The Age of Science: A Newspaper of the Twentieth Century

by Frances Power Cobbe

The Duke and Duchess of Broadacres, the Marquis of Carabas, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and the Lady Adeline Amundeville were brought up (in chains) to receive sentence on the charges (fully proved against them last week) of having deceived the Officers of Domestic Inspection respecting their own and their children’s Canination and Porcination. It was shown that all the defendants had been Vaccinated according to law four times during the last twelvemonth, and Equinated twice during the late prevalence of glanders, but though Rabies and the Measles were both known to be raging in London, they had not only neglected to present themselves and their children at the Canine and Porcine Stations in Queen’s Gate, but had deceived the Inspectors as above stated by exhibiting the former scars for the latter. Being unable to produce any medical certificate showing that they had obeyed the law, and having been found “guilty” by a special jury (containing, of course, the legal proportion—three-fourths—of Medical graduates), all five prisoners were sentenced by Mr. Justice Draco to the extreme penalty of the law. They will be vivisected for the instruction of the students at the magnificent new School of Physiology in Carlton Gardens, as soon after the opening of the session as may be convenient. Some sympathy was expressed in court for the Duke of Broadacres, who, being an elderly nobleman in feeble health, seems to have feared superstitiously the processes (unknown in his youth) of using, for the purpose of inoculations, the saliva from mad dogs, as a preventive of hydrophobia, on the principle of “a hair of the dog which has bitten you.” The expression of misplaced public commiseration was instantly checked by the learned Judge, and the prisoners were removed, exhibiting many signs of trepidation. Lady Clara Vere de Vere implored that she might be even Ratified sooner than given over to the students, but her request was, of course, sternly refused. It is indeed specially fortunate that so sensitive a subject as this young and delicate-looking lady is likely to prove should fall, in course of law, under physiological investigation at the moment when the exquisite experiments of Dr. Blacksmith on the Nervous System are in course of exposition.

Even these startling announcements, however, are less surprising than the following:—

SANITARY OFFICE.

Dec. 25, 1977.

The proceedings of this most high and solemn Court in the Realm were, as usual, held with closed doors. There were present five Lord Doctors, and sentences were passed, after due deliberation, and (it is rumoured) the application of the Question, ordinary and extraordinary, on nine obstinate heretics. Three of these were members of that fanatical sect, the Peculiar People, who refuse to consult physicians on the ground of religious scruples—an instance of the survival of outworn superstitions scarcely credible in this enlightened Age of Science. One of these miserable delinquents, named John Nokes, alleged that his twelve children had enjoyed unbroken health till his youngest little boy cut his finger. The wretched father, instead of hurrying instantly for the nearest surgeon, himself dressed the child’s wound (which appears to have been superficial) with adhesive plaster, and gave the child a fragment of toffee to stop his crying, in lieu of the proper therapeutic remedies for the shock to the nervous system which any medical attendant would have exhibited. The crime came fortunately to the knowledge of the police, who immediately brought the matter before the Sanitary Office. A second offender of the same sect, named Styles, had, it seems, an attack of Podagra, but took no advice, and having rather quickly recovered, was in hopes (it is supposed) that his neglect to obey the law would pass undiscovered. A crutch seen in his room raised the suspicion of a visitor, and the offender was eventually arrested. When interrogated by the Lord Presiding Doctor of the Sanitary Court as to the motives of his crime, the man (as his sentence sets forth) actually dared to reply by quoting a passage from an obsolete book, wherein it is narrated of a certain King, “Now Asa was diseased in his feet, yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers.”[^[1]] This narrative, as Styles had the audacity to argue, was an authentic, and, indeed, inspired report of a fit of the gout—its diagnosis, treatment, and the result. As he did not desire to “sleep with his fathers,” he (Styles) had avoided consulting the physicians, and had endeavoured to consult the Lord by following the dictates of common sense, and the consequence was that he had recovered with unusual rapidity. The Lord President was moved to great indignation by the obduracy of this heretic. He remarked that the book which contained such a passage—a volume which, he was happy to say, he had, for his part, never read—ought to be burnt before the doors of the London University; and as to the prisoner Styles, it would be useless for him to hope to escape sharing in the same combustion.

[1]. 2 Chron. xvi. 12.

After the Peculiar People, two Homœopaths were found guilty—one of administering globules to an old woman, the other of refusing to join in the processions on the 5th of November, when the busts of Hahnemann are carried to be calcined. The remaining four heretics avowed belief in as many different heinous errors. One gave credit to Michel’s process for the cure of external cancer, another thought new-born infants ought not to be dosed with castor oil; a third placed confidence in bone-setters, and the fourth (a very old lady) retained an infatuated preference for the remedies which were in vogue a century ago—bromide of potassium and chloral—which, of course, have been since peremptorily condemned and pronounced highly injurious by the supreme authority of the Faculty.

The aforesaid nine heretics, having been solemnly found “guilty,” after due inquisition by the High Sanitary Office, were condemned as contumacious by the Lord Presiding Doctor, and the Most Eminent Doctors Pole, Gardiner, and Bonner, and were delivered over last night to the Secular Arm. Piles are in process of erection in Trafalgar Square. It is announced that Her Gracious Majesty Queen Mary III. will preside at the execution, which will take place on Sunday morning next, after hearing a Lecture on “True Medical Belief,” to be delivered by Her Majesty’s Medical Confessor in Ordinary, Dr. Torr Quemada, under the dome of St. Paul’s.

Such is a brief abstract of these most astounding Law and Police Reports in the Age of Science. We make no comments upon them, except the expression of our wonder at the similarity between the office and behaviour of a Priest of Religion in the fifteenth century and a Priest of Science in the twentieth. With complete citations of four out of the twenty-five Leading Articles of the Age of Science, we must conclude this imperfect but thoroughly reliable account of the remarkable journal of 1977, whose discovery has been the glorious first-fruits of the Prospective Telegraph.

Since the epoch, now nearly forty years past, when Smith made his immortal discovery of the Army Exterminator, followed up so rapidly by Jones’ invention of the Fleet Annihilator, international policy has necessarily undergone a great modification. As war has become impossible as an ultima ratio in any case, and the principle of Arbitration, on which such hopes were founded, has proved ineffective, in consequence of the general refusal of the working classes to permit their governments to pay the amendes agreed upon by the Arbitrators, a permanent state of discord between nations seems to have become established. The dream of Free Trade having also been exploded, following the example of the American Empire, at that time a Republic, (prohibitive duties having been placed by the different States on their own exports and the imports of other countries,) commerce is undoubtedly, just now, considerably hampered. The immense facilities for travelling which we possess, thanks to the æro-magnetic propeller, have also their disadvantages, since the abandonment of extradition treaties allows the criminals of each country to take refuge immediately in the neighbouring State, when they happen to entertain any serious objection to detention in the Penal Hospitals. For all these drawbacks to our progress, however, Science will no doubt soon provide an efficient remedy.