Were we to carry on a speculation of this nature into graver topics, we should have a copious chapter to write of the opposition to new discoveries. Medical history supplies no unimportant number. On the improvements in anatomy by Malpighi and his followers, the senior professors of the university of Bononia were inflamed to such a pitch that they attempted to insert an additional clause in the solemn oath taken by the graduates, to the effect that they would not permit the principles and conclusions of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen, which had been approved of so many ages, to be overturned by any person. In phlebotomy we have a curious instance. In Spain, to the sixteenth century, they maintained that when the pain was on the one side they ought to bleed on the other. A great physician insisted on a contrary practice; a civil war of opinion divided Spain; at length, they had recourse to courts of law; the novelists were condemned; they appealed to the emperor, Charles the Fifth; he was on the point of confirming the decree of the court, when the Duke of Savoy died of a pleurisy, having been legitimately bled. This puzzled the emperor, who did not venture on a decision.
The introduction of antimony and the jesuits' bark also provoked legislative interference; decrees and ordinances were issued, and a civil war raged among the medical faculty, of which Guy Patin is the copious historian. Vesalius was incessantly persecuted by the public prejudices against dissection; Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood led to so protracted a controversy, that the great discovery was hardly admitted even in the latter days of the old man; Lady Wortley Montague's introduction of the practice of inoculation met the same obstinate resistance as, more recently, that of vaccination startled the people. Thus objects of the highest importance to mankind, on their first appearance, are slighted and contemned. Posterity smiles at the ineptitude of the preceding age, while it becomes familiar with those objects which that age has so eagerly rejected. Time is a tardy patron of true knowledge.
A nobler theme is connected with the principle we have here but touched on—the gradual changes in public opinion—the utter annihilation of false notions, like those of witchcraft, astrology, spectres, and many other superstitions of no remote date, the hideous progeny of imposture got on ignorance, and audacity on fear. But one impostor reigns paramount, the plausible opposition to novel doctrines which may be subversive of some ancient ones; doctrines which probably shall one day be as generally established as at present they are utterly decried, and which the interests of corporate bodies oppose with all their cumbrous machinery; but artificial machinery becomes perplexed in its movements when worn out by the friction of ages.
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DOMESTICITY; OR, A DISSERTATION ON SERVANTS.
The characteristics of servants have been usually known by the broad caricatures of the satirists of every age, and chiefly by the most popular—the writers of comedy. According to these exhibitions, we must infer that the vices of the menial are necessarily inherent to his condition, and consequently that this vast multitude in society remain ever in an irrecoverably ungovernable state. We discover only the cunning depredator of the household; the tip-toe spy, at all corners—all ear, all eye: the parasitical knave—the flatterer of the follies, and even the eager participator of the crimes, of his superior. The morality of servants has not been improved by the wonderful revelations of Swift's "Directions," where the irony is too refined, while it plainly inculcates the practice. This celebrated tract, designed for the instruction of the masters, is more frequently thumbed in the kitchen, as a manual for the profligate domestic. Servants have acknowledged that some of their base doings have been suggested to them by their renowned satirist.
Bentham imagined, that were all the methods employed by thieves and rogues described and collected together, such a compilation of their artifices and villanies would serve to put us on our guard. The theorist of legislation seems often to forget the metaphysical state of man. With the vitiated mind, that latent sympathy of evil which might never have been called forth but by the occasion, has often evinced how too close an inspection of crime may grow into criminality itself. Hence it is, that when some monstrous and unusual crime has been revealed to the public, it rarely passes without a sad repetition. A link in the chain of the intellect is struck, and a crime is perpetrated which else had not occurred.
Listen to the counsels which one of the livery gives a brother, more stupid but more innocent than himself. I take the passage from that extraordinary Spanish comedy, in twenty-five acts, the Spanish Bawd. It was no doubt designed to expose the arts and selfishness of the domestic, yet we should regret that the Spanish Bawd was as generally read by servants as Swift's "Directions":—
"Serve not your master with this foolish loyalty and ignorant honesty, thinking to find firmness on a false foundation, as most of these masters now-a-days are. Gain friends, which is a during and lasting commodity; live not on hopes, relying on the vain promises of masters. The masters love more themselves than their servants, nor do they amiss; and the like love ought servants to bear to themselves. Liberality was lost long ago— rewards are grown out of date. Every one is now for himself, and makes the best he can of his servant's service, serving his turn, and therefore they ought to do the same, for they are less in substance. Thy master is one who befools his servants, and wears them out to the very stumps, looking for much service at their hands. Thy master cannot be thy friend, such difference is there of estate and condition between you two."
This passage, written two centuries ago, would find an echo of its sentiments in many a modern domestic. These notions are sacred traditions among the livery. We may trace them from Terence and Plautus, as well as Swift and Mandeville. Our latter great cynic has left a frightful picture of the state of the domestics, when it seems "they had experienced professors among them, who could instruct the graduates in iniquity seven hundred illiberal arts how to cheat, impose upon, and find out the blind side of their masters." The footmen, in Mandeville's day, had entered into a society together, and made laws to regulate their wages, and not to carry burdens above two or three pounds weight, and a common fund was provided to maintain any suit at law against any rebellious master. This seems to be a confederacy which is by no means dissolved.