CATHOLICS AND MEDICINE

New Zealand Tablet, 22 June 1911, Page 1137

CATHOLICS AND MEDICINE

DISTINGUISHED PHYSICIANS AND SCIENTISTS It is a mistake to suppose that the study and practice of medicine have tended,to lead men from a belief in God. Dr. James J. Walsh, Professor of the History of Medicine at the Fordham .University Medical School, states that the great medical scientists have in all ages been, mainly, very faithful members of the Catholic Church. This was especially the case in the 1 fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, when the Church was the mother of education, scientific as well as philosophic. This was also the case in the nineteenth century, when the greatest investigators of that period were faithful Catholics. The foundations of nineteenth , century medicine (writes Dr. Walsh) ‘ were laid . in the latter half of the eighteenth century, - and v. the first great.name is that of Morgagni, whom Virchow greeted at the International Congress of Medicine held in Rome in 1894 as the father of pathology. Morgagni it was who first developed the very practical idea that to know something about disease it was necessary . to study the changes that took place, not only in the ’ particular organ which caused the death of a subject, but every other organ, and to compare these with all the clinical symptoms, in order to decide what was the significance of each symptom and the real seat of the affection that brought it about. This looks like a very obvious idea now. It was a great discovery . in Morgagni’s day, and his five books on the ‘ Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy, are counted among 1 the: great classics, of modern medicine Pathology, that is the study of the changes of organs in dead bodies, is usually considered to be the department of medicine that most easily leads men into infidelity. They are supposed to make a fruitless search for the soul or - some sign of its habitation, and, not finding it, give up their belief in immortality, human responsibility, and, in general, the principles that underlie all religion. Far from anything like this happening to Morgagni, his faith seems to have grown stronger in the contemplation of death beneath his dissecting knife. He was not only a faithful Catholic himself, but one of his sons (he had but two) became a Jesuit; and eight of his daughters (altogether there had been fifteen in the family) entered religious Orders. Morgagni was tlie intimate friend of four Popes. Two of them, and they are among the greatest Popes of that century, Benedict XIV. and Clement XIII., insisted that whenever he came to Rome he should stay in the Papal Palace. The next Great Name in Modern Medicine is that of, Auenbrugger, who taught physicians how to recognise and distinguish the various diseases within the chest by tapping or percussing, as it is called, with his finger. This was the beginning of modern scientific diagnosis, and Auenbrugger js universally conceded to be one of the founders of nineteenth-century medicine. He was an Austrian, horn in the Tyrol, noted for his kindliness, and remained a faithful Catholic all his life. He had been a personal friend of the great Catholic Empress, Maria Theresa. , zyAfter Auenbrugger, progress in medicine reverts once more to Italy, and to a very different phase of scientific advancement. Galvani, the professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, while studying frogs for purposes of demonstration to his class, found that, if the nerve and muscle of the frog were : touched by metallic • instruments at the same time, twitellings took place. These twßollings, he concluded after careful investigation, were electrical phenomena. Further study only confirmed this first impression, and before long Galvani was in a position to announce the existence of animal electricity. Some of his conclusions in the matter represent distinct anticipations of what is most modern in our knowledge of electricity as related to the functions of tissues. Galvani was a model son of the Church. It is even said that he found his wife while praying for light with regard to matrimony by having her face come between his and the altar during his prayers. When the French Revolution disturbed political conditions in northern Italy, Galvani refused, at the cost of considerable hardship, to take the oath of . allegiance to the new Government, because he considered himself bound to the old one. His delicacy of conscience caused him to be regarded as a Quixote by bis friends, but it won their respect and admiration. The next change of scene in medical progress brings The Focus of Activity ' Into France. The genius ' who accomplished a revolution in clinical medicine there was.Laennec. He it was who taught first what the sounds produced within the chest meant, and how to distinguish these sounds so as to recognise 1 clearly the manifestations of health and of ’ disease.' He : began his great work as a man of twenty, and at the ago of thirtythree he published a book that has ever since remained the standard of authority on auscultation. When he had completed his investigations, ■ practically nothing further was left to discover in this branch of medical science. > His name is honored as one of the greatest discoverers in medical science of all times, - and worthy to be placed beside those of Hippocrates, Harvey, and Sydenham, Laemieo

was born in Brittany, that famous Catholic province of France. He was brought up in the house of his uncle, a priest, and during all the _ stormy, times ;, of the French Revolution he remained a faithful son of the Church. They tell a story,, of him that, illustrates , very well how' simple and sincere was his devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The incident happened toward the end of his life,’when he was already considered by all the medical world of Europe as the most distinguished. of medical - discoverers. He was travelling one day with his wife, in the,.country,,; when .they were thrown from their carriage, escaping injury almost by a miracle. After their carriage was ready to proceed once more, and Laennec and his wife were seated, he said to her, ‘ We were at the third decade,’ and they went on with the rosary that they had been reciting at the time of the accident. Laennec used to say .that he attributed their fortunate escape to the fact that they were say their beads at the time the accident occurred. . The-next great name on the list of medical discoverers is that of an Irishman, the famous Sir Dominic Corrigan, to whom we owe most important ’ discoveries' with regard to one form of heart disease and the relationship of the pulse to heart - function. Trousseau, the ‘ distinguished French physician of the middle of the nineteenth century, declared that Corrigan’s work was some. of : „ the most important that had ever been accomplished in the history of medicine. He frequently commended it to ; his classes, and it is to him that we owe the fact that a certain kind of pulse beat is called the Corrigan pulse. • ' Almost needless to say Corrigan was a Catholic; besides being a distinguished physician he was deeply interested in other departments of scientific research, and was for a time a member - of Parliament for the city of Dublin. . Most of his life he was the consulting physician to St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. s from which so many Irish and American priests have been graduated. Scarcely ' - . V, |

Less Famous Than Corrigan : I Was his distinguished contemporary, Louis, in' France, to whom American medicine owes so much. Young Americans from Philadelphia and Boston studied with Louis and. brought his methods back with them to this country, to form the foundation of our, own clinical medicine. v ; -He was the first to show that typhoid and typhus fevers'were distinct, and the American school .did its first good ■ work in clinical medicine by spreading and confirming his ideas. Louis was .known, however, as a great clinician in all departments of medicine, and when the International Congress of Tuberculosis met at Paris a few years ago, an English and American delegation of physicians in attendance at the congress, led by Professor Osier, the Regius Professor of Physic at Oxford, and Dr. Lawrence F. Flick, the head of the Phipps Institute at Philadelphia, went to lay a wreath on Louis’s tomb. In the meantime German medicine had begun to develop and to take the place as teacher of the world which it has ever since maintained. Surprising , as it may seem to those who look upon Germany as' a : Protestant country, and medicine as a non-orthodox, rationalising science, the great father of German medicine,. ' :: - • • , ■. ;• -\ ■ Johann Muller, was a Catholic. ■- How much Muller is appreciated by German medical scientists can perhaps best be realised from an .expression used' by one of them ‘ No meeting of a German medical society; could hope to be a success which did not open with ail invocation to the great father of German medicine, Johann Muller.’ He referred, of course, to the fact: that this name is gpre to occur very early in the discussion of such medical societies, because it stands for so much in,. German medicine. >. t ,// Muller’s renown is due, not, to the fact that'lie made great discoveries some of these, as ‘ the alternation of generations and important details with regard to the functions of the nervous system and the special senses, are to his credit — but because he was a supremely great teacher of medicine. As a matter of fact it has never been granted* to any teacher in all the history of medicine to have so many distinguished pupils in his classes. ; Among them are the greatest names in modern medicine as well as in the allied sciences. Helmholtz, the great" German discoverer in physics, was very proud to claim Johan Muller as one of his* most suggestive teachers; Virchow,.., the father of cellular pathology, „ was • another distinguished pupil. There is scarcely -a'name in modern German medicine that " is not among them. Theodore Schwann received his earliest training from him; Du Bois Raymond was proud to acknowledge his obligations to him ; among the less distinguished may be mentioned 'Reichert, Claparede, Briicke, Remak, Lieberkuhn,! and there arc many others who might be recalled. - ■ . - Miiller was the son of a shoemaker, and was born in the Rhineland, where he had been educated in an old Jesuit school—though at the time of his birth, owing to the suppression of the. Jesuits, they had become secular priests. All his life he continued to be a faithful Catholic, though it was not always easy to practise his religion in Protestant Berlin, where for so many years lie occupied a professor’s chair. He was buried by his Catholic compatriots in the Rhineland, with all the rites ' of the Church;' ‘and there is a monument to him erected by them. . v * '* y- A’ If to these names be added . those of the distinguished Catholic discoverers in biology during the nineteenth century, most of whom were physicians, it will be readily seep

that, .though?, there is an impression:- that the Church does not ‘encourage" science, what is best in modern medicine has come from Catholic scourses. Such names as Theodore Schwann, the discoverer of the cell doctrine, and" the distinguished 'professor of anatomy at -I the : University; of Louvain; Claude Bernard, the great French physiologist, and Louis Pasteur, who, though hot a physician, did so much for modern medicine, are those of Catholic biologists who accomplished supremely great work in the science most nearly allied to medicine!.] v -= ' In more recent times in the tlnited States, some of the men who have done ' t. . r-' -- The Best Original Work in our generation for medicine were faithful sons of the Church. Dr. O’Dwyer, to whom we owe the invention of the method of incubation and of the tubes, the insertion of which into the / larynx prevent children .from being asghyxiated during the course, of diphtheria, was a fervent atholic; his work has done more to prevent acute suffering than almost any other advance in nineteenth century medi-cine.-'-.-Rr. Thomas Addis Emmet is another son of the Catholic Church whose distinguished services to medicine are recognised all over the world; one of the great American anatomists, Dr. -William Horner, ; after whom Horner’s muscle is named because he was the-first to describe it, was a convert to Catholicity ; in the midst of his scientific medical work. - Curiously enough, there are a number of names distinguished in medicine on the roll of converts to the: Catholic Church in the United States. Among them may be mentioned -Dr. Bryant, of Philadelphia; Dr. Van Buren, a distinguished surgeon of New York; Dr. Bedford, also of New York; Djjjj^fetmgton; Dr. Horatio Storer, distinguished: in gynaerology, who is still with us, and others. .As a contradiction of the old tradition that medical men are little given to serious religious thinking, these physician-converts; to the Catholic Church are a striking feature of American,life., j - ; > The history of medicine, especially in Belgium, Austria, Ireland, France, and Italy, has many men of . talent who were successful makers of medicine in lesser . degree, yet found no hindrance to their religious principles or practice in its study. _