ns of those who dared to venture that the earth was round.
Botany, mathematics, and geometry, as well as the natural sciences,
slumbered. Geology, which proved that the earth was more than 6000 years
old, was anathematized; archeologists had the greatest difficulty to
expound the truth concerning the antiquity of the human race. In purely
civil matters, the clergy opposed fire and marine insurance on the
ground that it was a tempting of Providence. Life insurance was regarded
as an act of interference with the consequence of God's will. Medicine
met the most strenuous of opposition.

It is impossible in this short study to analyze the specific forms of
retardation which the Church exhibited to all of these branches of
learning, whose only endeavor it was to search for the truth, to state
the facts, and to alleviate and make more bearable man's sojourn on this
earth. However, a few of the many instances of retardation on the part
of the Church will be pointed out.

CHAPTER VII

RELIGION AND MEDICINE

_Now, when physiologists study the living brain of an ape, they have
no grounds for supposing that they are dealing with a dual
structure. The brain is not a tenement inhabited by a spirit or
soul. The spirit or soul is but a name for the manifestations of the
living brain. The leading neurologists of the world are agreed that
the same is true of the human brain. It was only when they abandoned
the dual conception--an inheritance from the dark ages of
medicine--that they began to understand the disorders of man's mind
and how to treat them._

_Modern medicine thus strikes at the very root of Christian
doctrine. For, if man is truly mortal, if death ends all, if the
human soul is but the manifestation of the living brain, as light
and heat are the manifestations of a glowing bar of steel, then
there can be no resurrection of the dead. Man has the seeds of
immortality in him, but the gift is for the race, not for the
individual._

SIR ARTHUR KEITH.

Medicine and religion have been closely associated from the most
pristine time. Primitive medicine had its origin in conjunction with the
most primitive of religious conceptions, namely, animism; an illusion
that made primitive man recognize in all things, and everywhere, spirits
such as his supposed spirit; a belief that the world swarms with
invisible spirits which are the cause of disease and de