2 CHURCHILL.
3 JOHN SMITH.
Here again a distinction must be made,—between the physical theory and the pseudo-science. The former is but a question of more or less; for that men are affected by atmospherical influence is proved by every endemic disease; and invalids feel in themselves a change of weather as decidedly as they perceive its effect upon the weather-glass, the hygrometer, or the strings of a musical instrument. The sense of our weakness in this respect,—of our dependence upon causes over which we have no controul, and which in their operation and nature are inexplicable by us, must have a humbling and therefore a beneficial tendency in every mind disposed to goodness. It is in the order of Providence that we should learn from sickness and adversity lessons which health and prosperity never teach.
Some of the old theoretical physicians went far beyond this. Sachs von Lewenheimb compared the microcosm of man with the macrocosm in which he exists. The heart in the one, he said, is what the ocean is in the other, the blood has its ebbing and flowing like the tide, and as the ocean receives its impulse from the moon and the winds, the brain and the vital spirits act in like manner upon the heart. Baillet has noticed for censure the title of his book in his chapter Des prejugés des Titres des Livres; it is Oceanus Macro-Micro-cosmicus. Peder Severinsen carrying into his medical studies a fanciful habit of mind which he might better have indulged in his younger days when he was a Professor of Poetry, found in the little world of the human body, antitypes of every thing in the great world, its mountains and its vallies, its rivers and its lakes, its minerals and its vegetables, its elements and its spheres. According to him the stars are living creatures, subject to the same diseases as ourselves. Ours indeed are derived from them by sympathy, or astral influence, and can be remedied only by those medicines, the application of which is denoted by their apparent qualities, or by the authentic signature of nature.
This fancy concerning the origin of diseases is less intelligible than the mythology of those Rosicrucians who held that they were caused by evil demons rulers of the respective planets, or by the Spirits of the Firmament and the Air. A mythology this may more properly be called than a theory; and it would belong rather to the history of Manicheism than of medicine, were it not that in all ages fanaticism and imposture have, in greater or less degree, connected themselves with the art of healing.
But however dignified, or super-celestial the theoretical causes of disease, its effect is always the same in bringing home, even to the proudest heart, a sense of mortal weakness: whereas the belief which places man in relation with the Stars, and links his petty concerns and fortunes of a day with the movements of the heavenly bodies, and the great chain of events, tends to exalt him in his own conceit. The thriftless man in middle or low life who says, in common phrase, that he was born under a threepenny planet, and therefore shall never be worth a groat, finds some satisfaction in imputing his unprosperity to the Stars, and casting upon them the blame which he ought to take upon himself. In vain did an old Almanack-maker say to such men of the Creator, in a better strain than was often attained by the professors of his craft.
He made the Stars to be an aid unto us,
Not (as is fondly dream'd) to help undo us;
Much less without our fault to ruinate
By doom of irrecoverable Fate.
And if our best endeavours use we will,
These glorious Creatures will be helpful still
In all our honest ways: for they do stand
To help, not hinder us, in God's command,
Who doth not only rule them by his powers
But makes their glory servant unto ours.
Be wise in Him, and if just cause there be
The Sun and Moon shall stand and wait on thee.
On the other hand the lucky adventurer proceeds with superstitious confidence in his Fortune; and the ambitious in many instances have devoted themselves, or been deceived to their own destruction. It is found accordingly that the professors of astrology generally in their private practice addressed themselves to the cupidity or the vanity of those by whom they were employed. Honest professors there were who framed their schemes faithfully upon their own rules; but the greater number were those who consulted their own advantage only, and these men being well acquainted with human nature in its ordinary character, always took this course.—Their character has changed as little as human nature itself in the course of two thousand years since Ennius expressed his contempt for them, in a passage preserved by Cicero.
Non habeo denique nauci Marsum augurem,
Non vicanos haruspices, non de circo astrologos,
Non Isiacos conjectores, non interpretes somnium.
Non enim sunt ii aut scientiâ aut arte, divini,
Sed superstitiosi vates, impudentesque harioli,
Aut inertes, aut insani, aut quibus egestas imperat:
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam.
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab iis drachmam ipsi petunt.
De his divitiis sibi deducant drachmam, reddant cætera.
Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar were each assured by the Chaldeans that he should die in his own house, in prosperity, and in a good old age. Cicero tells us this upon his own knowledge: Quam multa ego Pompeio, quam multa Crasso, quam multa huic ipsi Cæsari à Chaldeis dicta memini, neminem eorum nisi senectute, nisi domi, nisi cum claritate esse moriturum! ut mihi permirum videatur, quemquam extare, qui etiam nunc credat iis, quorum prædicta quotidie videat re et eventis refelli.