Chapter 14

THE DEMOCRACY OF MEDICINE

THIS is St. Luke’s Day; and at this season the thoughts of the churches, and of vast numbers of people outside the churches, turn to the fine work done by our great hospitals. The skilful and sympathetic ministry of doctors and nurses in these excellently equipped institutions represents the very crown and climax of the highest type of civilization. It is natural that, in any movement on behalf of the hospitals, the churches should take a conspicuous part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual is very close. Knowing what we now know, it is no longer possible to divide life into watertight compartments. There are times when a doctor discovers that a sufferer’s real trouble is beyond the scope of his treatment, and advises his patient to take a minister into his confidence; and there are times when a minister realizes that his visitor’s mental anguish arises, not from spiritual dereliction, but from shattered nerves, and sends him to a doctor.

Nor is this all. For the very existence of the hospital springs from the instinct of mercy. And mercifulness is essentially a Christian grace. Nobody can travel far without being impressed by the gulf that yawns, in this respect, between the sentiments that prevail in a Christian country, on the one hand, and in heathen lands, on the other. One may, of course, see the most revolting cruelty under the shadow of a church spire, and may be treated with the most amazing kindness among pagan temples. But the general trend of things is in the opposite direction. The world would have been a hard and pitiless place if its temper had never been softened and sweetened by the introduction of the Christian faith.

Any man who has surveyed, even cursorily, the story of the centuries must have been profoundly impressed by the way in which the advance of medical science has kept pace with the spread of the faith. The great central Figure of that faith was essentially a healer, and, with the growth of His authority among the peoples, sickness and disease have slunk away before Him. To take a concrete case, do we adequately recognize the way in which the world was transformed by the eradication of the plague? The earliest historians besprinkle their sombre pages with grim hints concerning the devastating pestilence by which the peoples of Asia and Europe were afflicted. The monster stalked through the ages, exacting his colossal toll with a merciless hand. Sooner or later it left a trail of tears in every household. In his Life of Chaucer, Sir A. W. Ward points out that, if the poet had been born thirty years earlier, he would have enjoyed twice as large a constituency. For, between the date of his birth and the date of the appearance of his first work, the population of England had been reduced by a half

The pages that contain these dismal records are among the most terrible in history. The imagination staggers at the attempt to people the world with the unborn descendants of these myriads of victims. The present population of the planet, viewed in this light, appears to be a mere handful of survivors- ‘all that was left of them’. But, happily, the plague has been conquered. In the eighteenth century England was swept by a revival of religion so overwhelming, so dynamic, and so irresistible that it affected-vitally, fundamentally, and permanently-every phase of our national life. In days when ancient thrones were tottering and hoary institutions crumbling, it preserved for us, as Lecky has shown, our national integrity and respect. The country was born again. Social reforms were effected; slavery was abolished; industrial wrongs were righted; and the plague, the ghastly spectre of all preceding centuries, was banished by purer standards of living and saner systems of sanitation. So perfectly have the march of faith and the march of medicine kept in step with one another.

The modern hospital-scientifically designed, perfectly equipped, and efficiently staffed-stands as an impressive monument to the democratization of medicine. The ancients held that the healing of bodily ills, the cure of diseases, and the protection, preservation, and prolongation of human life were privileges that should be extended only to a kind of physical and intellectual aristocracy. Plato argued that the disciples of Hippocrates were guilty of a serious mischief if, by their healing art, they caused men to outlive the period of their usefulness. They had no right, he maintained, to protract lives that were better closed. This cheerless philosophy was echoed in a later age by Petrarch, whose caustic criticisms and fierce invectives stung the ears of the physicians of the renaissance.

But, like a breath from the hills wafted through the streets of the city, a new spirit has stirred every phase of civilization. The movement for the conquest of disease has been democratized. We all feel towards medical science as we feel towards no other branch of academic research. We look with a vague and impersonal approval upon the academic triumphs of the astronomer, the geologist, and the botanist; but in the exploits of the medical profession we feel an immediate, an intimate, an almost affectionate concern. The experience of pain is so general, and the relationship between the ordinary citizen and the doctor so close, that every member of the community feels himself directly involved in every happening that encourages or hinders the work of the doctors. There is no single household that is not vitally affected by the advance of surgical skill; every pioneer of medical research is conscious that the eyes of millions of sufferers are turning wistfully towards him; and every hospital is a reminder to the lowliest citizen that, through its invaluable ministry, the richest fruits of scientific achievement will, in case of need, be placed ungrudgingly at his service.

Dr. F. W. Boreham