Part 3 (2/2)

Blood was also feared by the religionists, and a taboo was placed upon all those who touched it, as being contaminated.

Even the dissection of the human body was prohibited by religion.

The study of human anatomy is within our own time, and the fruitful results of this scientific exploring of man's physical structure are incalculable.

It is needless, I think, to tell you why the study of human body is so recent. Until the emanc.i.p.ation of the mind of man from the thraldom and shackles of religion, it was taught and believed as a ”religious truth,” and maintained under penalty of eternal d.a.m.nation, that if the human body was dissected, G.o.d would not be able to recognize you on the day of resurrection!

Such has been the paralyzing menace of religion that has prevailed over the mind of man.

The discovery of the chemistry of food and its application to nutrition has contributed more to the health of the human race than all the G.o.ds, clergymen and priests since the dawn of existence.

Preventive medicine has accomplished amazing results in bringing health to, and prolonging, the life of the people.

Hygiene and its application have saved millions upon millions from disease and premature death. It has stayed the ”hand of G.o.d” in his madness in spreading deaths from epidemics of disease.

Charles Darwin published his ”Origin of Species” and the great principle of evolution was promulgated.

Modern emanc.i.p.ated medicine has reduced the infant death rate by more than 50 per cent, and has been responsible for more than doubling the life span of man within the past century.

Just think of it! All of this within our own lifetime!

All of this and more since the day of American independence!

And listen to these words of Dr. Paul D. White, founder of the American Heart a.s.sociation. He said:

”Those of us doctors who graduated from medical school thirty to forty years ago, look back now at the almost unbelievable ignorance about heart disease that then existed. _More knowledge has come since then than had been acquired in all the centuries before._” (Italics mine).

Man was taught in the past that the heart, like the voice, was the ”gift of G.o.d,” and it was too sacred for man to probe into its workings.

What were the results? Millions died who could have been saved; millions lived as horrible cripples who could have lived a normal life if man in the past, had had the courage, that he has today, to seek relief from the terrors of disease.

Such is the amazing progress that has been made when man relies upon his own efforts to solve his problems, whether they concern his health, or his social or political affairs.

It was only within the past forty years that Dr. James B. Herrick properly diagnosed the cause of coronary thrombosis from which followed the amazing progress that has since been attained in combating this greatest of killers.

I, for one, wish to place upon the brow of Dr. Herrick my laurel leaf of thanks for his great accomplishment in medicine.

What wonders have been accomplished since the invention of the steam engine, the automobile, radio, television, electronic devises, and the thousand and one other discoveries and inventions too numerous to mention.

The educational benefit of the motion picture will far outstrip its entertainment value, and its use in nearly every department of learning makes it one of man's most valuable inventions.

Think of Benjamin Franklin's discovery of the relations.h.i.+p of electricity and lightning and the condemnation heaped upon him for his defiance of ”The Prince of the Power of the Air.”

And of the Wright brothers, and the dire penalty they were to suffer for ”flying into the face of G.o.d.”

Lightning, once feared as the wrathful manifestation of an angry G.o.d, was reproduced in the laboratory by that electrical wizard and atheist, Charles P. Steinmetz.

The telephone, wireless telegraphy, the steam engine, refrigeration, the was.h.i.+ng and sewing machines, the mechanical weaving of cloth, and the myriad uses of electric and atomic power will make man the master of his destiny once he frees himself from the myth of a tyrant G.o.d.

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