§ 1 Disease
Disease, frequent, constant, and inevitable as it is, is, however, nothing but a fact outside the natural order. Its character is clearly accidental, and it interrupts the normal cycle of evolution. Medical observation teaches us, on the other hand, that the health of the body reacts on that of the mind; and therefore man as a whole, moral and physical, is affected by disease. Bacon described a diseased body as a jailer to the soul, and the healthy body as a host. Pascal recognized in diseases a principle of error. “They spoil our judgment and our senses.”
I am not expressing a chimerical hope when I predict that science will conquer disease. Medicine has at last issued from the contemplative attitude of so many centuries; it has engaged in the struggle, and signs of victory are already appearing. Disease is no longer the mysterious power which it was impossible to escape. Pasteur gave to it a body. The microbe can be caught. In the words of Schopenhauer, an alteration of the atmosphere so slight that it is impossible to detect it by chemical analysis may bring on cholera, yellow fever, the black plague, diseases which carry off thousands of men; and a slightly greater alteration might endanger all life. The at once mysterious and terrifying spectacle of the cholera at Berlin in 1831 had such an effect on the philosopher that he fled in terror to Frankfort. It has been said that this was the origin of his pessimism, and that but for this he would have continued to teach idealistic philosophy in some Prussian university. L. Hartmann, another celebrated leader of contemporary pessimism, has also said that disease will always be beyond the resources of medicine. Facts have given the lie to these sombre prognostics. The microbic origin of most infectious diseases has been recognized. The discovery of attenuated poisons and serums has diminished their gravity. An exact knowledge of methods of contagion has enabled us to erect against them impregnable barriers. Cholera, yellow fever, the plague knock in vain at our doors. Diphtheria, dreaded by every mother, has partially lost its deadly character. Puerperal fever and blindness of the new-born child are tending to disappear. Legend tells us that Buddha in his youth, frightened at the sight of a sick man, expressed in his father’s presence the wish to be always in perfect health and sheltered from disease. The King answered: “My son! you are asking the impossible.” But it is towards the realization of this impossibility that we are on our way. Science is repelling the attacks of disease.