It is interesting then to take some of the examples of men who are
known to have formed and maintained such habits and yet accomplished
very great work for mankind. The list might be made a very long one;
we shall mention only a few of the most distinguished. Almost in our
own time Pasteur said, as we have already quoted: "The more I study
nature the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray
while I am engaged at work in the laboratory." A distinguished
contemporary of his in France in his earlier years was Leverrier.
There is no doubt at all about his power of concentration; he is the
scientist who discovered the planet Neptune by mathematics alone
without the aid of a telescope. He constantly kept a crucifix in his
observatory and used to turn his eyes to it frequently for
recollection and then go on with his calculations. There is a
well-known picture of Vesalius, who so well deserves the title of
Father of Modern Anatomy, at work in his {38} anatomical rooms with a
crucifix before him. The composition is founded on the tradition that
the great anatomist was a devout man who prayed as he worked. He made
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in his older years in expiation for a
fault committed.
In spite of traditions to the contrary, a great many of our scientists
of the last two centuries whose work has meant most for modern
medicine have been men to whom prayer meant very much. There are
traditions of Morgagni, the distinguished father of modern pathology,
as Virchow hailed him, which show that never a day passed without his
raising his heart in prayer. Volta and Galvani, whose names have
become so familiar in modern electricity, were both of them well known
for their devotion to the practice of daily religious duties. French
scientists were not less devout. Laennec, a Breton by birth, lost none
of the devoutness of his early years so characteristic of the Bretons
even when he was in the midst of the great work which enabled him to
write the greatest medical book in modern times. Ozanam has told us
that when he himself felt thoroughly discouraged and ready to think
religion something that any one who wanted to keep up with modern
thought would have to give up, he wandered into a church, hoping that
prayer might help him to dispel his doubts and difficulties and found
there praying before the altar devoutly his great professor of
science, Ampere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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