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sively, and that doctors believe in them less now than they did; but this is not because there is anything irreligious about swallowing drugs for healing purposes if they disappear, it will be because they are against science and not because they are against religion. It is highly probable that some drugs will always remain in use; and we cannot object to their use if they are efficacious, any more than we can object to taking salt in our food, or indeed to taking food altogether — for, after all, there is nothing more "material" than the swallowing of food, and the question of drugs is merely as to what are the best constituent elements of the extremely varied stuff which passes into the human stomach.

Let medical science, then, by all means wean us from the habit of drinking medicine upon every occasion, a habit into which we were led by science in its infancy; let it lay greater and greater stress upon the psychic elements which have been so unwisely neglected; but still it will have a vast amount to do on the material plane. It may give us fewer things to swallow, it may use increasingly the more direct method of subcutaneous injection, it may devise new ways of assisting the material work of the undermind against parasitic invasion. But more especially will it continue with increasing success to make war upon the world of parasites that is without. What nature does on a large scale by the action of sunlight in destroying these microbes, it will do by the use of germicidal liquids and gases co-operating in its material way with the material ways of nature. And above all it will render us

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proof against disease by teaching us to avail ourselves more of the sunlight, and of the air, and of the water; and to be temperate and wise in the use of food and in the constant habits of our life; nor will it be satisfied till it has made us clean, without and within, and swept the last of our innumerable, invisible enemies from our homes and from our streets, till civilisation becomes as free from such disease as extra-human nature is.

This is all very material, but it is none the less religious and divine. It is an armoury of material weapons forged by the highest qualities of intelligence, patience, courage, and charity.

People who talk lightly about medical science, as if it consisted in the bewildering mixture of unpleasant drugs, do not surely realise what that science has already done; and they lay themselves open to the retort that whereas a horrible disease like the plague survived the use of litanies, processions, and prayers, it has succumbed to the humbler methods of hygiene. It has succumbed because God intends us to be clean and wise, and because godliness without cleanliness, and prayer without care, are not the way of God for men. Already the microbe has been discovered of the worst diseases phthisis, syphilis, diptheria, typhoid, cholera, plague, leprosy, puerperal fever, lock-jaw, gangrene, and septic poisoning in wounds. Already our knowledge as to the cause has led in some cases to our learning how to protect our brother against the parasites, or to cure him of it.

Most people do not at all realise how much has been already done. Take London, for instance:

typhus has been stamped out, and the deaths from whooping cough have been halved in twenty years: the death-rate from the principal epidemic diseases taken together has been reduced to the following remarkable extent :

Between 1881 and 1890, the deaths were 3.05 per 1,000 per annum.

In 1905, the deaths were 1.70 per 1,000 per annum.

And if we go further back, the saving of life is even more remarkable; for in 1841 the expectation of life for a London baby was only 35 years, whereas already in 1881-90 it had risen to 39.85, and in 1900 it stood at 40.98.

Or take the discovery of the phthisis bacillus, with the consequent cure by the simplest methods of fresh air, and the prospect of complete eradication by the spread of cleanly habits. What a change has come over many a family in the knowledge that neither it nor any similar disease can probably be inherited! What a weapon we have against it now that we know it to be infectious! Already what progress has been made! Here are the figures for London —

In 1881-90, 2.09 persons died of phthisis per 1,000 per

annum.

In 1905, 1.42 persons died of phthisis per 1,000 per

annum.

-which is only one-half of the death-rate from phthisis in the period from 1861-70.

It is the same in other cities. Dr. Hermann M. Biggs, the head Medical Officer of New York, in a recent paper has stated that there has been a reduction in New York City of about 40 per cent. in the

deaths from tuberculosis since 1886; and he concludes

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"I have no doubt that the measures, first begun in a very small way in New York City fifteen years ago, inadequate as they have been, have resulted in saving the lives of at least 20,000 persons. The annual deaths in the Greater City still number between nine and ten thousand, and we know that these are, to a very large extent, unnecessary."

This is a wonderful record, and no one doubts that the germs of other diseases will be similarly discovered and controlled. Natural scientists do not hesitate to claim that the victory is already in sight

"It is a matter of practical certainty," says Sir E. Ray Lankester," that, by the unstinted application of known methods of investigation and consequent controlling action, all epidemic disease could be abolished within a period so short as fifty years."

Such are the achievements and such the hopes of natural science. The doctors, like the clergy, have doubtless committed many mistakes in the past, but therapeutics like theology makes sure progress all the same, and both are reaching forward to that final sacramentalism where matter and spirit are at

one.

It may be that some enthusiasts for mind-cure may experience a certain disappointment at being told by the voice of natural science that the great majority of diseases will be destroyed without any help from them; but any such feeling would be un

1 The Kingdom of Man, 1906, p. 36. He points out that this unstinted application cannot be given without a considerable further endowment of research.

worthy of a moral creature, and would show also a fatally incomplete understanding of the known ways of God. And, indeed, when all our external enemies are rendered powerless, there will still be ample need for the mental factor in the recovery from sickness; and still more will it be true that in wise and moral actions, and in the inward balance of mind and wholeness of the spirit lies the great secret of well-being for body and for soul- the secret of that which later on we shall venture to call by the high name of Salvation.

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