Excerpt from Ohio State Journal of Dental Science, Vol. 1

The Bible is in no sense a text-book of natural science, and its Divine Author seems to have never intimated that such teaching is a leading or prominent aim in the bestowment of this invaluable gift. But it is evident, in the nature of things, that when it does teach science, it teaches it with absolute truthfulness, Long ago, in allusion to animated nature, it said, The blood is the life thereof - a truth slowly received by modern physiology, and recognised only within the memory of some present. And early in the centuries it set forth, in its army regulations, the disinfecting properties and' powers of dry earth, and had its directions been rigidly followed, in our late civil war thousands of lives would have been saved, and men who are mere wrecks would have remained strong and manly. Allow me a quotation And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee.

Nor is it silent on surgery, and we learn, from its description, that the first surgical operation, known to earth, was performed while the subject of it was under anaesthetic influence. And we are told, by the same high authority, that, Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, and, that All these things happened unto them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition, and yet how slow have we been to learn, or to receive, the admonition that surgical operations should be painless, and that, when painful, they are not performed in accordance with true science.

That surgical operations should be unattended with pain is all the more reasonable, when we recognize, as I think we must, that anaesthesia is, in its essential nature, a physiological, and not of necessity a pathological condition. True, many, and perhaps most patients, when anaesthetised, are in pathological states, but this may be their misfortune, and the fault of undeveloped surgical science, and in no sense a necessity of anaesthesia.

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