Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/168

 interesting book, but, if I may try to put the general argument into a single paragraph, Mr. Dearmer's contention is as follows:

Bodily functions and bodily health are regulated and sustained by what may be called the lower nerve centres in the medulla of the brain. It is by the exercise of these centres, which in turn control the circulation, the secretion of various glands, &c., that the body combats disease. This work is continually going on and we are for the most part quite unconscious of it. But, says Mr. Dearmer, 'we now know that these centres are in direct connexion with the higher centres of the cortex of the brain.' I should think we do. So did our ancestors a hundred years ago. Their knowledge of the work of such centres as the vasomotor, the respiratory, the heat-regulating, &c., was fragmentary and imperfect to the last degree, but not one of them had any doubt that myriads of nerve fibres connected the cortex with the medulla. Let us, therefore, know how to stimulate the cortex, and all disease (organic as well as functional) can be cured. Hence, when our Lord cured Bartimæus's blindness, and when a 'healer' cures locomotor ataxy, they are performing a function quite as natural as in the case of a doctor who cures malaria with quinine or restores the