MR KIPLING STAR GAZES

Hokitika Guardian, 30 April 1929, Page 7

MR KIPLING STAR GAZES

ASTIIOLOOY AND MODERN

SCIENCE.

A NICHOLAS CULPEPPER

FANTASY

A humorous blending of medicine,

literature, and politics was provided by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Air Kipling, who were guests at tlie annual dinner of the Royal Society of Medicine at which Lord Dawson of Penn presided.

Toasting the society, Mr Churchill said he had always been one of Mr Kipling’s greatest admirers, but he "'as afraid Mr Kipling had not always been one of his greatest admirers. The Chancellor said the society had pursued a clearly-defined object—the increase of knowledge in all the branches of science allied to medicine. There was an increasing need of combining and focusing all the results of each particular branch. He was not going to lay down the law to them—upon; medicine, although lie had tried his hand at a good many things. (Laughter; and a voice, ••'Bricklaying.’’)

11l its continual contact with the unknown, medicine resembled, in many respects, politics. Every human being, everybody was aii empire, with innumerable populations and different races living in vast provinces, and subject to accident and misfortune, and usually in a state of external or internal war. As long as the presiding genius was firmly on his throne, everything was well, hut as soon as the central power began to weaken or was ageing, then came disorder, discontent, riot, revolution. In politics they saw some of the disease with which doctors were grappling. Communism, for example, was a sort of cancer. It was political cancer, the revolt of a single cell which corrupted those- immediately around it. It required a remedy about which there was the greatest divergence of opinion. Some said it was a case for "the knife,” but all were agreed that the remedies should be prompt and drastic. They all knew, and he certainly did, the danger of intervention in the affairs of a foreign country. That intervention in the affairs of a Foreign State was exactly what evendoctor had to do when ho prescribed to a patient. He looked upon the Koval Society of Medicine, as a sort of- League of Nations applying to the disordered state remedies which were not merely within the knowledge of any one particular Power, but which contrived to get the collective knowledge in a concerted effort for all. The achievements in the medical sphere were great, and .substantial were the results in the political field, but thov were both asking for more, and expected better results in the future. They no doubt looked to him to reduce taxation, and yet improve social services and maintain our defences. He referred to the move to bring physics and chemistry into closer relationship with medicine, and then, referring to the electorate, said: “Let us give one word of advice to our patients. 1 would say: “Don't be in too much of a hurry to change advice and run after the latest quack who comes up wth some latest cure or specific for all the ills o'f the world. Carry.on with steady treatment.” CHANCELLOK S’ IRRADIATION. Lord Dawson of Penn, the president of the society, replying to Mr Churchill, said that less than 100 vears ago they were without anaesthesia and nursing. Tt was difficult to conceive a world without the power of removing pain and sensibility. He wished to refer tn tbe recent discovery that by irradiation ereosterol lxicame endowed with the qualities of Vitamin “D.” They had seen an example of irradiation in the Chancellor’s speech, but whn-t if. in the future, they could provide Mr Churchill, or. better still, his constituents, with the precise irradiation he (the Chancellor) required? Medicine, with the steady move of its thought towards the threshold of disease, had closer contact with man. and would be more concerned with his inhere qualities, physical and pliychioal, and his environment, and less with external attacks. They were passing, in fact, from the age of acute to subacute infections. I hey would think of forces rather than lesions, pass

from the static to the dynamic. So it was with the statesman. His policy would no longer be decided, still less excused, by wars and pestilence, and would have its origin in tinstudy of the people, their qualities and needs.

AIR KIPLING’S SPEECH. All- Rudvard Kipling, replying to the toast of “The Guests,” said:— Fellow-guests,—l don’’t -know how it is with you, but when a medical man approaches me in the language of compliment. I aim filled with an uneasy suspicion that somebody’s tobacco is going to bo rationed. That Possibility, however, is behind us for Ibis evening . Will you lend me your patience while T toll you a perfectly true story? Nearly three hundred years ago lb-'.r->- was an astrologer-physician, cm lied Niflio'as Culpepper, practising in Spitalfields. And it happened that r friend’s nviid-servant fell sick with what the local practitioner diagnosed as plague. Culpepper was called ir a.s a second opinion. AVhen lie armed the family were packing up th< beds preparatory to going away and leaving the girl to die. Ho took charge. There was no silly nonsense about looking for the characteristic plague tongue. He only asked at what hour the young Woman had taken to her bed. That gave him, as t need not tell you, “the hour of the decutwbiturc.” He then erected a horoscope, and “inquired of tire face of the heavens how the malady might prove.” The face of the heavens indicated it "as not plague—but just smallpox, which our ancestors treated almost as lightly as we do. And smallpox it turned cut to be. So the family came hack with their bedding, and lived happily ever after; the girl recovered, and Culpepper said what lie thoughi of his misguided fellow-practitioner. Among other things, he called him “q man of forlorn fortunes with sore eyes.”

HEALING AND THE STARS. Preposterous as all this was. you must remember that Culpepper justified his practise by the -theory that “this creation, though composed of contraries, is one united body, of which man is the epitome, and that he, therefore, who would understand the mystery of healing, must look as high as the stars.” . That was a distorted shadow of the ancient idea that the universe is one in ultimate essence —which essence is sustained and embraced and interpenetrated by a creative motion or inner heat—the pneunia of certain Greek physicians, who practised five hundred years before St. Paul preached at Athens. It was a noble belief; but it did not prevent Dr Culpepper front using a pharmacopoeia and therapeutics that would have made a AVest African witch doctor jealous. And ‘ when he caipe across anything that he did not understand, or that Aristotle had not provided for, he put it down to “influences” or “emanations”—the same as you do a common cold.

IF DR CULPEPPER RETURNED

TO-DAY

But if lie could return to earth to/dav and see how things have progressed in the mystery of healing, I fancy he would he quite at ease in your Zion. He believed in the transmutation of metals. He could he shown that in full blast at a Royal Society Soiree with emanations. He would land that the essential unity of creation is admitted as far north as we have plumbed infinity and that man, Culpepper’s epitome of all, is in himself a universe of universes, each universe ordered—negatively and positively—by sympathy and antinathv—on the same lines as hold the stars in their course. Consequently he would not be astonished to see men snatch out of the air an influence —an inner heat or pnouma—of which they know no more than that it visibly warms, lights, and works for them, and, invisibly trail-units their speech and vision on one side of the world on the instant that- they themselves speak or look from the othci. And the news that unknown influences from out of the skies lash and tear through all matter everywhere at all times would he received by him with perfect calm. P.-'ing an astrologer, he would, of course, go to Greenwich Observatory to learn more about those influences. There be would be given monographs of terrestrial magnetism—-its daily ami seasonal tides the world over; magnetic storms, sunspots, auroras, and so forth, but all discussed without any relation to the severity or u-cif’-ncrt of prevalent epidemics and diseases. ATMOSPHERICS. From Greenwich lie would certainly nush 011 to the 8.8. C... who w'Hilcl tell him that there are uknown heavenlv infl’voiees which prevent millions of h-'ld youths and blushing maidens from hearing the music they would dance to—influences which at times cause the spoken word to die out under the stars, as the note of a rubber (in ,T er-bowl dies when the hand is lifted Presently- for he was always stronger on theory than research —be would fetch up among the laboratories when*, if he was as lucky as 1 wa« this summer, lie would he shown marvellous films of infected tissue being subjected to tbe influence of an influence called radium. Then. T fancy, the fun would begin. Up to that point he would find the main axiom which lm had quoted three centuries before accepted, prov-

on, and in use; the influence, the inner breath, the pneiuna—not onl\ exceeding all bounds of wonder ami bolief in its proper manifestation but under the name of electricity piping and singing in the market-place on a commercial basis.

So, as with his smallpox case, hi first question after he had seen the films would be, “What was the as-p-'i-t of the heavens at the time these phenomena occurred?” He would take it for granted that, with the whole universe alight to signal some tremendous secret to mankind, men would naturally look as high as tin scars.

And what answer would he get" AVhen I asked a similar question of a in.il of science lately, lie said, “A’ou’d better see a doctor.” I told him that, with any luck, I expected to see even so many of them before long. That expectation having been fulfilled to night, 1 want to ask you some quos

tions. MISTAKING SECONDARY CAUSE/ FOR PRIMARY ONES. Isn’t it likely that the multitude and significance of the revelation heaped upon us within the past fe" years have made men, in self-defence specialise more and more narrowly! Haven’t wo been driven headlong t< abandon our conceptions Of life, motion, and matter? And isn’t it human that in that Upheaval ffieii may have carried off each his oWil cherished prepossession and camped beside it--just as refugees do with an earthquake? Is it then arguable that we may still mistake secondary causes for primary ones, and attribute to instant and visible agents of disease unconditioned activities, which, in truth, depend on some breath drawn from the motion of the universe—of the entire universe, revolving as one body for dynamo if you choose) through infinite but occupied space? The idea is wildly absurd? Quite true. But what does that matter if any fraction of any idea helps towards mastering even one combination in the great time-locks of life and death? Suppose then, at some future time when the bacteriologist and tile physicist are for the-moment at a standstill, wouldn’t it be interesting if they took their problem to the astronomer and—in modern scientific language, of course —-put to him Nicholas Culpepper’s curious question, “AVhat was the aspect of the heavens when such and such phenomena were observed.”