Answer to the religious objections advanced against the employment of anaesthetic agents in midwifery and surgery / By J.Y. Simpson.

James Young Simpson

Date:: 1847

Credit: Answer to the religious objections advanced against the employment of anaesthetic agents in midwifery and surgery / By J.Y. Simpson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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$heaven itself, even to the vi'ill of God. * Provi- dence (reasoned another author) never intended that the vaccine disease should affect the human race, else why had it not, before this time, visited the inhabitants of the globe. The law of God (he continues) prohibits the practice ; the law of man and the law of nature loudly exclaim against it. f Such historical facts and efforts, and the results in which they have invariably terminated, are surely suffi- cient to make men cautious and hesitating against al- ways recklessly calling up again the same religious, or supposed religious, arguments under the same circum- stances. ]: Views and arguments of this description * Rowley on Cow-pock Inoculation ; with the Modes of treat- ing the Beastly new Diseases produced by it, p. 9. t Dr Squirrell's Preface to the Second edition of his Observa- tions on Cow-pox, and the dreadful consequences of this new Disease, p. iv. \ Perhaps, in the history of misplaced religious arguments against all novel opinions and practices, none in the retrospect may appear stranger than one that has been repeatedly mentioned to me during the few past months. Formerly, among ray countrymen, most agri- cultural operations were performed, as commanded in the primeval curse, by personal exertion, and the sweat of the face. Com, in this way, was winnowed from the chaff by tossing it repeatedly up into the air, upon broad shovels, in order that any accidental currents which were present might carry otf the lighter part. At last, however, about a centui-y ago, fanners, or machinery made for the production of artificial currents to effect the same purpose, were invented and introduced into different parts of the country. Some of the more rigid sects of Dissenters loudly declaimed against the employment of any such machinery. Winds (they argued) wei'e raised by God alone, and it was iiTeligious in man to attempt to raise wind for the aforesaid purpose for himself, and by efforts of his own. Mr Giliillan, the well-known Scottish poet, has furnished me with evidence of one clergyman debarring from the communion of the Lord's Supper those members of his flock who thus irrever- ently used the Devil's wind (as it was termed). And such sen- B$