The Race has Become Diseased
The race has become diseased, is suffering, cries out for a betterment of its
conditions, grows constantly more embittered and renounces its faith in the powers,
human and divine.
Epidemics of terrific proportions sweep their recurring millions into the arms of
death; diseases of stupendous mortality, such as tuberculosis, cancer, syphilis,
diabetes, and the extensive array of so-called contagious diseases of children, are
continually increasing, in spite of doctors, hospitals, sanatoria, hydros, hygienics,
asylums, nostrums and serums, and continue to afflict humanity, taking their
ghastly toll in daily thousands, despite the vaunted but theoretical advancement of
Medical Science.
In the field of medical science the controversy rages at full blast today.
An endless succession of hypotheses, conjectures and dogmas lies widespread
before us—a troubled sea of uncertainties—a complex labyrinth of doubt.
The "doctors of medicine" are many but responsible physicians are few, while
disease is constantly on the increase among mankind.
It is really little that the people have to learn, for instinct has taught them there is
little to be hoped of succour from the professional source. But the world-old habit
of superstitious fear and reverence for the "Medicine Man" fetish yet holds its grip
upon the race—alike in the savage or the Senate and, despite the knowledge of its
fallacy, humanity, still faithful, turns to it weakly, fear-driven, in its hour of
distress, knowing no self-reliance and no safer refuge.
The reader will pardon this digression, since it is better that from the outset we
should divest ourselves of all delusions and recognize existing conditions as they
really are in order that it may help to eliminate these ignorant superstitions from the
public mind and implant therein the wholesome fact that there is
no magic in medicine but simply an ordinary problem of cause and effect.
Existence is movement; the whole visible world is progress, development. These
are facts which, in truth, are daily becoming more generally known. But man—
even modern man—is still so stubbornly unyielding in his faith that what he learns
in an instant becomes immovably rooted in his mind to the utter exclusion,
generally, of anything new, which even though it be a matter of demonstrated fact,
it matters not if at variance with this earlier knowledge; to him it is an
impossibility.
How often the fallacy of such ultra-conservative principles has been demonstrated
has no bearing upon the case; the fact remains—irrational, stupid though it be—
that, sublimely indifferent to criticism, it survives, with all the wrong and
persecution that follows in its train.
But one of the most noticeable surprises of this description occurred in the year
1896, when Professor Roentgen made public his discovery of the X-rays; for
through this discovery facts were disclosed such for instance, as the permeability of
solid bodies by luminous rays and the possibility of photographic examination of
bony tissues in living creatures—facts entirely incompatible with prevailing ideas
and teachings.
But these facts were not only intrinsically veracious but were
capable of occular demonstration, beyond all possibility of doubt, and thus, as
nothing could be changed or refuted, science found itself compelled, for once, to
honour the truth in its initial stage—to receive them gracefully unto itself and
adopt them in its teachings.
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