If the sailor, the nun, and the king of France were afflicted with the "bloody sweat," why should it seem incredible that the man Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, should have been similarly afflicted? If Tissot, Schenck, and Voltaire are to be believed, why should we refuse to believe St. Luke? If St. Luke told the truth in this regard, why should we doubt his statements concerning other matters relating to the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God? Does not Voltaire, the most brilliant and powerful skeptic that ever lived, corroborate in this particular the biographer of the Christ? Let us pass to another instance of resemblance and corroboration. While describing the crucifixion, St. John wrote the following: "But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out _blood and water_."[44] Early skeptical criticism denied the account of the flowing of blood and water from the side of the Savior because, in the first place, the other Evangelists did not mention the circumstance; and, in the second place, it was an unscientific fact stated. But modern medical science has very cleverly demonstrated that Jesus, according to the Gospel accounts, died of rupture of the heart. About the middle of the last century, a celebrated English physician and surgeon, Dr. Stroud, wrote a treatise entitled, "Physical Cause of the Death of Christ." In this book, he proved very clearly that cardiac rupture was the immediate cause of the death of Jesus on the cross. Many arguments were adduced to establish this fact. Among others, it was urged that the shortness of time during which the sufferer remained upon the cross and His loud cry just before "He gave up the ghost," tended to prove that a broken heart was the cause of the death of the Man of Sorrows. But the strongest proof, according to the author of this work, was the fact that blood and water flowed from the dead man when a spear was thrust into His side. This, says Dr. Stroud, has happened frequently when the heart was suddenly and violently perforated after death from cardiac rupture. Within a few hours after death from this cause, he says, the blood frequently separates into its constituent parts or essential elements: _crassamentum_, a soft clotted substance of deep-red color, and _serum_, a pale, watery liquid--popularly called blood and water, which will flow out separately, if the pericardium and heart be violently torn or punctured. In this treatise numerous medical authorities are cited and the finished work is indorsed by several of the most famous physicians and surgeons of England.