Scientific Inquisitors.—I will here quote a late statement of Professor Huxley’s, which might well be emblazoned in all our medical schools. He says: ‘We are at the beginning of our knowledge instead of at the end of it; the limitation of our faculties is such that we never can set bounds to the possibilities of nature. The verdict may be always more or less wrong, the best information being never complete, and the best reasoning liable to fallacy.
‘The greatest mistake those who are interested in free thought can make is to overlook these limitations and deck themselves with the dogmatic feathers which are the traditional adornments of opponents.’
This vigorous protest of our English naturalist against the dictation of so-called science is in striking accord with the observations of our French visitors in relation to the futility of compulsory legislation now urged by scientific specialists.
What is Science?—When the investigators in any limited branch of knowledge glibly use the term ‘science’ to compel assent or to enforce legislation, we are forced to ask, What is true science or certain knowledge grounded on demonstration, as distinguished from false science, which is uncertain knowledge, based upon varying and imperfectly observed phenomena or upon theory? Knowledge is of various kinds: Mental, Physical, Mathematical. These separate departments of knowledge rest equally on bases of fact. Love is as much a fact as bread-and-butter; justice is as potent in its effects as microbes; and from their wider range of action and more permanent duration these mental facts are far more real than the physical phenomena.
In determining the claim of science to obedience the great Law of Unity gives the guiding principle, which, however humbling to human arrogance, or however affirmative of the limitations of our intellect, the truly scientific mind is bound to accept.
The Law of Unity the Foundation of Science.—The Law of Unity teaches us that no explanation of any fact is final or ‘true’ if it contradicts other facts. It announces that no method of examining facts is reliable that destroys other facts equally patent, and that any results deducible from partial phenomena, however interesting or even apparently useful, can only be regarded from the point of view of true science as temporary expedients. They may possibly be recommendations for useful trial, but they can never be justified as subjects for dictation.
The confusion of thought which has brought the unnatural practices of inoculation into fashion may be usefully illustrated by dwelling on the mingling of truth and error which exists in relation to vaccination. Vaccination must not be confounded with inoculation, although the word ‘vaccination’ is now incorrectly used by bacteriologists to cover up the alarming practice of injecting the diluted virus of any particular disease, which is inoculation. Vaccination, on the other hand, is solely the injection of matter derived from a disease in the vacca, which disease is neither small-pox nor derived from small-pox, and vaccinia in a healthy cow is a mild disease.
During a lifetime of medical practice I have vaccinated children (sharing the widespread belief that it was preventive of small-pox). The practice, however, has always seemed to be an unsatisfactory method, which I hoped increased knowledge of sanitation would enable us to improve.
I also recognised the powerful influence of fear in predisposing to disease, and I regarded vaccination as a sedative for the family or community. My faith in the innocence of this practice was, however, rudely shaken by the lamentable death, in my own practice, of a scrofulous infant—a death clearly caused by the phagedenic ulceration produced by the vaccination. I also noted the accumulating evidence of very serious diseases communicated by so-called vaccine lymph.