The following is a lecture recently delivered by of Riverside, Cal., before the regular quarterly meeting of the Riverside County Medical Society —only slightly abridged to conform to our space.
"Mr. President and Gentlemen:— It has been suggested to me that my subject is one of extreme delicacy to place before this body, since a medical society, of all societies, is best justified in being conservative and is strongly inclined to exercise its just prerogative. But "the world moves." With swift recurring years new theories appear upon the stage, play their parts, and make their exit, and modes of treatment of disease have been no exception to the rule. Untiring zeal and self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of humanity have not been confined to the exposition of old doctrines and the practice of old methods, but have been brilliantly marked in steps of progress; the most resplendent names of medical history are the names of discoverers and innovators; the profession has ever sought such knowledge as seemed to it applicable to the amelioration of morbid conditions whether physical or mental, and I, therefore, consider this society quite the proper one to have its attention called to a field of inestimable therapeutic value.
It has been further suggested that as medical practice is founded upon a materialistic basis, and that as nothing could be more absolutely the antithesis of materialism than the field just alluded to, its tenets and even many of its terms must seem empty to a large majority of the association. But recent years have witnessed a growing belief that even spiritual things are not beyond scientific proofs and uses. The fact that Spirit is utterly beyond the province of the most delicate metrical device, and has eluded the magnifying-glass, the retort and the spectroscope, has been deemed sufficient to consign the nature, the power, the very existence of Spirit, to the region of the Unknowable." Now, however, data is multiplying which leads even radical materialists to wonder whether that hypothetical region may not be triumphantly invaded. "We are unable to cast a measuring-line over the infinite": nevertheless, the conviction is growing that infinity of knowledge, wisdom, and will, exist, and are superphysical, though the partially developed man may not be aware of them. In illustration of existent yet unseen potentialities, one of the One of the Hindu Scriptures, pronounced oop-in-ish-ads. Upanishads relates that, a father, whose son was frivolous and skeptical, commanded him to bring a fruit of the sacred fig-tree. 'Break it,' said the father" 'what do you see?' 'Some very small seeds,' replied the son. 'Break one of them: what do you see in it?' the father asked again. 'Nothing,' answered the son. 'My child,' said the father, 'where you see nothing, there dwells a mighty banyan-tree.'" Professor Tyndall, materialist though he was, is quoted to have said regarding certain lines of research, "It was found that the mind of man is capable of penetrating far beyond the boundary of his free senses; that the things which are seen in the material world depend for their action upon things unseen:— in short, that besides the phenomena which address the senses, there are laws and principles and processes which do not address the senses at all, but which need be and can be spiritually discerned."
