Mercy, not curiosity, the mother of medicine / by John E.B. Mayor.

  • Mayor, John E. B. (John Eyton Bickersteth), 1825-1910.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mercy, not curiosity, the mother of medicine / by John E.B. Mayor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    Seeing what man has made of the healing art, we might almost bid the sick forsake its oracles. Search the Pharmocopoeia from age to age, and you will know why Greeks have but one word to express poisons and drugs. Or look at surgery. Aesculapius, the god of medicine, was accoutred like the god of war. Fire and sword, to burn.and to cut, KaUiv koX re/xvetv, secure et urere, such is the equipment, such the function of the surgeon. Where blood is tainted indeed, and gangrene spreading, or where bones are crushed, cautery and the knife may still be needed ; but as a rule Vegetarians may hope to recover without loss of limb from sorest wounds. Our hospital is one of many heralds of a good time coming for animals ; a dawning sense of their rights. Tennyson and Cardinal Manning, Professor Chandler, Miss Cobbe, Mr. E. B. Nicholson Mr. Howard Williams, Mr. Ernest Bell and Mr. H. S. Salt, have not lived in vain. Our Queen herself pleads earnestly for justice to the lower creation: No civilisation, she says, is complete which does not include the dumb and defenceless of God's creatures within • the sphere of charity and mercy. There are papers, as the Zoophilist and Band of Mercy, school-readers issued by Mr. Bell, which enlighten the pubHc conscience. Let us collect here a library of humanity. In general, we ask for gifts in kind. Vegetarians might easily relieve the officers from all necessity of spending a farthing on food or flowers. .hnJ^hi^'^f'^'T.^^^.T'.u^^J^'^''.^^^'''' Egyptians, Romans; not whether holiness should be preferred to all things, and m all cases should be pursued, but whether it is holy to eat pig's flesh or not holy (Epictet. i 22 §4). wneiner u is Meeting this passage the other day in Epictetus, I bethought me of a droll rivalry. The office of counsel for the pig of civilisation is coveted, and in very different quarters. Several years ago I pointed out what seemed a wrong done by man to swine. In a state of nature they are lords of the forest. The Calydonian and Erymanthian boars tried the mettle of heroes and demigods. Pig-sticking is no child s play in India. Charging boars are likened in classical poetry to the crash of thunderbolts. What is the sty-fed pig ? A tub of wheezing lard, tottering on four crazy pegs, utterly unable to run. The prize pig in the Agricultural Hall, choked by fog, was found rotting by Professor Gamgee, when he came in mercy to end its pams. Its bffeath, as Chrysippus says, was given it as salt, to stay Qorruption. So much for the blessings of civiUsation from the pig's point of view. From the other side, as Professor Newman proved the pig s loss is no gain to us. Arabs freely eat pork from the wild ammal, but loathe the tenant of the sty. S*, say they, what garbage he eats. All this appeared to me a truism ; but we live and earn. A moral philosopher, a famous surgeon, and a reformer ot all and sundry, have spoken. Roma locuta est: causa finita est