Chapter 13

RELIGIO MEDICI.

Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Religio Medici,"[49] alludes to the scandal that is generally attached to our profession, we being accused of professing no religion. That this opinion is still prevalent at the present day is undeniable,--philosophers and physicians are believed to be atheists and non-religionists,--while, at the same time, by that strange contradiction that is so common, philosophers and physicians are the known and recognized sources of religions, such is the intimate relation existing between physical and moral hygiene. Confucius, the contemporary of Pythagoras, whose religion was said to be nothing more than the observance of a certain moral and political ethical code, and he who first formulated the text "that one should do unto others as one wishes others to do unto him," the founder of the Confucian religion, the orthodox religion of China, was a philosopher. Buddha, the founder of the second creed recognized in China, and which forms the religion of a great part of eastern Asia, was also a philosopher who was endeavoring to reduce the Brahminical religion to the simple principles of philosophical religion, based on morality. Moses not only was the greatest philosopher of his time, but also had an insight into medicine that to us of the present day is simply incomprehensible. The Great Master was both a philosopher and a physician, his disputes with the learned and his attention to the sick having given him the titles of Great Master and Divine Healer.

To use the words of the "Religio Medici," the great body of the medical profession can, without usurpation, assume the name of Christians; for no monk of the desert convents of Asia Minor or religious knight of the middle ages, either in their care of the sick, or giving food and shelter to the weary, or protection of sword and shield to the oppressed pilgrim plodding his way to the Holy Land, were more deserving of the name of Christian than the medical man unwearily and unselfishly practicing his profession. To the true student of his art there is that in medicine which makes of the physician a practical Christian. Nor is there aught in medicine, either in its traditions, history, study, or practice, that in the lover of his art should ever make him anything but a philosophical and practical religionist. The physician, such as is actively engaged in the daily practice of his profession, instead of having no religion, is really a practical religionist, and, although he may subscribe to no outer ceremonial form or dogma, his life is such that a Confucian, a Buddhist, a Christian, or a Hebrew can behold in him the practitioner of the essence of either of their religions,--a conception carried out by Lessing, in his play of "Nathan the Wise," where the Jew, the Saracen, and Crusader teach the impressive lesson that nobleness is bound by no confession of faith or religion; showing the principle that should guide true religion.

The Rev. Dr. Townsend, of Boston University, has given a very interesting and intelligent relation of the connections that exist between medicine and the Old Testament, in the light of nineteenth-century science.[50] The article in question is interesting in its logical reasons as to why the Bible was inspired by a superior power, as well as in the comparisons it lays before us of the medicine of the Pagans and that of the Bible, during the early history of the world. After reviewing the false, crude, and senseless vagaries and superstitious notions that passed for medicine from the period of the Trojan war, in 1184 B.C., to the dissolution of the Pythagorean Society, 500 B.C.--periods which existed after the writing of the books of Moses,--and the period between 500 B.C. and 320 B.C., or the philosophic era of medicine, during which flourished the father of our present system of medicine, an era of advancement, but which in our eyes is still full of errors and unscientific conclusions. From these two periods we span over centuries of darkness for science and medicine to the ages of Ambroise Paré and the more modern fathers of our art, who by perseverance finally extricated medicine from the mass of magical and superstitious rubbish which, like barnacles, had clung to it during its passage through the dark and ignorant ages. After this review our author turns to the Bible and discourses in this wise:--

"Turning our attention to the Bible, we take the position that, though it was not designed to teach the science of medicine, still, whenever by hint, explicit statement, or commandment there is found in it anything relating to medicine, disease, or sanitary regulation, there must be no error; that is, provided the Bible, in an exceptional sense, is God's book. Now, what are the facts in this case? They are these: though the Bible often speaks of disease and remedy, yet the illusions, deceptions, and gross errors of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, as formerly taught, nowhere appear upon its pages. This, it must be acknowledged, is at least singular. But more than this: the various hints and directions of the Bible, its sanitary regulations, the isolation of the sick, the washing, the sprinkling, the external applications, and the various moral and religious injunctions in their bearing upon health are confessed to be in harmony with what is most recent and approved. To be sure, the average old-school physician of a century ago would have blandly smiled at our simplicity, had it been suggested to him that his methods would be improved by following Bible hints. 'What did Moses know about medical science?' would have been his reply. But Moses, judged by recent standards, seems to have known much, or, at least, to have written well."

The above statement is a truthful relation of facts, from which it can well be conceived that even in the Bible the physician finds something to inspire him with the idea of its divine inspiration, as the very history of medicine, with which it is connected, and with which he is familiar, only lends him further support in that direction. Most intelligent physicians are also lovers of philosophical history. None is more entertaining than Rawlinson, either in his "Seven Great Monarchies" or his "Ancient Egypt." In his "Ancient Religions," in his concluding remarks, he observes as follows, in regard to the Hebraic religion: "It seems impossible to trace back to any one fundamental conception, to any innate idea, or to any common experience or observation, the various religions which we have been considering. The veiled monotheism of Egypt, the dualism of Persia, the shamanism of Etruria, the pronounced polytheism of India are too contrariant to admit of any one explanation, or to be derivative of one single source.... It is clear that from none of the religions here treated of could the religion of the ancient Hebrews have originated. The Israelite people, at different periods of its history, came and remained for a considerable time under Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian influence, and there have not been wanting persons of ability who have regarded Judaism as a mere offshoot of the religion of one or the other of these three peoples. But, with the knowledge that we have now obtained of the religions in question, such views have been regarded as untenable, if not henceforth impossible. Judaism stands out from all other ancient religions as a thing _sui generis_, offering the sharpest contrast to the systems prevalent in the rest of the East, and so entirely different from them in its essence that its origin could not but have been distinct and separate.... The sacred books of the Hebrews cannot possibly have been derived from the sacred writings of any of these nations. No contrast can be greater than that between the Pentateuch and the 'Ritual of the Dead,' unless it be that between the Pentateuch and the Zendavesta, or between the same work and the Vedas.... In most religions the monotheistic idea is most prominent _at the first_, and gradually becomes obscured, and gives way before a polytheistic corruption.... Altogether, the theory to which the facts appear on the whole to point is the existence of a primitive religion, communicated to man from without, whereof monotheism and expiatory sacrifice were parts, and the gradual clouding over of this principle everywhere, unless it were among the Hebrews."[51]

Medicine is indebted for its advancement to the Hebraic religion to a greater extent than is generally believed. In the early Christian centuries there existed three great creeds: the Christian, Hebraic, and Mohammedan. The Christian Church was in a perplexing condition. As observed by Draper,[52] it was impossible to disentangle her from the principles which had, at the beginning, entered into her political organization. For good or evil, right or wrong, her necessity required that she should put herself forth as the possessor of all knowledge within the reach of the human intellect. But the monk and priest were prohibited from studying medicine,[53] as by so doing the church saw that she would have to relinquish the spiritual control of disease were medicine a matter of scientific research; she preferred to hold on to her spiritual dominion, and let science slumber in darkness. On the other hand, the Mohammedans, recognizing the principle of fatalism in their religion, it was not to be expected that they should cultivate an art entirely opposed to that principle. In this state of affairs the Jewish physician, led by the teachings of his religion, alone presented the study of medicine in a scientific manner, and its practice and its result taught the Moslems that medical science placed it within the power of man to keep himself out of the grave, when either assailed by disease or laid low by the wounds of war. The Arabs were not slow to avail themselves of this discovery; and to the learning and skill of the Jewish physician, guided by the light of an intelligent Deity and a liberal religion, does medicine owe the existence of those able and learned Arabian physicians that flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

There has been more or less of fault-finding in regard to certain rules and ordinances being sacramental, which, from the nature of things, should have been merely advisory or suggestive, as they pertained more to the hygienic welfare of the people than to the spiritual. Thus to reason, is neither philosophical nor in concert with our knowledge of the structure of man, and of the intimate relations that exist between mind and body, or of good health and good morals. The writer has seen violent catharsis produced by bread pills, after podophyllin, castor-oil, and phosphate of soda in the most generousdoses--administered as one would drop a letter in a mail-box--had completely failed; it is all in the manner and way we give a medicine or treat a disease. Certain narcotic and irritant poisons or powerful sedative agents have a physical action uninfluenced by the mind, but an intelligent physician is hardly supposed to drive at the small tack of disease with such powerful sledge-hammers. Charcot, recognizing the power of and availing himself of such a remedial agent as the pilgrimages to the Notre Dame de Lourdes, is an evidence of the intelligent and enlightened practitioner, who has learned, what the Bible taught, long, long ago, that human nature must be taken as it is found, and that, like the homely saying of Mohammed, as the mountain would not come to him, he must go to the mountain. Moses and all the Scriptural writers were well aware of this state of affairs, and their manner of using their knowledge was adapted and timed to the general intellectual development of the times.

There is one point in connection with the above that should not escape our attention, this being that, while the Hebraic creed and the people still subscribed to the theological doctrine of the origin of disease, in common with the religions then in vogue, here the connection stopped. All other creeds--not excepting Christianity--looked forward to a theological doctrine of the cure of disease. With the Hebrew, disease was looked upon as the result of some infraction on his part of some of the laws, and the consequent expression of displeasure on the part of the Deity. He was taught, however, that the observance of certain ordinances were both conducive to health and to the prevention of disease, and acceptable to God, as well as to rely upon his study and skill to cure disease. This was equivalent to teaching them that diseases arose from physical causes, and that physical means were to be used to combat them. From this arose the practice of exposing the sick in public places, that they might receive the benefit of the advice of such who might have had experience in a like case. It is from their religion that Hebraic medicine has received its foundation of intelligent philosophy that carried it in its purity through all ages, free from magic, superstition, and imposture. With other creeds and religions, medicine, disease, as well as the physical phenomena affecting nature, were believed to be the arbitrary expression of anger of their gods, and that the cure of disease, or alterations in physical phenomena, were to be as arbitrarily effected, regardless of the existence or action of physical laws. It is to be regretted that one of the sects which has sprung from the Hebraic creed, and which worships the same God, has been unable to emancipate itself or its people from the idea of an arbitrary theological doctrine of the origin and control of disease. It is this creation of a narrow-minded theology of a vaccilating, unintelligent, unphilosophical, and arbitrary God, who would neither respect nor regard the laws of his own creation, that has led the great body of physicians out of the modern churches. They do not deny the existence of the Deity, but the god of their conception is a higher and nobler god,--the Deity of Religio Medici.

When the prize for the best essay on "_the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in creation_"--a series of publications known as the Bridgewater Treatises--has been nearly every other time won by physicians, among whom we may mention Sir Charles Bell, Dr. John Kidd, Dr. Peter M. Roget, and Dr. William Prout,--not only won on their own merit, but in competition with learned theologians and noted divines,--we may truly say that physicians are by no means atheists or agnostics, but that, on the contrary, they are the real exponents of a practical and intelligent religion, which they not only practice, but fully and intelligently comprehend.