The elements of social science, or, Physical, sexual, and natural religion : an exposition of the true cause and only cure of the three primary social evils: poverty, prositution, and celibacy / by a doctor of medicine.

  • George Drysdale
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The elements of social science, or, Physical, sexual, and natural religion : an exposition of the true cause and only cure of the three primary social evils: poverty, prositution, and celibacy / by a doctor of medicine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    indolence, vanish like a dream; and when she demands penalty for broken laws, such excuses die away on the lips of the offender. In the same way that physical religion enjoins reverence for the genital organs, so does it prohibit all low and degraded ideas connected with the organs of excretion. All such are an abomination unto it, and it will not hold him guiltless who stoops to entertain them. Every one should endeavour absolutely to free his mind from these unhappy views of our ancestors, and learn to regard all parts of his body with the same reverential eye, undisturbed by feelings of mystery, shame, or disgust. Too long alas! too long have these indignities defiled our humanity, and baffled the efforts of the physician! What sufferer from the diseases of these organs has not had his woes aggravated ten-fold by these unhappy feelings f The universal study of anatomy, enjoined on all men by physical religion, will alone succeed in dissipating these morbid and irre- vcrcnt ulcus But i'n what direction can we turn our eyes, and not find man de- graded by the want of physical reverence ? Have not all the various classes, who follow material pursuits, become themselves degraded, from the want of a religious enthusiasm for them? Have not the physician, the artist, the actor, the labourer, and artizan, become de- graded thereby ? If a man have not a sufficient reverence for his pur- suit, it will hang a dead weight round his neck, and sink him to the level of a mercenary drudge. It is deplorable to see the way in which some of these glorious branches of human endeavour are looked down upon, not only by society at large, but by their own followers. The noble profession of the actor or actress is viewed in so degrading alight by society that it is almost ignored. Is the perfection of art in that vocation, which forms as integral an ingredient of our social life as any others, less difficult in its attainment or less unbounded in its in- fluence than they ? In a more perfect state of society it will not be Yiewed so. The interests of all concerned in physical studies or pursuits, are, no less than the physician's, bound up in the spread of physical religion. Without it, medicine is, as it has been up to this time, comparatively paralysed, and can have but a minor influence on the physical regenera- tion and progress of man. How can the voice of the physician be heard if he can urge only the feeble motives of expediency, while the moralist and clergyman have at their command thearmoury of duty and relisrion, with the array of eternal rewards and punishments, to enforce reverence for their precepts ? To all of these assumptions of spiritual superiority, as it has been seen, physical religion inexorably returns a denial, while it claims, and will have from all human beings exactly an equal share of their reverence. The individual and the age which resist those claims shall not escape punishment, but shall surely suffer ; not that it loves spirit less, but that it loves the whole man more. The true interests of the spiritualist are no less involved in this, for, where in- justice is done, all must suffer.
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