selfishness. Worldliness is
none the less sinful because it is other-worldliness. If bil-
lions of souls could thus be wasted in an eternity of useless
pain or pleasure, could thus drunken with individuation
hug their own sweet ghosts for never-ending time, then
were life a farce, the universe a huge, meaningless machine
for grinding out waste and useless souls. But if all life,
past or future, is one and indivisible, purposive, educational,
then the world becomes full of meaning and the face of the
Father, Life, smiles out at us from every living thing. The
faith of all good men that goodness is at the heart of things
is justified. The Earth becomes our home, that we can
love ; our Father ever dwelleth here ; we cannot be ban-
ished. When we have finished our task, when our body
has worn out, tireless life, of which we are the children and
heirs, gives us here and now other work to do.
To matter, this tremendous cosmical game of incarnation
can mean nothing. We see the dead flesh break up into
simpler chemic forms and the atoms finally spin off un-
altered by their flesh-dance, again to be caught up by the
mystic and unseen Master, again to be pressed into organic
forms, forms that like empty seashells only show where
life has been. And so on forever. But to life some edu-
cative purpose must be operative through it all. Life that
made eyes must see more than eyes; life that made brains
must know more than brains. There is, doubtless, pain and
strain ; but is there to be no ultimate justification ? We
may catch glimpses of reasons. Do we not see an increase
both of quantity and quality of life in geologic times ? Is
life trying to do away with death and heredity ? Are they
but makeshifts, death but a discarding of too obstinate
374 IMMORTALITY.
material ? birth but a retempering and reworking of the
same material ? heredity but the temporary means of
passing life and its experiences onward until death and
birth shall be found unnecessary in a growing command of
chemic and physical forces that shall banish old age out
of the world ? There is no inherent reason why a body
should grow decrepit. If it can be made to preserve its
suppleness for fifty years, why not for a thousand ? It may
transpire that the dream of an elixir of life may come true
through scientific progress despite the savage death-blow
given it by Brown-Sequard. The more sin, selfishness,
and wrong there is, the shorter is the average length of
human lives. If you will look into the rich and awful
science of statistics you will find proof of this in every
class of society. When we apply ourselves to enrich and
lengthen our life-time with the same zeal we now use in
killing each other, when the endowments of the world's
scientific schools equal the cost of the world's armies,
then there will be a very different life-table found in the
insurance offices.
Finally, with mournful, echoing recurrence comes the old
question : How much of individuality persists and passes
untouched through death's fingers? How far does the
graduate life carry with it the results of experience ? I
would answer : All that you ought to desire, all that is best,
all that you will want when you fully understand how
little and poor is individuality and that there is something
including it and far better. I have a strange inability,
personally, to understand the, to me, absurd hunger after
personal identity. It appears to me a childish obtuseness
of character. The great and glorious freeness and large-
ness of life, the decentralized, impersonal quality of it,
seems to be unappreciated. I do not see how people can
fail to understand that personal identity is not only impos-
sible, does not exist now and here, but that the desire of
IMMORTALITY. 375
it is the renunciation of progress. We grow and advance
only by change, only by breaking up identity and becoming
other. Think also of the lack of identity or individuality
in nature. There is no personality and individualism there,
and yet there is something that includes personality and
is much more. There is will, consciousness, intelligence,
life, but not identity or individuality. So the life that is
the heart of us invites us to leave our little self and find a
larger self. Religion is our yes to that invitation. Mate-
rialism and pessimism is the saying no to it. The immor-
tality that is alone possible or desirable is the losing our
life, the individual identity-loving life, again to find it as
the impersonal but richer, deeper life of nature and God.
God denies you an immortality of individualism and
identity because He loves you so well that He refuses you
your crude, childish desire in order to offer you something
infinitely better. People do not seem to see how narrow,
small, and partial is the dissociate speck of the individual,
and that as an individual progresses in all the virtues of
character he evermore becomes proportionally less indi-
vidual and less centralized, always more like the divine
prototype of his impersonal father, Life. The love of in-
dividualism is the love of imperfection. This may to some
seem a hard doctrine. It is not perhaps an easy task for
the butterfly to break its way out through the million-fold
bonds of its cocoon, but when risen into the large air and
sunshine does it regret the birth-struggle? They who
think they are being cheated of reality for a metaphysic
illusion will find, in breaking through the bonds of flesh,
that they also have brought with them splendid wings for
rising in the no less real but rarer air of spiritual trust in
life. It is not that we love less the thousand ties of flesh,
home, and kindred, but that in recognizing the paternity
and fraternity of all life, we find love commensurate with
that life. I do not think there was any cold, stony harsh-
376 IMMORTALITY.
ness in the face of Jesus when He uttered those most pro-
foundly significant of all words, " Who is my mother, and
who are my brethren ? Whosoever shall do the will of
my Father, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."
What a recall to the common life of the spirit ! What
unity with the common life based upon loving obedience
to the will of the Father. What a wonderful rebuke of
the love of individualism. He did not love His mother
less, but humanity more. The more we rise into that im-
personal atmosphere the more are we careless of the fate
of personal identity. The composite photograph shows
the fundamental and enduring quality, the average feature.
In a certain sense life and history are taking humanity's
composite photograph ; but, inordinately loving individ-
ualism, each sitter conceitedly demands that his own
picture be left untouched and unblurred by that of the
others, and that his poor little portrait shall stand alone
and forever precisely what the divine Photographer does
not wish and will not permit. Obstinacy persists and God
smashes the negative to the ground with the unanswerable
argument called death. Because it is more than metaphor
that in many ways the body may be likened unto a photog-
rapher's negative, created, for example, by the in-flashing
of a heavenly ray of light among the highly unstable
chemicals of matter ; useless, except as an intermediate
step to a clearer showing of the character; black and in-
visible, unless shone through by the pure light of life and
love ; fragile as glass, and lastly, the poor, weak, shadowy,
dead counterfeit of a throbbing, marvelous, living reality.
The hunger for an immortality of the body, of the senses,
the lust of immortality, is, in empty fatuousness, only
comparable to the mania of a crazy photographer interested
only in his negatives, and who never " develops " one ; or
to the foolishness that values photographs more than the
friends themselves. If we once get our spiritual eye fixed
IMMORTALITY. 377
upon the deep reality and unity hidden by the Maia-veil-
ings of individuality and flesh, the cravings of our weak
hearts for eternal continuance of our little bundle of little-
nesses would fall away from us as softly as the wayward
longings of childhood. We could then see that it is the
quality of all life, the progressive purity, power, and in-
crease of life in the abstract, that become all-important.
Religion would become the love and veneration of Life
the Father of us ; morality the cheerful obedience of the
individual to that Father ; Heaven the reentrance of the
individual life into the great unity. Much of the old
religion was irreligious ; its God a far-away, dead abstrac-
tion, not a living, ever-present love ; its immortality was at
heart a desire for death, its spiritualism at heart a barbaric
materialism. To this death of faith and irreligious religion
comes the sympathetic study and love of nature that is,
science and reveals to us the opulence of life, the infinity
of intellect in nature, the inexhaustibleness of her resources
and of her diversity, her beauty and her splendor. The
old materialistic degradation of religion forefelt its doom
would come from this spiritualistic revivification, and the
devotees cried out against science as atheistic. And science
found some foolish enemies in her own camp who, mis-
reading their divine book, joined in the cry " Nothing
but mechanics." It was a dismal, short-lived croak. We
now see that not only are science and her workers religious,
but without scientific knowledge there can be no adequate
idea or practice of religion. You can't love God unless
you love and know what He is doing in this universe. The
man who in a walk goes neglectfully and obliviously by a
million mysteries and wonders that God has been toiling
to eliminate for ages, such a man cannot lay much claim
to God's friendship. If we love our friend, we have some
interest in the deepest concern of his life. The foolishest
of all fears is the fear that science is somehow going to
378 IMMORTALITY.
destroy all good things of faith and life. In truth, it reveals
all good things. It demonstrates and manifests both God
and immortality, God as the Father of all life, immortality
as the surety of the conservation and nonwastage of that
life. Much of the fear of science is, as I have said, the
fear of the old materialistic religion in presence of the
larger faith that burns up its beloved errors. They who
had been promised and had argued themselves into a
groundless belief in the value and immortality of a bundle
of sensual appetites, selfish desires, and imperfections, saw
far in advance that any large study of life and nature would
dash their wretched faith to atoms. And science has over-
ridden this unfaithful faith. "He that soweth to his flesh
shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but he that soweth to
the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." This is
as true scientifically as it is true morally and religiously.
It required but a little study of neurology and psy-
chology to give demonstration to this truth. The products
of organization die with disorganization. Most, if not all,
of what people mean by individuality and personal iden-
tity is a product of organization, is an accident of incar-
nation. Children are similar to each other ; they are
lovable partly because idiosyncrasy and individualism
haven't yet developed. As we grow older we cultivate
individuality, until the very old are usually angular, cranky,
individual with a vengeance! Death, thank heaven! is the
end of that, the certainty of a noneternalizing of the imper-
fect. Birth is a new trial. Incarnation and reincarnation
are the ever-renewed work of Life. Through the laws of
heredity, through physiology, sociology, and biology,
science is tirelessly illustrating to us how all life holds
together, how individualism is valueless, and sacrificed to
the common weal. There is no escape, sensual or super-
sensual, from the world's great common life. The old,
selfish dream of a heaven apart from incarnation, from
IMMORTALITY. 379
doing and becoming, was a pitiful mistake. You cannot
clutch your cake of happiness and like a spoiled child run
into the attic of heaven to eat it alone. Life will see to it
that you do not slip off. And if you have been born again
of the Spirit you will have no such desire, but will beg for
kindred work upon the old earth-home.
In the meantime the conclusion is clear : to love and aid
the work of our master Life we need not wait for death.
We may not seek our own salvation ; it is no matter
whether you and I are saved or not. The reincarnation of
life is our work here and now. It took you twenty years
to fashion out of a microscopically small speck of unor-
ganized protoplasm your body and brain. Within us we
are to keep that organization from cramping and binding
the life, keep life as large and free and pliant as possible.
Outside of us the incarnation goes on as well, and every
person you influence either for good or for ill, thus by the
fact becomes a product of your incarnating work. Every
day you have a hundred opportunities to give, without les-
sening your own supply, some of your own life, to increase
the quantity and to elevate the quality of the general stock
of the world's life. Help the young ; they inherit the world
and will use it well or ill according to your teaching and
example. Stop cruelty to animals ; they are your brothers,
rilled with the same life as your own. Fight the political ruin
we are preparing for ourselves by partisanship, bribery, and
class-legislation. Discourage war and intemperance, and
lessen the tyranny of the strong and wealthy. Wage a
ceaseless war to the death against luxury, the poison that
is eating and rotting the hearts of all of us. Love trees,
meadows, clear brooks, the mountains, and silences of
Nature. Love, not so much your own or another's indiv-
idual life, as Life itself. There is otherwise no immortality.
The divine story tells us that after measureless suffering
and self-purification, Buddha had gained the right to enter
380 IMMORTALITY.
Nirvana. With compassion filling his heart he put his
merited reward aside and resolved to remain without to
teach and to help until every child of earth should have
become his disciple, and until every disciple should have
entered Nirvana before him. Such must be the resolve of
every true lover of life and of every right seeker after
immortality.
The Meaning and The Method of Life.
A SEARCH FOR RELIGION IN BIOLOGY.
BY GEORGE M. GOULD, A.M., M.D.
New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893. 297 Pages. Price, $1.75.
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS.
In strong contrast to all this is the genuine biologist's religion set forth by
Dr. Gould in the book before us. To begin with, it is truly a religion, and no
sham. Whoever believes anything like it must, no doubt, be filled with the
spirit, if not of worship, yet of devotion, hearty, tender, and passionate ; and for
how many confessions can we say as much ? Next, whether we accept the doc-
trine or not, we cannot but grant that it does truly spring, by methods of thought
analogous to those of natural philosophy, out of observations of nature. Insist-
ing upon the absolute distinction between living and lifeless things, Dr. Gould
sees in the former an invisible Life, purposeful and intelligent. This is his God.
He names him Biologos. He is a regular Aryan nature-god, very wise and
clever, but existing in nature, not the creator of matter, and very far from
being omnipotent.
Dr. Gould believes in his God without one shade of doubt, and with a fervid
joy that would render his book delightful reading even if it were not filled with
interesting suggestions gracefully and strikingly expressed. He really makes
his doctrine decidedly attractive, at least for some of our moods.
It is little to say that there must be some truth in Dr. Gould's idea if there
is any truth in religion ; for every religion worthy the name represents a struggle
between the God and some dark and baleful resistance. The Nation.
It is this directness of experience, this presence of a truly passionate interest
in the subject, which makes our author's work fascinating, and which ought to
make it valuable for many who will not accept Dr. Gould's conclusions in his
own form. These conclusions, as here stated, are embodied, indeed, rather in
an excellent cosmical romance than in a reasoned philosophical doctrine. But
cosmical romances are works of art that few can write, and the good cosmical
romance is a fiction that is sure to veil a deeper truth than perhaps its own author
imagines, especially if he himself takes his legend to be literally accurate.
In setting himself this task our author appears as one well equipped with
empirical illustrations derived from the biological sciences. His acquaintance
with a considerable mass of them is as close and fresh as his own inner experi-
ence of life. It need not be said, however, that this empirical material is here
used, not technically, nor in the service of science for its own sake, but rather
382 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS.
by way of illustrating the general cosmical hypothesis. The latter, meanwhile,
is itself presented with all the naive and charming immediacy of a divine intui-
tion. One does not prove this intuition ; one simply sees its truth.
Our author is, above all, ethical in his concern, and feels precisely that
opposition between the ethical and the all-powerful characteristics in the God of
tradition which has so divided in twain the religious consciousness of the ages.
The worth of the present intuition lies, then, in the fruits that spring from it.
And there is something delightful, as one reads Dr. Gould's glowing pages, in
watching this fervent student of current medical and of general biological lore,
who, inspired by a moral devotion, " sees," " under the microscope," the work-
ings of a God whom he now has to conceive with attributes quite pathetically,
yes, tragically, human.
The air of what we have called " unique experience " in this volume can
be but faintly suggested by such a review. These propounders of intuitions
will always be welcome guests in philosophy. Professor Josiah Royce, of
Harvard University, in the International Journal of Ethics.
We differ from the author so radically in one of his most important philoso-
phic premises, we agree with him so heartily in his ethical conclusions, and,
moreover, we admire so sincerely his earnest, whole-souled, vigorous style, his
reality and loftiness of purpose, that our critical faculty is paralyzed.
In the living cell, the finite, powerful, but not all-powerful God, whom Dr.
Gould terms Biologos (/3/of, life; /W;of, the world), becomes incarnate. In every
living cell is God bodily present, and slowly, painfully through the ages, Life
struggles with matter; sympathy, pity, love, struggle with the mechanical regu-
larity of the inanimate universe.
Biologos gains for himself new footholds, he advances from " strength to
strength," as higher forms of life appear. At last, man, the nearest approach to
God, is evolved, and every man becomes God's deputy to push his conquests over
matter further, and finally to establish his kingdom of love. Evil exists, not
because God wills it, but because God's power to prevent it is limited. Or,
rather, evil is the result of the imperfections of the development of the creatures
of Biologos; it is but another name for the obstacles unconquered; the obstacles
inherent in dead, mechanically-governed matter.
From this and other scientific data, interestingly and forcibly set forth, the
author develops a practical creed of highest value. We are all the sons of God,
all His servants to conquer evil. Life is real and holy ; its method is given by
science, its meaning by a direct inspiration from Biologos. The author vigorously
denounces all forms of selfishness, cruelty, pretense, and hypocrisy, and shows
wherein lies the true, noble, sincere, and loving use of God's gifts. Sympathy
with and respect for all other life are its foundations.
To the thousands who, like the author, find traditional roads impassable, his
book will doubtless be a comfort and an inspiration. To all, it will prove a
source of spiritual elevation ; for it breathes an immediate consciousness of
God's existence, rare indeed in our modern literature. The American Hebrew.
A very active-minded and suggestive work. The author seems to have
passed through a prolonged period of atheistic thought, and to have worked
his way out by great mental suffering to a vision of God in all life. His style is
vigorous and clear, his observation is close and connected, and his views are
decidedly original. Public Opinion, Washington, D. C.
The ability and sincerity of the author will yet commend his volume most
to the most philosophic minds, who incline to believe agnosticism as far from
the truth as gnosticism. The Literary World, Boston.
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 383
We consider it an important contribution to the scientist-theological litera-
ture of the day. The Bookseller, London.
The writer seeks to give the key-note to the riddle of life. The peculiarities,
course, accidents, and evils of life he seeks to explain. In many respects the
idea sought to be established is the same as that wrought out by Drummond in
his work on God in the material world. Each takes the phenomena of the
world as observed, and shows how a divine power works through the observed
material to attain the ends to be accomplished.
Perhaps the chapter on cytology, or theology of the cell, will attract most
medical minds. Cell physiology and pathology are accepted as fundamental
elements of medicine.
The work will interest all who desire to increase their knowledge as to the
meaning of life. American Lancet.
In every chapter much will be found to help the willing soul longing to be
free so as to know God, aware that in this knowledge is perfect freedom, and
unaware that He Himself is in us, of us, and about us for " in Him we live
and move and have our being." Book News, Phila.
The volume is an acceptable contribution to the solution of the problem of
life. It is deserving of careful examination, and may confirm many a mind in
the same grooves of thought which his chapters in some respects clearly set
forth. The Transcript, Boston.
About the earnestness, the high ethical purpose, and the great ability, on his
own lines, of the author of this remarkable work there can be no question.
The Christian World, England.
Its motto, " From life, through life, to life," gives the key-note of its tone
one of cheer and encouragement a refreshing contrast to the philosophy of
pessimism and despair, so prevalent for many years past in works assuming to
be guides of scientific thought.
One of the greatest merits and clearness of the book is its manly and vigorous
protest against the crying evils of the age its rampant materialism, its suicidal
love of luxury, gross sensualism, ever-increasing inefficiency and self-indulgence.
We hail it as an omen of good in our future progress toward the light an
important link in the chain of evidence binding earth to heaven. We would
urge the intelligent and earnest general reader not to be deterred by the technical
phraseology of many of its passages from a careful perusal of the entire work.
It will amply repay him for the effort. It will leave the impress for good on
both heart and mind, enlarging the views and broadening one's sympathies
with all things stamped with the image of the all-loving p'ather. The Times,
Richmond, Va.
It is a work worth careful study, and while at a cursory glance it may
appear dull, one has only to read a few pages to realize the wealth of thought
contained between its covers. The Herald, Rochester, N. Y.
Dr. Gould's work is a sincere and enthusiastic endeavor to bring vividly
before the mind the evidencesof God's existence and the method of His activity
apparent in the world of living things. He takes for his mottoes, " From life,
through life, to life," and " the Word became flesh," of which this volume
attempts to be an exposition.
In attempting thus to indicate the spiritual principles underlying the world
of nature, Dr. Gould's book maybe considered as in some sense a counterpart
to Drummond's exposition of the natural law in the spiritual world. The
Press, Burlington, Vt.
384 EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS.
At the present moment there is no question of a purely theoretic character
which so profoundly agitates thinkers as that which has reference to a recon-
ciliation of the traditional faiths of mankind with the startling revelations of
scientific investigation ; and Dr. Gould deserves sincere thanks for the able and
scholarly way in which he here meets the issue and clears the ground of en-
cumbering side questions and logical impediments.
Dr. Gould speaks as a scientist, but always as one whose ear has been sen-
sitive to the still, small voices of nature, no less than to the utterances of her
unalterable laws. The Bulletin, Phila.
The book is one of deep thought, the product of unwearied study of life
itself and the most intense and genuine conviction, and will well repay the
reader. Book News, Phila.
These somewhat startling theories will doubtless expose the author to acrid
criticism; but they should acquit him of the sin of mental plagiarism, for they
are the unique product of his own brain. That circumstance, however, should
not deter the reader from dipping into the book, because, though it is full of
strange conceits, it contains much that is suggestive and interesting. The author
is plainly a man who has brought to bear a cultivated intelligence and a
thoughtful and inquiring mind on the problems of the here and the hereafter.
New York Tribune.
It is a matter for congratulation that here and there is to be found a man
who will put aside his desire for the fame that the many might give him, and
seek for his reward in the appreciation of the few. Dr. Gould has studied the
facts before him in his search for religion in biology, and has written a really
entertaining book. Post, Chicago.
When the reader has got through with this book he will admit that Dr.
Gould has not made his search for religion in the realm of biology wholly in
vain. For apologetic purposes the work will be found highly useful. New
York Christian at Work.
Dr. Gould has attempted to discover the secret of nature and of human life.
He brings to the task intelligence and skill. We have read his argument with
sympathetic interest, and, although it seems to us inadequate, it has a peculiar
poetic power of fascination. The argument tends toward the faith of optimism ;
and, although it leaves us with a dualism that cannot be resolved into unity, it
is in the direction of a sane and sound explanation of the universe. The Chris-
tian Register.
His work is evidently sincere, the result of persistent study and the effort of
a candid and truthful mind. His volume is an indication of the longing every-
where evident to reconcile the essentials of the old faith with new knowledge ;
if the effort is incoherent it is at least resolute and genuine, and deserves the
consideration that should always be accorded to honest endeavor. The
National Baptist, Philadelphia.
The work is that of a writer who knows his own mind and has no hesitation
in combating received opinions which seem to him erroneous. It is a scholarly,
incisive work. Detroit Free Press.
We recognize the abilty and learning, the sincerity and suggestiveness, of
the volume. Zion's Herald.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES
THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
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