On the relation between Religion and Science / By George Combe.

  • Combe, George, 1788-1858.
Date:
1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the relation between Religion and Science / By George Combe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    and religious sentiments than that which is presented by such occurrences as tliese, in which the voice of nature calls aloud on ]>arents to save their children by yielding obedience to the Creator’s laws ? Yet what occurs ? Mr Chadwick informs us. “ Well,” says he, “ here, in this city, in one of the healthiest counties of the kingdom, with an admirable site, and with all favourable circumstances, you have an in- fantile mortality and slaughter that very nearly follows— very closely indeed—upon the infantile slaughter of Spital- fields, &c.” The same gentleman mentioned that, “ about three years ago, an epidemic raged in Glasgow, and there was scarcely a family, high or low, who escaped attacks from it. ISut at Glasgow they have an exceedingly well-appointed, well- ventilated prison ; and in that prison there was not a single case of epidemic ; and in consequence of the overcrowding of the hospitals, which killed some two thousand people, they took forty cases into the prison, and not one of them spread. In fact, there are so many classes of disease so completely within management, that medical men who have the care and custody of those vvho are in comparatively well-condi- tioned places, are in the habit of saying, in relation to cases in their private practice, ‘ Oh, if I had but tliat case in pri- son, I could save it.’ Now, what has your mortality to do with that disease here in Exeter \ I find that in Tiverton, wliile 23 out of 10,000 of the population are swept off by epidemic diseases, in Exeter no less than 103 are killed.” 6, then, we see a man of science, whose understanding is enlightened by the study of chemistry and physiology, clearly unfolding to the people of Exeter certain relations established by the Author of Nature between the composi- tion of the atmosphere and the human body, in consequence of the infringement of which thousands of their fellow- citizens have perished prematurely. Yet these infractions of the laws of nature were allowed to continue, year after year, under the eyes of the Eishop of Exeter, unheeded and unrestrained. Not only so; but while his hock 'was thus dying from causes that were discoverable and removable, his Lordship was warmly engaged in denouncing, as irreli- gious, the Irish system of National Education, because it pro- posed to teach, under the name of secular instruction, un- mingled with the leaven of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church, a knowledge of these very institutions of the Crea- tor, a due regard to which w^ould have enabled the jieople to save their own lives and those of their children ! I do not doubt that he and his clergy duly consoled the dving, read