Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/571

Rh in our grand enterprise the future would seem dark indeed. Some of the trustees advocate closing temporarily. Brother A has withdrawn from the board; Mr. Virtue refuses to do any thing more for us; our creditors are proving to be most inveterate duns, and no way seems to be open for going on. Still, we must go on; inaction would be fatal. Some rich friend ought to endow us liberally—a great university like ours cannot be permitted to die. In our two opening years we have done as much work as did either Yale or Harvard in the corresponding periods of their youth; why should we not rise as they have risen? We appeal to the public at large for support—to all friends of true education, of high culture, of moral civilization. Let it not be said in despotic Europe that Americans cared so little for intellectual advancement that they allowed their most promising university to fail. Let the rich give us money liberally for the glory of the denomination which we represent; others who cannot give should send us their sons and daughters to be educated in the true principles of life and the faith of the early fathers. No matter how dark the present may appear, the future is bright before us; great success must eventually attend our labors; unborn generations will one day look back and say, "Our ancestors sustained that university in its hour of trial, and have transmitted to us the inheritance of its greatness." Statesmen, poets, and chieftains, shall hail our university as their alma mater and contribute gladly to its glory and its support.



PASS, now, to fields of more immediate importance to us to Anatomy and Medicine.

It might be supposed that the votaries of sciences like these would be suffered to escape attack; unfortunately, they have had to stand in the thickest of the battle.

As far back as the latter part of the thirteenth century, Arnold de Villa Nova was a noted physician and chemist. The missile usual in such cases was hurled at him. He was charged with sorcery and dealings with the devil; he was excommunicated and driven from Spain.

Such seemed the fate of men in that field who gained even a glimmer of new scientific truth. Even men like Cardan, and Paracelsus, and Porta, who yielded much to popular superstitions, were at once 