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History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A >> Andrew Dickson White >> History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom




[338] For Boyle's attempt at compromise, see Discourse on the
Air, in his works, vol. iv, pp. 288, 289, cited by Buckle, vol.
i, pp. 128, 129, note.


The recent history of sanitation in all civilized countries shows
triumphs which might well fill us with wonder, did there not rise
within us a far greater wonder that they were so long delayed.
Amazing is it to see how near the world has come again and again
to discovering the key to the cause and cure of pestilence. It
is now a matter of the simplest elementary knowledge that some of
the worst epidemics are conveyed in water. But this fact seems
to have been discovered many times in human history. In the
Peloponnesian war the Athenians asserted that their enemies had
poisoned their cisterns; in the Middle Ages the people generally
declared that the Jews had poisoned their wells; and as late as
the cholera of 1832 the Parisian mob insisted that the
water-carriers who distributed water for drinking purposes from
the Seine, polluted as it was by sewage, had poisoned it, and in
some cases murdered them on this charge: so far did this feeling
go that locked covers were sometimes placed upon the
water-buckets. Had not such men as Roger Bacon and his long line
of successors been thwarted by theological authority,--had not
such men as Thomas Aquinas, Vincent of Beauvais, and Albert the
Great been drawn or driven from the paths of science into the
dark, tortuous paths of theology, leading no whither,--the world
to-day, at the end of the nineteenth century, would have arrived
at the solution of great problems and the enjoyment of great
results which will only be reached at the end of the twentieth
century, and even in generations more remote. Diseases like
typhoid fever, influenza and pulmonary consumption, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, pneumonia, and la grippe, which now carry off
so many most precious lives, would have long since ceased to
scourge the world.

Still, there is one cause for satisfaction: the law governing
the relation of theology to disease is now well before the world,
and it is seen in the fact that, just in proportion as the world
progressed from the sway of Hippocrates to that of the ages of
faith, so it progressed in the frequency and severity of great
pestilences; and that, on the other hand, just in proportion as
the world has receded from that period when theology was
all-pervading and all-controlling, plague after plague has
disappeared, and those remaining have become less and less
frequent and virulent.[339]

[339] For the charge of poisoning water and producing pestilence
among the Greeks, see Grote, History of Greece, vol. vi, p. 213.
For a similar charge against the Jews in the Middle Ages, see
various histories already cited; and for the great popular
prejudice against water-carriers at Paris in recent times, see
the larger recent French histories.


The recent history of hygiene in all countries shows a long
series of victories, and these may well be studied in Great
Britain and the United States. In the former, though there had
been many warnings from eminent physicians, and above all in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from men like Caius, Mead,
and Pringle, the result was far short of what might have been
gained; and it was only in the year 1838 that a systematic
sanitary effort was begun in England by the public authorities.
The state of things at that time, though by comparison with the
Middle Ages happy, was, by comparison with what has since been
gained, fearful: the death rate among all classes was high, but
among the poor it was ghastly. Out of seventy-seven thousand
paupers in London during the years 1837 and 1838, fourteen
thousand were suffering from fever, and of these nearly six
thousand from typhus. In many other parts of the British Islands
the sanitary condition was no better. A noble body of men
grappled with the problem, and in a few years one of these rose
above his fellows--the late Edwin Chadwick. The opposition to
his work was bitter, and, though many churchmen aided him, the
support given by theologians and ecclesiastics as a whole was
very far short of what it should have been. Too many of them
were occupied in that most costly and most worthless of all
processes, "the saving of souls" by the inculcation of dogma.
Yet some of the higher ecclesiastics and many of the lesser
clergy did much, sometimes risking their lives, and one of them,
Sidney Godolphin Osborne, deserves lasting memory for his
struggle to make known the sanitary wants of the peasantry.

Chadwick began to be widely known in 1848 as a member of the
Board of Health, and was driven out for a time for overzeal; but
from one point or another, during forty years, he fought the
opposition, developed the new work, and one of the best exhibits
of its results is shown in his address before the Sanitary
Conference at Brighton in 1888. From this and other perfectly
trustworthy sources some idea may be gained of the triumph of the
scientific over the theological method of dealing with disease,
whether epidemic or sporadic.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century the annual
mortality of London is estimated at not less than eighty in a
thousand; about the middle of this century it stood at
twenty-four in a thousand; in 1889 it stood at less than
eighteen in a thousand; and in many parts the most recent
statistics show that it has been brought down to fourteen or
fifteen in a thousand. A quarter of a century ago the death rate
from disease in the Royal Guards at London was twenty in a
thousand; in 1888 it had been reduced to six in a thousand. In
the army generally it had been seventeen in a thousand, but it
has been reduced until it now stands at eight. In the old Indian
army it had been sixty-nine in a thousand, but of late it has
been brought down first to twenty, and finally to fourteen. Mr.
Chadwick in his speech proved that much more might be done, for
he called attention to the German army, where the death rate from
disease has been reduced to between five and six in a thousand.
The Public Health Act having been passed in 1875, the death rate
in England among men fell, between 1871 and 1880, more than four
in a thousand, and among women more than six in a thousand. In
the decade between 1851 and 1860 there died of diseases
attributable to defective drainage and impure water over four
thousand persons in every million throughout England: these
numbers have declined until in 1888 there died less than two
thousand in every million. The most striking diminution of the
deaths from such causes was found in 1891, in the case of typhoid
fever, that diminution being fifty per cent. As to the scourge
which, next to plagues like the Black Death, was formerly the
most dreaded--smallpox--there died of it in London during the
year 1890 just one person. Drainage in Bristol reduced the death
rate by consumption from 4.4 to 2.3; at Cardiff, from 3.47 to
2.31; and in all England and Wales, from 2.68 in 1851 to 1.55 in
1888.

What can be accomplished by better sanitation is also seen to-day
by a comparison between the death rate among the children outside
and inside the charity schools. The death rate among those
outside in 1881 was twelve in a thousand; while inside, where
the children were under sanitary regulations maintained by
competent authorities, it has been brought down first to eight,
then to four, and finally to less than three in a thousand.

In view of statistics like these, it becomes clear that Edwin
Chadwick and his compeers among the sanitary authorities have in
half a century done far more to reduce the rate of disease and
death than has been done in fifteen hundred years by all the
fetiches which theological reasoning could devise or
ecclesiastical power enforce.

Not less striking has been the history of hygiene in France:
thanks to the decline of theological control over the
universities, to the abolition of monasteries, and to such
labours in hygienic research and improvement as those of Tardieu,
Levy, and Bouchardat, a wondrous change has been wrought in
public health. Statistics carefully kept show that the mean
length of human life has been remarkably increased. In the
eighteenth century it was but twenty-three years; from 1825 to
1830 it was thirty-two years and eight months; and since 1864,
thirty-seven years and six months.



IV. THE RELATION OF SANITARY SCIENCE TO RELIGION.


The question may now arise whether this progress in sanitary
science has been purchased at any real sacrifice of religion in
its highest sense. One piece of recent history indicates an
answer to this question. The Second Empire in France had its
head in Napoleon III, a noted Voltairean. At the climax of his
power he determined to erect an Academy of Music which should be
the noblest building of its kind. It was projected on a scale
never before known, at least in modern times, and carried on for
years, millions being lavished upon it. At the same time the
emperor determined to rebuild the Hotel-Dieu, the great Paris
hospital; this, too, was projected on a greater scale than
anything of the kind ever before known, and also required
millions. But in the erection of these two buildings the
emperor's determination was distinctly made known, that with the
highest provision for aesthetic enjoyment there should be a
similar provision, moving on parallel lines, for the relief of
human suffering. This plan was carried out to the letter: the
Palace of the Opera and the Hotel-Dieu went on with equal steps,
and the former was not allowed to be finished before the latter.
Among all the "most Christian kings" of the house of Bourbon who
had preceded him for five hundred years, history shows no such
obedience to the religious and moral sense of the nation.
Catharine de' Medici and her sons, plunging the nation into the
great wars of religion, never showed any such feeling; Louis XIV,
revoking the Edict of Nantes for the glory of God, and bringing
the nation to sorrow during many generations, never dreamed of
making the construction of his palaces and public buildings wait
upon the demands of charity. Louis XV, so subservient to the
Church in all things, never betrayed the slightest consciousness
that, while making enormous expenditures to gratify his own and
the national vanity, he ought to carry on works, pari passu, for
charity. Nor did the French nation, at those periods when it was
most largely under the control of theological considerations,
seem to have any inkling of the idea that nation or monarch
should make provision for relief from human suffering, to justify
provision for the sumptuous enjoyment of art: it was reserved
for the second half of the nineteenth century to develop this
feeling so strongly, though quietly, that Napoleon III,
notoriously an unbeliever in all orthodoxy, was obliged to
recognise it and to set this great example.

Nor has the recent history of the United States been less
fruitful in lessons. Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only
Southern cities but even New York and Philadelphia, has now been
almost entirely warded off. Such epidemics as that in Memphis a
few years since, and the immunity of the city from such
visitations since its sanitary condition was changed by Mr.
Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.
Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to
be feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly,
is now rarely heard of. Curious is it to find that some of the
diseases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in
every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought
of little account, and for the cure of which people therefore
rely, to their cost, on quackery instead of medical science.

This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the United
States has also been coincident with a marked change in the
attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory of disease.
In this country, as in others, down to a period within living
memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were
constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national
sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view has mainly
passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of the
country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading
useful ideas as to the prevention of disease. The religious
press has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to
every household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and
hygienic living.

The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in
church and state has been changed by facts like these. Lord
Palmerston refusing the request of the Scotch clergy that a fast
day be appointed to ward off cholera, and advising them to go
home and clean their streets,--the devout Emperor William II
forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency, on the ground
that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,--all
this is in striking contrast to the older methods.

Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at Philadelphia,
by an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcopal Church. The
Bishop of Pennsylvania having issued a special call to prayer in
order to ward off the cholera, this clergyman refused to respond
to the call, declaring that to do so, in the filthy condition of
the streets then prevailing in Philadelphia, would be
blasphemous.

In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field, as in
so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has gradually
done much to evolve in the world not only a theology but also a
religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness of God and
of the destiny of man.[340]

[340] On the improvement in sanitation in London and elsewhere in
the north of Europe, see the editorial and Report of the
Conference on Sanitation at Brighton, given in the London Times
of August 27, 1888. For the best authorities on the general
subject in England, see Sir John Simon on English Sanitary
Institutions, 1890; also his published Health Reports for 1887,
cited in the Edinburgh Review for January, 1891. See also
Parkes's Hygiene, passim. For the great increase in the mean
length of life in France under better hygienic conditions, see
Rambaud, La Civilisation contemporaine en France, p. 682. For
the approach to depopulation at Memphis, under the cesspool
system in 1878, see Parkes, Hygiene, American appendix, p. 397.
For the facts brought out in the investigation of the department
of the city of New York by the Committee of the State Senate, of
which the present writer was a member, see New York Senate
Documents for 1865. For decrease of death rate in New York city
under the new Board of Health, beginning in 1866, and especially
among children, see Buck, Hygiene and Popular Health, New York,
1879, vol. ii, p. 573; and for wise remarks on religious duties
during pestilence, see ibid., vol. ii, p. 579. For a contrast
between the old and new ideas regarding pestilences, see Charles
Kingsley in Fraser's Magazine, vol. lviii, p. 134; also the
sermon of Dr. Burns, in 1875, at the Cathedral of Glasgow before
the Social Science Congress. For a particularly bright and
valuable statement of the triumphs of modern sanitation, see Mrs.
Plunkett's article in The Popular Science Monthly for June, 1891.
For the reply of Lord Palmerston to the Scotch clergy, see the
well-known passage in Buckle. For the order of the Emperor
William, see various newspapers for September, 1892, and
especially Public Opinion for September 24th.




CHAPTER XV.

FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.

I. THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.


Of all the triumphs won by science for humanity, few have been
farther-reaching in good effects than the modern treatment of the
insane. But this is the result of a struggle long and severe
between two great forces. On one side have stood the survivals
of various superstitions, the metaphysics of various
philosophies, the dogmatism of various theologies, the literal
interpretation of various sacred books, and especially of our
own--all compacted into a creed that insanity is mainly or
largely demoniacal possession; on the other side has stood
science, gradually accumulating proofs that insanity is always
the result of physical disease.

I purpose in this chapter to sketch, as briefly as I may, the
history of this warfare, or rather of this evolution of truth out
of error.

Nothing is more simple and natural, in the early stages of
civilization, than belief in occult, self-conscious powers of
evil. Troubles and calamities come upon man; his ignorance of
physical laws forbids him to attribute them to physical causes;
he therefore attributes them sometimes to the wrath of a good
being, but more frequently to the malice of an evil being.

Especially is this the case with diseases. The real causes of
disease are so intricate that they are reached only after ages of
scientific labour; hence they, above all, have been attributed
to the influence of evil spirits.[341]

[341] On the general attribution of disease to demoniacal
influence, see Sprenger, History of Medicine, passim (note, for a
later attitude, vol. ii, pp. 150-170, 178); Calmeil, De la Folie,
Paris, 1845, vol. i, pp. 104, 105; Esquirol, Des Maladies
Mentales, Paris, 1838, vol. i, p. 482; also Tylor, Primitive
Culture. For a very plain and honest statement of this view in
our own sacred books, see Oort, Hooykaas, and Kuenen, The Bible
for Young People, English translation, chap. v, p. 167 and
following; also Farrar's Life of Christ, chap. xvii. For this
idea in Greece and elsewhere, see Maury, La Magie, etc., vol.
iii, p. 276, giving, among other citations, one from book v of
the Odyssey. On the influence of Platonism, see Esquirol and
others, as above--the main passage cited is from the Phaedo. For
the devotion of the early fathers and doctors to this idea, see
citations from Eusebius, Lactantius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine,
St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, in Tissot,
L'Imagination, p. 369; also Jacob (i.e., Paul Lecroix), Croyances
Populaires, p. 183. For St. Augustine, see also his De Civitate
Dei, lib. xxii, chap. vii, and his Enarration in Psal., cxxxv, 1.
For the breaking away of the religious orders in Italy from the
entire supremacy of this idea, see Becavin, L'Ecole de Salerne,
Paris, 1888; also Daremberg, Histoire de la Medecine. Even so
late as the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther maintained
(Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, London, 1872, pp. 250, 256)
that "Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind."


But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed to
diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and
especially the more obscure of these! These, indeed, seemed to
the vast majority of mankind possible only on the theory of
Satanic intervention: any approach to a true theory of the
connection between physical causes and mental results is one of
the highest acquisitions of science.

Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men had
obtained an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude,
down to the end of the seventeenth century, nothing was more
clear than that insanity is, in many if not in most cases,
demoniacal possession.

Yet at a very early date, in Greece and Rome, science had
asserted itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed
destined to bring a large fruitage of blessings.[342] In the
fifth century before the Christian era, Hippocrates of Cos
asserted the great truth that all madness is simply disease of
the brain, thereby beginning a development of truth and mercy
which lasted nearly a thousand years. In the first century after
Christ, Aretaeus carried these ideas yet further, observed the
phenomena of insanity with great acuteness, and reached yet more
valuable results. Near the beginning of the following century,
Soranus went still further in the same path, giving new results
of research, and strengthening scientific truth. Toward the end
of the same century a new epoch was ushered in by Galen, under
whom the same truth was developed yet further, and the path
toward merciful treatment of the insane made yet more clear. In
the third century Celius Aurelianus received this deposit of
precious truth, elaborated it, and brought forth the great idea
which, had theology, citing biblical texts, not banished it,
would have saved fifteen centuries of cruelty--an idea not fully
recognised again till near the beginning of the present
century--the idea that insanity is brain disease, and that the
treatment of it must be gentle and kind. In the sixth century
Alexander of Tralles presented still more fruitful researches,
and taught the world how to deal with melancholia; and, finally,
in the seventh century, this great line of scientific men,
working mainly under pagan auspices, was closed by Paul of
Aegina, who under the protection of Caliph Omar made still
further observations, but, above all, laid stress on the cure of
madness as a disease, and on the absolute necessity of mild
treatment.

[342] It is significant of this scientific attitude that the
Greek word for superstition means, literally, fear of gods or
demons.


Such was this great succession in the apostolate of science:
evidently no other has ever shown itself more directly under
Divine grace, illumination, and guidance. It had given to the
world what might have been one of its greatest blessings.[343]

[343] For authorities regarding this development of scientific
truth and mercy in antiquity, see especially Krafft-Ebing,
Lehrbuch des Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1888, p. 40 and the pages
following; Trelat, Recherches Historiques sur la Folie, Paris,
1839; Semelaigne, L'Alienation mentale dans l'Antiquitie, Paris,
1869; Dagron, Des Alienes, Paris, 1875; also Calmeil, De la
Folie, Sprenger, and especially Isensee, Geschichte der Medicin,
Berlin, 1840.


This evolution of divine truth was interrupted by theology.
There set into the early Church a current of belief which was
destined to bring all these noble acquisitions of science and
religion to naught, and, during centuries, to inflict tortures,
physical and mental, upon hundreds of thousands of innocent men
and women--a belief which held its cruel sway for nearly eighteen
centuries; and this belief was that madness was mainly or largely
possession by the devil.

This idea of diabolic agency in mental disease had grown
luxuriantly in all the Oriental sacred literatures. In the
series of Assyrian mythological tablets in which we find those
legends of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and other early
conceptions from which the Hebrews so largely drew the accounts
wrought into the book of Genesis, have been discovered the
formulas for driving out the evil spirits which cause disease.
In the Persian theology regarding the struggle of the great
powers of good and evil this idea was developed to its highest
point. From these and other ancient sources the Jews naturally
received this addition to their earlier view: the Mocker of the
Garden of Eden became Satan, with legions of evil angels at his
command; and the theory of diabolic causes of mental disease took
a firm place in our sacred books. Such cases in the Old
Testament as the evil spirit in Saul, which we now see to have
been simply melancholy--and, in the New Testament, the various
accounts of the casting out of devils, through which is refracted
the beautiful and simple story of that power by which Jesus of
Nazareth soothed perturbed minds by his presence or quelled
outbursts of madness by his words, give examples of this. In
Greece, too, an idea akin to this found lodgment both in the
popular belief and in the philosophy of Plato and Socrates; and
though, as we have seen, the great leaders in medical science had
taught with more or less distinctness that insanity is the result
of physical disease, there was a strong popular tendency to
attribute the more troublesome cases of it to hostile spiritual
influence.[344]

[344] For the exorcism against disease found at Ninevah, see G.
Smith, Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34. For a very
interesting passage regarding the representaion of a diabolic
personage on a Babylonian bronze, and for a very frank statement
regarding the transmission of ideas regarding Satanic power to
our sacred books, see Sayce, Herodotus, appendix ii, p. 393. It
is, indeed, extremely doubtful whether Plato himself or his
contemporaries knew anything of evil demons, this conception
probably coming into the Greek world, as into the Latin, with the
Oriental influences that began to prevail about the time of the
birth of Christ; but to the early Christians, a demon was a
demon, and Plato's, good or bad, were pagan, and therefore
devils. The Greek word "epilepsy" is itself a survival of the
old belief, fossilized in a word, since its literal meaning
refers to the SEIZURE of the patient by evil spirits.

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