The kind of sentiment cultivated by colleges in the medical profession was shown by the deportment of the medical visitors. The report of the fast says:—
“The most curious episodes, probably, on the whole, were afforded by the appearance of sceptics, and members of the medical profession from the country. Many of the latter came long distances to satisfy their respective curiosity, or vent their scepticism, as the case might be. As a rule they were long-visaged, not a few were unkempt, and many were downright seedy in wearing apparel. Almost invariably they insisted upon boring the doctor with numberless questions, many of which were idle. The majority displayed ignorance, and it might truthfully be said, they were rude almost without exception. One man insisted upon feeling Dr. Tanner’s arms and legs; another wanted to feel his pulse; a third demanded a view of his tongue; a fourth declared food must be given to him surreptitiously, else he would be dead; a fifth wanted to search his pockets; the sixth asserted his professional reputation (sic) that there was fraud about the whole business; the seventh had some patent surgical, or other appliance, which he wished to test upon the patient; and yet another wanted to analyze even the water he used, before the faster drank it.
“The effect of these boors in their constant inroads upon a fasting man, whose surroundings and conditions were not of the best, to say the least, may be easily imagined. When these fanatics were prevented by the watchers from extracting what little of life was left in the object of their devotions, their indignation took various forms of expression. As a rule they denounced the whole thing as a humbug, and every one participating as frauds. Now and then it became positively necessary, in common decency and self-respect, to show these charlatans the way to the door, notwithstanding their protests that they had paid twenty-five cents for the purpose of ventilating their empty heads. As a general thing, by Dr. Tanner’s direction, the admission fee was returned to these people. Even on the thirty-ninth day, when the doctor desired all the quiet he could obtain, one of these gentry, who said he was a physician from Long Island, talked so loudly that he had to be called to order, and then nothing daunted, he asked the faster to go in his enfeebled condition to the south gallery, where his writing materials were, to prepare an autograph for the applicant. The Herald reporter on watch at the time, through whom the request was made for the autograph, gave the fellow a settler by remarking, that he, as a layman, thought the first rudiments taught in the medical profession, were those of feelings of humanity.
“Then the wits had their time of it. They showered in caricatures and doggerel by the barrel. None enjoyed these more than the doctor himself. By his direction the funniest of the cartoons were pasted against the wall of the gallery in which the doctor slept and the watchers sat. Above the whole was the legend in German text, ‘Tanner Art Gallery,’ and during the closing days and hours of the fast it was a source of much attraction and a great deal of merriment to the thousands of visitors who sought the place.”
Before the fasting began I witnessed an amusing specimen of the medical scepticism. One of the medical visitors inspected the hall closely, and finding in the back part that a piece of nearly worn out carpet remained on the floor, proceeded to rip it up and tear it away, as if he suspected there might be a trap door concealed.
Medical education has been miserably cramped and benighted by the total ignoring of the nobler element of the human constitution.
Cerebral Psychology.
The comprehensive system of science developed by experiment on the brain, perfected by psychometric exploration, demonstrated by pathognomy, corroborated by personal experiences and the sensations of the head, enforced and illustrated by the study of comparative development throughout the animal kingdom, based upon anatomy, illustrated by pathology, and proven by every examination of a living head, as well as every scientific experiment upon the brain in sensitive and intelligent persons, has now been for forty years in the hot crucible of experimental physiological investigation by vivisection, ablation, autopsy, and electricity, and still remains as the solid gold of eternal science.
The labors of Ferrier, Fritsch, Hitzig, Schiff, Bastian, Charcot, and others, have added many valuable facts; but no new fact can contradict a fact previously well observed, and nothing has occurred to dethrone the founder of cerebral science, Dr. Gall, who ranks immeasurably beyond all his contemporaries, and who prepared the way for the full development of Cerebral Psychology, resulting from the discovery of the impressibility of the brain, which has opened the entire realm of cerebral psychology, and through that has given us access to every realm of wisdom.