Page:The Necessity of Atheism (Brooks).djvu/139

Rh against disease has probably saved more lives than the total of all the lives lost in all wars. The clergy maintained that "Smallpox is a visitation from God, and originates in man, but Cowpox is produced by presumptious, impious men. The former, heaven ordained, the latter is perhaps a daring and profane violation of our holy order."

In the seventeenth century, the Jesuit missionaries in South America learned from the natives the value of the so-called Peruvian Bark in the treatment of ague. In 1638, quinine, derived from this bark, was introduced into Europe as a cure for malaria. It was stigmatized as "an invention of the Devil." The ecclesiastical opposition to this drug was so strong that it was not introduced into England until 1653.

The medieval Christians saw in childbirth the result of a carnal sin to be expiated in pain as defined in Genesis. Accordingly the treatment given the child-bearing woman was vastly worse than the mere neglect among the primitive peoples. Her sufferings were augmented by the fact that she was no longer a primitive woman and childbearing had become more difficult. In these "Ages of Faith" which could be better called the "Ages of Filth," nothing was done to overcome the enormous mortality of the mother and child at birth. Attempts, however, were made to form intra-uterine baptismal tubes by which the child, when it was locked by some ill chance in its mother's womb, could be baptized and its soul saved before the mother and child were left to die together. But nothing was done to save their lives. No greater crimes were ever committed in the name of civilization, religious faith, and smug ignorance than the sacrifice of the lives of countless mothers and children in the first fifteen centuries after Christ among civilized mankind.

Approaching our own time, we have the example of Dr.