DOCTOR AND PRIEST.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1159, 16 October 1913, Page 4

DOCTOR AND PRIEST.

In the course of his sermon to a large number of the delegates attending the International Congress of Medicine which recently mec in London, the Dean of St. Paul's said : Doctors have to a large extent succeeded to some of the functions of the medieval priests. It is they who now hear the confessions of anxious and consciencestricken penitents ; it is they who prescribe dietary disciplines and various quaint penances ; it is they who send people on pilgrimages to distant lands. Moreover, owing to the state of neglect into which the art of spiritual, therapeutics has fallen in Protestant countries, the physician usually knows more than the clergyman about the real springs of action, the secret causes of sin and sorrow, the subtle and delicate influences by which soul and body affect each other, the mysterious and melancholy trammels of morbid heredity, and the uniecognised heroism of struggles against it. To him, and not always to the clergyman, are known the storm and stress which often accompany the beginning and sometimes the end of the sexual life, the nervous instability which may show itself in mental depression, in foolish and violent partisanship, in loss of natural affection, and in many other obscure ways. He strenuously urged the medical profession to take a greater part in public affairs than was customary at present.