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(Concluded from p. 315.)
Having Reference to the Employment of Anaesthetics
in Cases of Labour
By
The Rev. Abraham De Sola, Lecturer on Hebrew
Language and Literature, University of Macgill
College.
Professor Simpson has added many logical and
convincing arguments in refutation of the actual
and imaginary objections of the literalists. One or
two we have adduced as our own, because they
occurred to us before we had seen the learned
Professor’s book; and because we thought the cause
of truth would not suffer by repeating them. For
others, which appear to us most cogent, we must
refer the reader to the work itself; and yet, we
cannot refrain transcribing one which appears to us
particularly happy. Professor Simpson says, “But the
accoucheurs and surgeons among you who object to the
use of chloroform on the ground that it goes, in
their opinion, against the object and end of the
primeval curse upon woman, strangely forget that the
whole science and whole art and practice of
midwifery is, in its essence and object, one
continuous effort to mitigate and remove the effects
of that curse.” And after enumerating these means of
mitigation, the Professor continues—“By these means
they succeeded partially, in, times past, in
mitigating the sufferings and effects of
parturition, and thought they <<417>>committed no
sin. But a means is discovered by which the
sufferings of the mother may be relieved far more
effectually; and then they immediately denounce this
higher amount of relief as a high sin. Gaining your
end, according to their religious views,
imperfectly, was no sin—gaining your end more fully
and perfectly is, they argue, an undiluted and
unmitigated piece of iniquity.”*
We
must beg leave further to quote what a Christian
clergyman, who takes the same view of the case as
Professor Simpson and the humble writer of the
present inquiry, has said in connexion with this
subject, “I should not be surprised, in the course
of the debates upon the emancipation of the Jews, to
find some members pleading, as some have pleaded in
former times, that to give a Jew a legitimation in
any commonwealth, is a plain contravention of the
will and word of God concerning that people.Ӡ The
writer was not incorrect in his prophetic
anticipations. In the late discussion on the Jewish
Bill in the British Parliament there were not
wanting those who did urge such an objection,
and it was, doubtless, as much in consequence of
their everlastingly chiming this objection, as from
any other cause, that the Bill was lost.
With these extracts from Professor Simpson we
conclude, but not before earnestly exhorting our
readers to weigh calmly and unprejudicially the
arguments adduced on both sides of the question
before they decide the employment of anaesthetics in
cases of labour to be unscriptural and irreligious.
As to the propriety or expediency of their use, in a
medical point of view, as before remarked, it is not
for us but for others to decide. We desire only to
show that if a certain case should call for their
employment, both physician and patient would not be
acting unscripturally were they to use them. It is
true that some teachers of religion have not been
able to see the innocency of the practice, and one
has pronounced chloroform, in particular, to be “a
decoy of Satan, apparently offering itself to bless
woman; but in the end, it will harden society, and
rob God of the deep, earnest cries which arise in
time of trouble for help.”‡ But we have already seen
that language similar in tone has been employed by
such injudicious and bigoted zealots (worse enemies
to the Scriptures than unbelievers themselves), when
waging a fierce war against the introduction of
inoculation.
And we cannot but remember how, among Christians,
the teachings of the celebrated Galileo were also
styled unscriptural, and himself branded with such
titles as “liar,” “impostor,” etc.; and how among
Jews, that eminent philosopher,
<<418>>Moses
Maimonides, whose gigantic intellect has been
extolled as well by enemy as by friend, was
excommunicated by the French Israelites, and copies
of his works, now so much prized, publicly burned by
them, because he strove to disabuse them of various
absurdities they had permitted to usurp the place of
religion. Nor can we forget that the most important
discoveries in medical science, when first broached,
have had to contend with this same prejudice and
bigotry*—that Harvey called down upon himself the
indignation and ridicule of the profession, because
he taught the circulation of the blood—that his
followers were lampooned and his discovery written
against—that Democritus was pronounced a madman;
Roger Bacon a sorcerer,—that epilepsy, St. Vitus’s
dance, and numerous other diseases were ascribed to
demoniacal possession, the phenomena of electrical
and galvanic apparatus, to the agency of
spirits—that the devil was declared to be the chief
personage, though disguised, in the lodges of
freemasons—that the truths of the physiology of the
brain, of the lacteals, and then of the lymphatics,
bark, antimony, the stethoscope were pronounced to
be no truths. Let us recollect all this, and then
let us ask ourselves with what sentiments we, at the
distance of a couple of generations from the
decriers of these truths, now regard their
opposition, and then let us determine that coming
generations shall not so regard us, but that they
shall be obliged to confess, that however superior
and advanced they may be in science, they do not
excel us in our attachment to it; and that we have
been guided in the present, and every other inquiry
we have instituted, by a love of truth, of progress,
and therefore of God and his revelations.
And above all, let us remember that our heavenly
Father does not find any satisfaction in “the
deep earnest cries” of suffering humanity†—“does
not find pleasure in the death of him that dieth;”‡
but that on the contrary, God’s love for us
surpasseth that of a mother for her tender babe.§
Yea, “The Eternal, the Eternal is a merciful God and
gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness
and truth.”||
Montreal, February 28, 1850.
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