Medical science has been slow in developing, but it has now reached a condition of which humanity may be proud. It is outside my purpose to give a long exposition of this subject; but it is necessary to my argument to set out a few facts from which the reader may judge of the present condition of medical science. Without doubt the fear of disease has played a large part in the pessimistic conceptions of the universe. Not only the words of Buddha that I have quoted, but many of the systems of pessimistic philosophy attest this. I have already stated in chap. vi. that Schopenhauer in 1831 was driven from Berlin to Frankfurt by fear of cholera. In his statement of the case against this universe, and as a chief argument for his proposition that “this is the worst of possible worlds” Schopenhauer adduced the spreading of epidemics. “An alteration of the atmosphere so slight that it cannot be detected by chemistry brings about cholera, or yellow fever, or the black death, diseases which number their victims by millions; an alteration slightly greater might destroy all life.”[265] Hartmann, who has been one of the chief advocates of Schopenhauer’s pessimism, also had gloomy views on diseases and medicine. He was convinced that howsoever great the progress of humanity might come to be, there never would be an end or even a diminution of diseases. “It is no matter,” he said, “how many remedies may be discovered for diseases; new diseases, and particularly chronic affections which, although not serious are extremely painful, will continue to appear more rapidly than the discoveries of medicine.”[266]