But the attack took a shape far more terrible. The two great religions orders, Franciscan and Dominican, vied with each other in fighting the new thought in chemistry and philosophy. St. Dominic, sincere as he was, solemnly condemned research by experiment and observation. The general of the Franciscan order took similar grounds. In 1243 the Dominicans solemnly interdicted every member of their order from the study of medicine and natural philosophy, and in 1287 this interdiction was extended to the study of chemistry.[99] In 1278 the authorities of the Franciscan order, assembled at Paris, solemnly condemned Bacon's teachings. Another weapon began to be used upon the battle-fields of that time with much effect. The Arabs had made noble discoveries in science. Averroès had, among many, divided the honors with St. Thomas Aquinas. These facts gave the new missile: it was the epithet "Mahometan." This, too, was flung with effect at Bacon.[100] Bacon was at last conquered. He was imprisoned for fourteen years. At the age of eighty years he was released from prison, but death alone took him beyond the reach of his enemies. How deeply the struggle had racked his mind may be gathered from that last affecting declaration of his: "Would that I had not given myself so much trouble for the love of science!" Sad is it to think of what this great man might have given to the world had the world not refused the gift. He held the key of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery. With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also. The nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thirteenth. But for that interference with science, the nineteenth century would, without doubt, be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century. Thousands of precious lives shall be lost in this century, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken religious fight against Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth. In 1868 and 1869, sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales of scarlet fever; probably nearly as many died in this country. Had not Bacon been hindered, we should have had in our hands, by this time, the means to save two-thirds of these victims; and the same is true of typhoid, typhus, and that great class of diseases of whose physical causes science is just beginning to get an inkling. Put together all the efforts of all the atheists who have ever lived, and they have not done so much harm to Christianity and the world as has been done by the narrow-minded, conscientious men who persecuted Roger Bacon, and closed the path which he gave his life to open.[101]