Miracles and Medicine

New Chapters in the Warfare of Science

Nothing in the evolution of human thought appears more inevitable than the idea of supernatural intervention in producing and curing disease. The causes of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after ages of scientific labor. In those periods when man sees everywhere miracle and nowhere law; when he attributes all things which he can not understand to a will like his own, he naturally ascribes his diseases either to the wrath of a good being or to the malice of an evil being... Progress in medical science within the past quarter of a century has been vast indeed; the theological view of disease has greatly faded, and the theological hold upon medical education has been almost entirely relaxed. In three great fields especially, discoveries have been made which have done much to disperse the atmosphere of miracle...