A History of Science Volume IV Part 9

NEW CHAMPIONS

To the Origin of Species, then, and to its author, Charles Darwin, must always be ascribed chief credit for that vast revolution in the fundamental beliefs of our race which has come about since 1859, and which made the second half of the century memorable. But it must not be overlooked that no such sudden metamorphosis could have been effected had it not been for the aid of a few notable lieutenants, who rallied to the standards of the leader immediately after the publication of the Origin. Darwin had all along felt the utmost confidence in the ultimate triumph of his ideas. "Our posterity," he declared, in a letter to Hooker, "will marvel as much about the current belief (in special creation) as we do about fossil sh.e.l.ls having been thought to be created as we now see them." But he fully realized that for the present success of his theory of trans.m.u.tation the champions.h.i.+p of a few leaders of science was all-essential. He felt that if he could make converts of Hooker and Lyell and of Thomas Henry Huxley at once, all would be well.

His success in this regard, as in others, exceeded his expectations.

Hooker was an ardent disciple from reading the proof-sheets before the book was published; Lyell renounced his former beliefs and fell into line a few months later; while Huxley, so soon as he had mastered the central idea of natural selection, marvelled that so simple yet all-potent a thought had escaped him so long, and then rushed eagerly into the fray, wielding the keenest dialectic blade that was drawn during the entire controversy. Then, too, unexpected recruits were found in Sir John Lubbock and John Tyndall, who carried the war eagerly into their respective territories; while Herbert Spencer, who had advocated a doctrine of trans.m.u.tation on philosophic grounds some years before Darwin published the key to the mystery--and who himself had barely escaped independent discovery of that key--lent his masterful influence to the cause. In America the famous botanist Asa Gray, who had long been a correspondent of Darwin's but whose advocacy of the new theory had not been antic.i.p.ated, became an ardent propagandist; while in Germany Ernst Heinrich Haeckel, the youthful but already noted zoologist, took up the fight with equal enthusiasm.

Against these few doughty champions--with here and there another of less general renown--was arrayed, at the outset, practically all Christendom.

The interest of the question came home to every person of intelligence, whatever his calling, and the more deeply as it became more and more clear how far-reaching are the real bearings of the doctrine of natural selection. Soon it was seen that should the doctrine of the survival of the favored races through the struggle for existence win, there must come with it as radical a change in man's estimate of his own position as had come in the day when, through the efforts of Copernicus and Galileo, the world was dethroned from its supposed central position in the universe. The whole conservative majority of mankind recoiled from this necessity with horror. And this conservative majority included not laymen merely, but a vast preponderance of the leaders of science also.

With the open-minded minority, on the other hand, the theory of natural selection made its way by leaps and bounds. Its delightful simplicity--which at first sight made it seem neither new nor important--coupled with the marvellous comprehensiveness of its implications, gave it a hold on the imagination, and secured it a hearing where other theories of trans.m.u.tation of species had been utterly scorned. Men who had found Lamarck's conception of change through voluntary effort ridiculous, and the vaporings of the Vestiges altogether despicable, men whose scientific cautions held them back from Spencer's deductive argument, took eager hold of that tangible, ever-present principle of natural selection, and were led on and on to its goal. Hour by hour the att.i.tude of the thinking world towards this new principle changed; never before was so great a revolution wrought so suddenly.

Nor was this merely because "the times were ripe" or "men's minds prepared for evolution." Darwin himself bears witness that this was not altogether so. All through the years in which he brooded this theory he sounded his scientific friends, and could find among them not one who acknowledged a doctrine of trans.m.u.tation. The reaction from the stand-point of Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin and Goethe had been complete, and when Charles Darwin avowed his own conviction he expected always to have it met with ridicule or contempt. In 1857 there was but one man speaking with any large degree of authority in the world who openly avowed a belief in trans.m.u.tation of species--that man being Herbert Spencer. But the Origin of Species came, as Huxley has said, like a flash in the darkness, enabling the benighted voyager to see the way.

The score of years during which its author had waited and worked had been years well spent. Darwin had become, as he himself says, a veritable Croesus, "overwhelmed with his riches in facts"--facts of zoology, of selective artificial breeding, of geographical distribution of animals, of embryology, of paleontology. He had ma.s.sed his facts about his theory, condensed them and recondensed, until his volume of five hundred pages was an encyclopaedia in scope. During those long years of musing he had thought out almost every conceivable objection to his theory, and in his book every such objection was stated with fullest force and candor, together with such reply as the facts at command might dictate. It was the force of those twenty years of effort of a master-mind that made the sudden breach in the breaswtork{sic} of current thought.

Once this breach was effected the work of conquest went rapidly on. Day by day squads of the enemy capitulated and struck their arms. By the time another score of years had pa.s.sed the doctrine of evolution had become the working hypothesis of the scientific world. The revolution had been effected.

And from amid the wreckage of opinion and belief stands forth the figure of Charles Darwin, calm, imperturbable, serene; scatheless to ridicule, contumely, abuse; unspoiled by ultimate success; unsullied alike by the strife and the victory--take him for all in all, for character, for intellect, for what he was and what he did, perhaps the most Socratic figure of the century. When, in 1882, he died, friend and foe alike conceded that one of the greatest sons of men had rested from his labors, and all the world felt it fitting that the remains of Charles Darwin should be entombed in Westminster Abbey close beside the honored grave of Isaac Newton. Nor were there many who would dispute the justice of Huxley's estimate of his accomplishment: "He found a great truth trodden under foot. Reviled by bigots, and ridiculed by all the world, he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated with the common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared by those who would revile but dare not."

THE ORIGIN OF THE FITTEST

Wide as are the implications of the great truth which Darwin and his co-workers established, however, it leaves quite untouched the problem of the origin of those "favored variations" upon which it operates.

That such variations are due to fixed and determinate causes no one understood better than Darwin; but in his original exposition of his doctrine he made no a.s.sumption as to what these causes are. He accepted the observed fact of variation--as constantly witnessed, for example, in the differences between parents and offspring--and went ahead from this a.s.sumption.

But as soon as the validity of the principle of natural selection came to be acknowledged speculators began to search for the explanation of those variations which, for purposes of argument, had been provisionally called "spontaneous." Herbert Spencer had all along dwelt on this phase of the subject, expounding the Lamarckian conceptions of the direct influence of the environment (an idea which had especially appealed to Buffon and to Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire), and of effort in response to environment and stimulus as modifying the individual organism, and thus supplying the basis for the operation of natural selection. Haeckel also became an advocate of this idea, and presently there arose a so-called school of neo-Lamarckians, which developed particular strength and prominence in America under the leaders.h.i.+p of Professors A. Hyatt and E.

D. Cope.

But just as the tide of opinion was turning strongly in this direction, an utterly unexpected obstacle appeared in the form of the theory of Professor August Weismann, put forward in 1883, which antagonized the Lamarckian conception (though not touching the Darwinian, of which Weismann is a firm upholder) by denying that individual variations, however acquired by the mature organism, are transmissible. The flurry which this denial created has not yet altogether subsided, but subsequent observations seem to show that it was quite disproportionate to the real merits of the case. Notwithstanding Professor Weismann's objections, the balance of evidence appears to favor the view that the Lamarckian factor of acquired variations stands as the complement of the Darwinian factor of natural selection in effecting the trans.m.u.tation of species.

Even though this partial explanation of what Professor Cope calls the "origin of the fittest" be accepted, there still remains one great life problem which the doctrine of evolution does not touch. The origin of species, genera, orders, and cla.s.ses of beings through endless trans.m.u.tations is in a sense explained; but what of the first term of this long series? Whence came that primordial organism whose trans.m.u.ted descendants make up the existing faunas and floras of the globe?

There was a time, soon after the doctrine of evolution gained a hearing, when the answer to that question seemed to some scientists of authority to have been given by experiment. Recurring to a former belief, and repeating some earlier experiments, the director of the Museum of Natural History at Rouen, M. F. A. Pouchet, reached the conclusion that organic beings are spontaneously generated about us constantly, in the familiar processes of putrefaction, which were known to be due to the agency of microscopic bacteria. But in 1862 Louis Pasteur proved that this seeming spontaneous generation is in reality due to the existence of germs in the air. Notwithstanding the conclusiveness of these experiments, the claims of Pouchet were revived in England ten years later by Professor Bastian; but then the experiments of John Tyndall, fully corroborating the results of Pasteur, gave a final quietus to the claim of "spontaneous generation" as. .h.i.therto formulated.

There for the moment the matter rests. But the end is not yet. Fauna and flora are here, and, thanks to Lamarck and Wallace and Darwin, their development, through the operation of those "secondary causes" which we call laws of nature, has been proximally explained. The lowest forms of life have been linked with the highest in unbroken chains of descent.

Meantime, through the efforts of chemists and biologists, the gap between the inorganic and the organic worlds, which once seemed almost infinite, has been constantly narrowed. Already philosophy can throw a bridge across that gap. But inductive science, which builds its own bridges, has not yet spanned the chasm, small though it appear. Until it shall have done so, the bridge of organic evolution is not quite complete; yet even as it stands to-day it is perhaps the most stupendous scientific structure of the nineteenth century.

VII. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MEDICINE

THE SYSTEM OF BOERHAAVE

At least two pupils of William Harvey distinguished themselves in medicine, Giorgio Baglivi (1669-1707), who has been called the "Italian Sydenham," and Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738). The work of Baglivi was hardly begun before his early death removed one of the most promising of the early eighteenth-century physicians. Like Boerhaave, he represents a type of skilled, practical clinitian rather than the abstract scientist.

One of his contributions to medical literature is the first accurate description of typhoid, or, as he calls it, mesenteric fever.

If for nothing else, Boerhaave must always be remembered as the teacher of Von Haller, but in his own day he was the widest known and the most popular teacher in the medical world. He was the idol of his pupils at Leyden, who flocked to his lectures in such numbers that it became necessary to "tear down the walls of Leyden to accommodate them." His fame extended not only all over Europe but to Asia, North America, and even into South America. A letter sent him from China was addressed to "Boerhaave in Europe." His teachings represent the best medical knowledge of his day, a high standard of morality, and a keen appreciation of the value of observation; and it was through such teachings imparted to his pupils and advanced by them, rather than to any new discoveries, that his name is important in medical history. His arrangement and cla.s.sification of the different branches of medicine are interesting as representing the att.i.tude of the medical profession towards these various branches at that time.

"In the first place we consider Life; then Health, afterwards Diseases; and lastly their several Remedies.

"Health the first general branch of Physic in our Inst.i.tutions is termed Physiology, or the Animal Oeconomy; demonstrating the several Parts of the human Body, with their Mechanism and Actions.

"The second branch of Physic is called Pathology, treating of Diseases, their Differences, Causes and Effects, or Symptoms; by which the human Body is known to vary from its healthy state.

"The third part of Physic is termed Semiotica, which shows the Signs distinguis.h.i.+ng between sickness and Health, Diseases and their Causes in the human Body; it also imports the State and Degrees of Health and Diseases, and presages their future Events.

"The fourth general branch of Physic is termed Hygiene, or Prophylaxis.

"The fifth and last part of Physic is called Therapeutica; which instructs us in the Nature, Preparation and uses of the Materia Medica; and the methods of applying the same, in order to cure Diseases and restore lost Health."(1)

From this we may gather that his general view of medicine was not unlike that taken at the present time.

Boerhaave's doctrines were arranged into a "system" by Friedrich Hoffmann, of Halle (1660-1742), this system having the merit of being simple and more easily comprehended than many others. In this system forces were considered inherent in matter, being expressed as mechanical movements, and determined by ma.s.s, number, and weight. Similarly, forces express themselves in the body by movement, contraction, and relaxation, etc., and life itself is movement, "particularly movement of the heart." Life and death are, therefore, mechanical phenomena, health is determined by regularly recurring movements, and disease by irregularity of them. The body is simply a large hydraulic machine, controlled by "the aether" or "sensitive soul," and the chief centre of this soul lies in the medulla.

In the practical application of medicines to diseases Hoffman used simple remedies, frequently with happy results, for whatever the medical man's theory may be he seldom has the temerity to follow it out logically, and use the remedies indicated by his theory to the exclusion of long-established, although perhaps purely empirical, remedies.

Consequently, many vague theorists have been excellent pract.i.tioners, and Hoffman was one of these. Some of the remedies he introduced are still in use, notably the spirits of ether, or "Hoffman's anodyne."

ANIMISTS, VITALISTS, AND ORGANICISTS

Besides Hoffman's system of medicine, there were numerous others during the eighteenth century, most of which are of no importance whatever; but three, at least, that came into existence and disappeared during the century are worthy of fuller notice. One of these, the Animists, had for its chief exponent Georg Ernst Stahl of "phlogiston" fame; another, the Vitalists, was championed by Paul Joseph Barthez (1734-1806); and the third was the Organicists. This last, while agreeing with the other two that vital activity cannot be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry, differed in not believing that life "was due to some spiritual ent.i.ty," but rather to the structure of the body itself.

The Animists taught that the soul performed functions of ordinary life in man, while the life of lower animals was controlled by ordinary mechanical principles. Stahl supported this theory ardently, sometimes violently, at times declaring that there were "no longer any doctors, only mechanics and chemists." He denied that chemistry had anything to do with medicine, and, in the main, discarded anatomy as useless to the medical man. The soul, he thought, was the source of all vital movement; and the immediate cause of death was not disease but the direct action of the soul. When through some lesion, or because the machinery of the body has become unworkable, as in old age, the soul leaves the body and death is produced. The soul ordinarily selects the channels of the circulation, and the contractile parts, as the route for influencing the body. Hence in fever the pulse is quickened, due to the increased activity of the soul, and convulsions and spasmodic movements in disease are due, to the, same cause. Stagnation of the blood was supposed to be a fertile cause of diseases, and such diseases were supposed to arise mostly from "plethora"--an all-important element in Stahl's therapeutics. By many this theory is regarded as an attempt on the part of the pious Stahl to reconcile medicine and theology in a way satisfactory to both physicians and theologians, but, like many conciliatory attempts, it was violently opposed by both doctors and ministers.

A belief in such a theory would lead naturally to simplicity in therapeutics, and in this respect at least Stahl was consistent. Since the soul knew more about the body than any physician could know, Stahl conceived that it would be a hinderance rather than a help for the physician to interfere with complicated doses of medicine. As he advanced in age this view of the administration of drugs grew upon him, until after rejecting quinine, and finally opium, he at last used only salt and water in treating his patients. From this last we may judge that his "system," if not doing much good, was at least doing little harm.

The theory of the Vitalists was closely allied to that of the Animists, and its most important representative, Paul Joseph Barthez, was a cultured and eager scientist. After an eventful and varied career as physician, soldier, editor, lawyer, and philosopher in turn, he finally returned to the field of medicine, was made consulting physician by Napoleon in 1802, and died in Paris four years later.

The theory that he championed was based on the a.s.sumption that there was a "vital principle," the nature of which was unknown, but which differed from the thinking mind, and was the cause of the phenomena of life. This "vital principle" differed from the soul, and was not exhibited in human beings alone, but even in animals and plants. This force, or whatever it might be called, was supposed to be present everywhere in the body, and all diseases were the results of it.

The theory of the Organicists, like that of the Animists and Vitalists, agreed with the other two that vital activity could not be explained by the laws of physics and chemistry, but, unlike them, it held that it was a part of the structure of the body itself. Naturally the practical physicians were more attracted by this tangible doctrine than by vague theories "which converted diseases into unknown derangements of some equally unknown 'principle.'"

It is perhaps straining a point to include this brief description of these three schools of medicine in the history of the progress of the science. But, on the whole, they were negatively at least prominent factors in directing true progress along its proper channel, showing what courses were not to be pursued. Some one has said that science usually stumbles into the right course only after stumbling into all the wrong ones; and if this be only partially true, the wrong ones still play a prominent if not a very creditable part. Thus the medical systems of William Cullen (1710-1790), and John Brown (1735-1788), while doing little towards the actual advancement of scientific medicine, played so conspicuous a part in so wide a field that the "Brunonian system" at least must be given some little attention.

According to Brown's theory, life, diseases, and methods of cure are explained by the property of "excitability." All exciting powers were supposed to be stimulating, the apparent debilitating effects of some being due to a deficiency in the amount of stimulus. Thus "the whole phenomena of life, health, as well as disease, were supposed to consist of stimulus and nothing else." This theory created a great stir in the medical world, and partisans and opponents sprang up everywhere. In Italy it was enthusiastically supported; in England it was strongly opposed; while in Scotland riots took place between the opposing factions. Just why this system should have created any stir, either for or against it, is not now apparent.

Like so many of the other "theorists" of his century, Brown's practical conclusions deduced from his theory (or perhaps in spite of it) were generally beneficial to medicine, and some of them extremely valuable in the treatment of diseases. He first advocated the modern stimulant, or "feeding treatment" of fevers, and first recognized the usefulness of animal soups and beef-tea in certain diseases.

THE SYSTEM OF HAHNEMANN

Just at the close of the century there came into prominence the school of h.o.m.oeopathy, which was destined to influence the practice of medicine very materially and to outlive all the other eighteenth-century schools.

It was founded by Christian Samuel Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843), a most remarkable man, who, after propounding a theory in his younger days which was at least as reasonable as most of the existing theories, had the misfortune to outlive his usefulness and lay his doctrine open to ridicule by the unreasonable teachings of his dotage.

Hahnemann rejected all the teachings of morbid anatomy and pathology as useless in practice, and propounded his famous "similia similibus curantur"--that all diseases were to be cured by medicine which in health produced symptoms dynamically similar to the disease under treatment. If a certain medicine produced a headache when given to a healthy person, then this medicine was indicated in case of headaches, etc. At the present time such a theory seems crude enough, but in the latter part of the eighteenth century almost any theory was as good as the ones propounded by Animists, Vitalists, and other such schools. It certainly had the very commendable feature of introducing simplicity in the use of drugs in place of the complicated prescriptions then in vogue. Had Hahnemann stopped at this point he could not have been held up to the indefensible ridicule that was brought upon him, with considerable justice, by his later theories. But he lived onto propound his extraordinary theory of "potentiality"--that medicines gained strength by being diluted--and his even more extraordinary theory that all chronic diseases are caused either by the itch, syphilis, or fig-wart disease, or are brought on by medicines.