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sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. The suffering then is real, and a definite purpose for it is assigned. These two are linked together, the suffering and the benefit. In such eternal justice demanded of offering of the cross and passion of Jesus the Son of God, the most extreme undeserved suffering, resulting in this most supreme blessing, is there not found some hint towards the understanding of the cruelty of Nature? "And," say the theologians, "may not all undeserved suffering be part of an eternal law, by which the greatest possible result and blessing is secured?" Such rot as this is painful.

Geddes in his Synthetic History of Biology, .shows how morphology and physiology, fol. low the logical path more and more penetrative analysis is associated with the synchronous perfecting of instruments. The intact organism, the component organs, the web of tissues, the individual cells, the intricacy of protoplasmic structure, every one knows how far descriptive analysis has gone on each of these levels. He points out how the morphological view was broadened and deepened by excursions into the remote past, and the distant present, by studying things in situ, by penetrating into the invisible. One of the striking results was the transition even in morphology to a kinetic point of view.

"Rest and fixity of form seem only to exist apparently, or for transient moments in the history of natural events; and even the finished and recurring structures of living beings, which appear to our eyes to be possessed of so much finality, and sometimes of so much finish, owe these qualities only to the comparatively short space of time during which we are permitted to gaze at them, and to our ignorance of the slow but endless changes to which they are nevertheless subject. The morphological view also took note of the relatedness and apparent recurrence of definite forms called types, of the so-called fixity of species, and the succeeding characteristic periods of creation, and sought to explain these morphologically; i.e., it sought in the abstract forms-sometimes geometrical, sometimes artistic-the key to an understanding of the recurrence as well as the continued variation of definite types. But the relationship was mostly looked upon as ideal not real." It is thus difficult to impose logical schemata upon history. It is hard to punctuate history. The swing of the pendulum

is between vitalism and materialism.

Liebig, Johannes, Müller, Bichat, Claude Bernard, Lotze and Dubois Reymond are masters of morphology. But by their teachings even have we come any nearer an answer to the question, What is life?

We

thought so, a generation ago. But closer scrutiny convinced us that we have not. The specter of a vital principle still lurks behind all our terms. Neither the physiological, nor the psychological unity is intelligible to us. The dilemma of pure mechanic and the vitalistic biologic theories leads on to the psycho-physical view of Nature.

Though we speak as if God himself could not alter "the course of Nature," yet we ourselves constantly alter the inanimate processes of Nature, and though we too readily ignore the daily and hourly influences of our evolution, we do not recognize that they are beyond the pale of our science, or that some of them are inside the universe of fact.

Prof. Geddes and Prof. Thompson pointed out that science is an intellectual attitude rather than a body of facts, and that though the ideal biologist, poet, philosopher or theologian in interpreting scientifically the nature, continuance and evolution of life, arrange them in ordered series, to detect their inter-relations and likenesses of sequence, to reduce them to simple terms, to find their common denominator, and finally to sum them up in a general formula, unfortunately called, too often a "law, we must not delude ourselves by imagining that the "law" is an explanation of the facts formulated.

Why is God so slow and vague? The Presbyterian Rev. John Kelman knows! He says speaking of our sacred books: "So far as we have gone, the history of the past, viewed by the light in which the newer conception of the Bible has placed it, shows that at the present point in the progress of thought, science and religion are not in the least degree at strife. They need no reconciliation.

The facts are God's facts, and the scientific knowledge of them is God's ever new and wonderful revelation, unfolding itself not in one book, closed two thousand years ago, but in every book written today, by any honest and competent investigator.'

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In the Philosophy of Ignorance and in Christian Pantheism which appeared thirty years on "The Mystery of Matter," Mr. Picton's professions in his Religion of the Universe are in substantial agreement with the worship of the "Unknowable," as set forth in Spencer's First Principles. He is much more theistic than Spencer's agnosticism presents. He claims that we can know God by progressively learning what He is in relation

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made on us, by a life. What is this but to represent self-existent life as metaphysical causality, as much as that which the theorist ascribes to God. Mr. Picton, in a Spencerian mood, allows of moral freedom, when he holds that the self, which wills is a metaphysical reality of some sort. He assents to it, that this self is free in its moral self-determinations. He maintains that the essence of moral evil is sin against God, involving responsibility and deserving praise and blame. We are so enmeshed and involved, he says, in untraceable relations to our true and infinite self, that it is impossible to say how far we are only taking our part in the action of universal will. How far then can

moral evil, or sin against God have a real existence?

The problem of existence by light of Aryan wisdom, practically allows us to imagine that our own philosophy, and our own religion, which have their roots in Greece and Judea, exhaust the thought of the world. And this they do, for they have filtered down the ages, into our common stock of thought. The voice of old friend Jacob is heard from the far East, in the story of "Satan" and our "first parents." A moral and personal God is found, in an omnipresent, omnipotent, omniparous and omniverous essence, or ether, for while all spring, in which all have being, and into which all disappear at their dissolution. The soul, having come into individual being at birth will continue to exist forever. Immortality is inseparable as attribute of soul. It passes to eternal bliss or

woe.

The Aryans believe that the wheel of existence goes on forever without beginning and without end, remorselessly grinding out good and evil, joy and sorrow, and that the thing to be aimed at is for the individual to escape from it, and to pass into the still region of a Nirvana, where beyond these voices there is peace. Thus consciousness of self is lost. Self-consciousness is the root of worldliness. Desire nursed by ignorance, is the Hindu equivalent of that carnal mind, to which the delusion of evil is due. How this delusion

comes about in a world in which all is god and all is good, we cannot explain. And we are not able to accept the explanation offered, that evil is due to a delusion of the devil, and that the devil does not exist. The permanent elements of religion are those that satisfy human needs, e.g., in idealizing the baser facts of the animal life, supporting the mind against the terror of the mystery of life, and strengthening moral weakness. The justification of religion lies in this service, rather than in any revelation of objective truth.

Herder in Germany, had ambition to free

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himself and others from the numbing tyranny of the rules and formulas which attached to the poetry, the history and the theology of his days. Germany was in the hands of the so-called men of enlightenmentthe writers who supposed that all the previous ages of the world were dark ages, and that their own was the first in which the full light of reason had shone on the human mind. This was a light, however, which, as they further supposed was enjoyed only by the few, namely, themselves. In their views reason consisted of certain clear and definite principles divinely planted in the mind and heart of every man and existent from all eternity, even if only now for the first time fully understood. Herder was not dazzled by Rousseau's pictures of a primitive age of peace and innocence which never existed. may thus see, he said, as freshly today as when the poets first expressed in their interpretation, the hopes and fears, the thought and emotions, every people, standing out against the dark background of its actual history. Each age must be judged by its own own surroundings and its own aspirations. As men could conceive of no beings very different from themselves, so they made their gods and angels in their own image, and represented them as magnified men. He called this ideal in one word: Humanity, and its great progress led to a great end. Ideal men and nations were dependent on their physical surroundings. He spoke of men who nursing a high ideal and straining after it, with irresistible desire see it dashed to pieces before their eyes. Men of this kind, he said, hide their trouble from their friends, and keeping the sad secret in their heart die a slow death. This he termed a subtle form of suicide, of which only the elect were capable. All the changes in the world, as Schopenhauer held, have only been fresh combinations of the same facts like the shapes taken by the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, interesting doubtless, but exhibiting no trace of orderly development. Throughout all his speculations he never lost sight of the principle of evolution.

Herder in Germany was the one who gave effective stimulus to that general tendency to inquire, that spirit of Forschung, continued in many directions by Goethe, in philosophy by Hegel and Lotze, in history by Niebuhr and by Niebuhr and Ranke, in theology by Strauss and Baur, in law by Savigny, in natural science by Baer and Humboldt, a tendency which spread over the civilized world, and which in religion is just beginning to be dominant.

Over and over again in the development in religion as in other things the course taken

by Christianity was not that of Christ's religion, but was taken backward.

In the problem of immortality there was the question of future fact of what is to be, as Tennyson voicing the common sense of the race states, Does our individuality endure? And there was the question of fact of what is: Do we share in an eternal life, and does the connection become a matter of experience? If man is a reproduction or differentiation of the eternal mind, and so partaker of an eternal life, it does not follow that regarded as an individual spirit, he is eternal. And if this metaphysical tie is what gives absolute value to human life the thing of absolute value might remain, while individual spirits were extinguished, provided the race continued.

The mystery of this unfathomable universe is one that the plummet of our thought will never sound. But at least we can avoid, and as an intellectual duty we are bound to avoid, plain and palpable self-contradictions. We cannot assert in the same breath the reality of evil and the fact of creation by an omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent being.

Neither Greek philosophy nor Persian religion were subject to a like embarrassment with our theology. The one assigned evil to an active principle, the one to the intractable nature of matter, tthe other to a malignant spirit.

Our theology says: "God is all," "God is good," therefore "all is good," or in other words, there is no evil. Our Christian theism must deny one of the premises. Must we deny that God is good? Yet we can worship a being partly evil. Or, we must deny that God is all. This means that we must give up, making religion into a theory of the universe and regard it as a passion of the heart.

Now for the conscience to condemn God, is a peril to religion, and not to condemn God is a peril to morality. Is it the God of Nature revealed to us by science, or the God whom our heart reveals to us?

We must choose between these. And yet how one sided and untrue to fact, says St. George Stook, if addressed to the God of Nature. For to nature belongs the ugly equally with the beautiful, the awful and sinister as well as the benign; the howling wastes of blackness as well as the sunlit pastures.

Dr. Jethro Brown in his Passing of Conviction, says "I well remember how when I was a boy of about seventeen, and a devout ardent Christian, my faith sustained its first shock from a study of Greek philosophy. I had always been given to understand that before the advent of Jesus Christ the world was sunk in the lowest depths of wickedness,

and ignorance, that; therefore, God had sent had only begotten Son to teach me how they should live in order to inherit the kingdom of heaven. What, then, was my amazement to find that centuries before Christ, philosophers had lived in Greece who taught all that seemed to me most admirable and most needed for the spiritual salvation of mankind in the Christian religion. Where, I asked was the need of God to incarnate in human form in order to reveal truths, a knowledge of which already existed in the world. I found little or nothing in the ethical teaching of Jesus superior to what one might find in the philosophy of Plato, and I might also add of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. I may have been wrong-probably I was-but at any rate the discovery of this fact, if fact it was, first shook the foundations of my belief.

My religious convictions received their second shock when I read Darwin's epochmaking "Origin of Species." Here we had the cosmology and biology of the Old Testament absolutely subverted. My belief did, however, in an enfeebled form survive that shock. It was possible to argue that those parts of the Bible, which were inconsistent with modern science were allegorical, or in the termination of the Swedenborgians, "written according to the law of correspondences."

But this kind of quibbling of tortuous and sophistical attempts at reconciliation became, as time went on, more and more repugnant to my sense of intellectual honesty. If Christ was omniscient why did he not correct the popular ideas in respect of these things?

Soon after this I was introduced to the study of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy. This, however, did not effect further subversion of my belief in Christian religion. Quite the contrary, whatever there was of beauty and truth in the Christian religion, appeared to me, in full blaze, to be but an imperfect reflection of that light, the primal source of all the great religions. This theory of a common origin solved the puzzled paralellisms found in so many great religions, even incidents and circumstances in the lives of the founders. The ethical teachings of some of the philosophies embraced the highest conceptions of the Christain religion, or went even beyond them in the sublimity of its ideals, and even included in its benevolence not only the human race, but all that lives, and appeared better adapted to the practical needs of our daily life.

Take for instance what may be called the pivotal doctrine of Christianity, the Divinity of Christ. Well, the idea of a divine incarnation or Avatar, has probably been familiar to the Hindu mind for several thousand

years. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna claims to be the supreme being, to know all things, to have created all things, to be immanent in all things. Further, he declares that it is by a knowledge of him that salvation is attained. "They verily who worship me, with devotion, they are in me, and I in them," says Krishna.

The idea of the sacrifice of a divine human person "himself to himself," at about the time of the vernal equinox, for the redemption of the sins of the people was no new one.

Before the light of modern science the gloomy theology of the "Fall" has vanished, and a cloud has been lifted from men's minds.

When pulpits are occupied by men whose reading has been wide and catholic, when their minds are no longer invincibly biased by their education; when their career and their very livelihood no longer depend upon the acceptance of certain antiquated beliefs, then, and not till then, shall we find our churches better attended for the inculcation of natural morals, by the more reflecting and better informed members of the laity.

Great wars seem to be in preparation. Within my copy of Haeckel's "Insulinde" I found a four-page illustrated notice of a book by Dr. Alex. Pfluger, privat docent at the University of Bonn, telling of his travels in the South Pacific Ocean. I translate the following:

The future of Germany lies upon the water; the Germans must spread out more, and get the air of foreign zones in their noses. To make the Kaiser's word practicable has been the leading thought of Pfluger in his travels and in the preparation of the book. I believe another war is not far away. Yes, for it looks like a hara-kiri of the flagship of the Japanese navy, the Mikasa that would be the natural answer of the naval officers to their Emperor's policy. They would not express their disapproval openly. The army is yet to be heard from. Even if they thought their Emperor had done wrong they would not revolt against his holy authority; but would turn their enmity towards England and America, and the Japanese advisers about him, who had wronged (or misled) their holy avatar. They would protect their emperor against such advice. Strange people! Malay and Negro-Britain may regret the alliance. Nobody can forejudge the East with any satisfaction. An American lawyer, who returned a few days ago from the Philippines where he is established as member of the bar, says: "Chief Ali is organizing a rebellion against the United States." He makes it plain that our white troops are "up against" a

ning, swift, murderous, silent, implacable foe We have put our hands into a box of snakes; while Roosevelt by his pro-English course during the Japano-Russian war, offended Russia by his insistence on peace, he, now, has offended Japan. now, has offended Japan. Practically the United States sits down between two stools, by the Rooseveltian "statesmanship."

health requires that the street railway comCLEAN STREET CARS.-Topeka's board of pany of that city shall fumigate its cars at least once a month.

"MEDICAL OFFICES" CLOSED.-Fifty-two illegal "medical offices" in New York and Brooklyn have recently been closed by the post-office authorities.

LUPULIN.-T. F. Reilly, New York (Jour. A. M. A., April 7), states that he finds lupu. lin a valuable mild anodyne and hypnotic and often an excellent substitute for more active drugs of this class. He believes it will be an excellent and safe substitute for the coal-tar preparations in cases in which the latter have been employed. In neurotic and high-strung people, who do not require an opiate, but are very liable to cultivate a drug habit, for non-organic pains, aches and insomnia, it is admirably adapted. For children it is often a good substitute for opium, as also for old people suffering from advanced renal disease, and it is of especial value for sleeplessness and nervousness following a mild debauch.

Harrison Griffin

TURBINECTOMY.-E. (Med. Rec., April 14, 1906) does not believe in complete turbinectomy. He declares that only so much of the bone should be removed as is necessary to restore the normal canal and to give back to nature the proper function of the nose. A partial turbinectomy is not nearly so easy to perform as a complete operation. The great objection to the latter is that it makes the passage too large and removes something, which belong there, and which has a function to perform. Partial turbinectomy restores the normal anatomy. The writer has observed many cases of deafness in which the restoraton of the nasal passage has brought back hearing. Hemorrhages should be guarded against both before and after this operation. Nasal examination sometimes suggests the existence of Bright's disease. The local use of cocaine has made the operation of turbinectomy perfectly painless. Re-established nasal breathing results in a better supply of oxygen and consequent improved nutrition. The writer has operated upon over ten thousand cases, and always with gratifying results.

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REPORT OF A CASE OF MEGALOGASTRIA*

WM. RUSH, M. D.

ST. LOUIS.

IN September of the past year there came to the Washington University Clinic a patient 74 years of age, a widow, complaining of palpitation of the heart. The woman was of German descent, a native of Pennsylvania, of long lived parents, free from all diseases of hereditary significance. As a girl and young adult she had done much hard work in the field. She had had no infectious diseases except measles, pertussis and influenza. Menstruation began at 14, was fairly regular. Was married at 23, three normal labors, no miscarriage, menopause without notable incident.

The trouble of which the patient complained, a somewhat annoying consciousness of the beating of the heart, had existed for about a year, without, however, causing any serious inconvenience. The patient ate well, had no discomfort connected with the taking of food, bowels regular without laxatives, slept well, only moderately nervous.

Patient was small of stature, but erect, active and unusually well preserved for one of her years. Lungs normal. Apex beat in fifth interspace in the mammary line, impulse rather forcible. Cardiac dullness from the midsternal line to the mammary line; no heart murmur; first heart sound at the apex distinctly divided. Liver dullness at seventh rib, edge of liver palpable, normal in consistence, two cm. below costal margin on deep inspiration. Lower half of right kidney palpable on deep inspiration, left kidney and spleen not palpable. No abdominal tenderness, and further than mentioned above no abnormal resistance.

Urine: twenty-four hours amount 750 cc., specific gravity 1018, pale, acid, trace albumin, no sugar, many hyaline casts.

Pulse regular, 80 per mm., radial artery not. palpable. Blood pressure (Riva-Rocci), 195

mm.

Suspecting a possible gastroptosis or en

* Read at the meeting of February 1, 1906.

teroptosis I inflated the patient's stomach. The stomach was found to be not sunken, but greatly enlarged. The percussion figure measured 20 cm. in height in the median line, and 21 cm. in width midway between the umbilicus and the ensiform cartilage. The normal dimensions of the percussion figure for woman is about 10 cm. height and 18 om. width.

The patient was put upon 6 gr. daily of sod. nitrite. On her return one week later the palpitation had entirely ceased and the blood pressure had fallen to 155 mm.

The evening before the patient's second visit she ate her customary dinner between 6 and 7 o'clock, and the following morning at 6 she ate a light breakfast of coffee, rolls and one egg.

At 11 a.m. the stomach tube was introduced, and patient received through the tube, without distress, 3000 cc. of lukewarm water. This water was discharged entirely free from food remnants of either the evening or morning meal. The stomach was again inflated, and the area of tympany found exactly what it was before, 20 by 21 cm., extending from near the ensiform cartilage snugly down into the left iliac region and to the symphysis pubis.

The patient repeated that she ate everything she liked, and that she had no sort of digestive disturbance. From the size of the percussion figure of this stomach, and from the amount of water that it will contain without distress to the patient it is clear that its capacity is far greater than that of the normal organ. Furthermore, from the absence of all subjective symptoms of digestive disturbance, as well as the absence of the objective signs of motor insufficiency, we must conclude that this is not a dilated or atonic stomach, but that it is a physiologically or naturally enlarged organ that is properly performing all its functions a condition known as megastria, or more generally I believe as megalogastria.

DISCUSSION.

Dr. A. E. Taussig had seen this patient a number of times with Dr. Rush. The case presented the three cardinal features of a

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