Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

64
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE.
of diseases as resulting from the wrath of God or malice
Satan was steadily weakened ; and, out of the many things
which show this, one may be selected as indicating the drift
of thought among theologians themselves.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century the most eminent
divines of the American branch of the Anglican Church
framed their Book of Common Prayer. Abounding as it does
in evidences of their wisdom and piety, few things are more
made in the exhortation to the faith-
noteworthy than a change
ful to present themselves at the communion. While, in the
old form laid down in the English Prayer Book, the minister
was required to warn his flock not " to kindle God's wrath "
or " provoke him to plague us with divers diseases and sundry
kinds of death," from the American form all this and
more of similar import in various services was left out.
Since that day progress in medical science has been rapic
indeed, and at no period more so than during the last half1 o\j.
the nineteenth century.
The theological view of disease has steadily faded, ai
the theological hold upon
medical education has been aim
entirely relaxed. In three great fields, especially, discover!^
have been made which have done much to disperse t^i
atmosphere of miracle. First, there has come knowledge
regarding the relation between imagination and medicine
which, though still defective, is of great importance. Thi
relation has been noted during the whole history of the sc:
ence. When the soldiers of the Prince of Orange, at th
siege of Breda in 1625, were dying of scurvy by scores, h
sent to the physicians " two or three small vials filled with
decoction of camomile, wormwood, and camphor, gave 01
that it was a very rare and precious medicine a medicin
of such virtue that two or three drops sufficed to impregnat
a gallon of water, and that it had been obtained from tfc
East with great difficulty and danger." This statemen
made with much solemnity, deeply impressed the soldier:
they took the medicine eagerly, and great numbers reco
ered rapidly. Again, two centuries later, young Humphi
Davy, being employed to apply the bulb of the thermomet'
to the tongues of certain patients at Bristol after thev hr
inhaled various gases as remedies for disease, and findii
i