Moral Principles and Medical Practice: The Basis of Medical JurisprudenceCoppens, Charles
Philosophy
Moral Principles and Medical Practice: The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence
Coppens, Charles
Medical ethics; Medical jurisprudence
Some of these effects are connected with bodily cures and thus are of
interest to physicians. For instance, spiritualistic mediums, whether
connecting their practices with magnetism or not, though entirely
ignorant of medicine, are at times able to state the exact bodily
indisposition of sick persons living at a great distance, put into
communication with them by holding some object belonging to them. They
will indicate the seat of the disorder, its nature and progress, its
complications. They propose simple and efficacious remedies, using not
infrequently technical terms which are certainly unknown to them before.
They manifest the thoughts of others, reveal family secrets, answer
questions put in languages of which they know nothing. To deny facts
attested by thousands of witnesses of various nations belonging to
various religious denominations or professing no religion whatever, is
not the spirit of science. It it estimated that 100,000 spiritist books
and pamphlets are sold yearly in the United States alone. It is certain
that much, very much imposture is mixed up with many undeniable facts,
but that does not dispose of the real facts mixed up with the
impostures. Tyndall once caught an ill-starred spiritualistic impostor
at his juggling. He concluded that all other spiritists were impostors.
The world now laughs at him for his foolish reasoning.
Of course, I do not suppose that spiritism is mainly employed in such
matters as would directly interest the physician. It has grown into a
system of religion and morals, very peculiar and at variance with the
Christian religion, a system rather resembling the religion of Buddha,
with its reincarnations and transmigrations of souls while struggling
after eternal after-progress. This is fully and clearly explained in an
article on "Spiritism in its True Character" in the English publication
called "The Month," for September, 1892. But with this phase of it we
are not now concerned. As to the facts, it is enough to remark that
spiritists claim a following of 20,000,000. Suppose there are only
one-half that number. 10,000,000 people are not readily deceived about
matters of their daily observation, for their meetings or séances
consist chiefly of those manifestations which others call impostures.
Their adherents are chiefly among the educated classes, I believe.
Certainly they include multitudes of doctors, lawyers, professors,
scientists, magistrates, clergymen, close students, keen intellects,
even such men as Alfred Russell Wallace, Profs. Morgan, Marley, Challis,
William Carpenter, and Edward Cox. If one has still lingering doubts on
this matter let him read the four learned articles written by my
predecessor in this chair of Medical Jurisprudence, Rev. James F.
Hoeffer, S.J., the former president of Creighton University. They are
found in the "American Catholic Quarterly Review" for 1882 and 1883.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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