Medicine especially was a Satanic thing, a rebellion against disease, the scourge so justly dealt by God. It was clearly sinful to check the soul on its way towards heaven, to plunge it afresh into life!
What atonement shall we make for all this? How are we to put down, to overthrow, this pile of insurrections, whereof at this moment all modern life is made up? Will Satan destroy his work, that he may tread once more the way of angels? That work rests on three everlasting rocks, Reason, Right, and Nature.
So great is the triumph of the new spirit, that he forgets his battles, hardly at this moment deigns to remember that he has won.
It were not amiss to remind him of his wretched beginnings, how coarsely mean, how rude and painfully comic were the shapes he wore in the season of persecution, when through a woman, even the unhappy Witch, he made his first homely flights in science. Bolder than the heretic, the half-Christian reasoner, the scholar who kept one foot within the sacred circle, this woman eagerly escaped therefrom, and under the open sunlight tried to make herself an altar of rough moorland stones.
She has perished, as she was certain to perish. By what means? Chiefly by the progress of those very sciences which began with her, through the physician, the naturalist, for whom she had once toiled.
The Witch has perished for ever, but not the Fay. She will reappear in the form that never dies.
Busied in these latter days with the affairs of men, Woman has in return given up her rightful part, that of the physician, the comforter, the healing Fairy. Herein lies her proper priesthood—a priesthood that does belong to her, whatever the Church may say.
Her delicate organs, her fondness for the least detail, her tender consciousness of life, all invite her to become Life’s shrewd interpreter in every science of observation. With her tenderly pitiful heart, her power of divining goodness, she goes of her own accord to the work of doctoring. There is but small difference between children and sick people. For both of them we need the Woman.
She will return into the paths of science, whither, as a smile of nature, gentleness and humanity will enter by her side.