The Seattle Post Intelligencer

Centuries were gone by in strange credulity. Nations arose, triumphed and died: race after race sun bathing the world in purple and gray, each beholding the morning glory, flourished, and passed away, and the evening splendor kissing the domes to sleep, yet none dreamed that it was the earth that moved, while the sun, the mighty sentinel of infinity, moved imperceptibly. The fallacy was at last exploded by an Innovator - and it came near costing him his life because it shocked the conservatives. The traveler who starts on his journey at midnight has far more to fear during the first few hours he gropes his way than after the purpling east heralds the approach of day, more to fear during the uncertain light of unfolding dawn than after the golden splendor of the sun floods his path with radiance. Just so, far back in the history of medicine they blundered along, employing the most heroic measures, the most deadly minerals, the most loathsome concoctions that the brain could conceive, and the legacies or heirlooms have been zealously defended for centuries, only discarding them when the innovators compelled them by their success to reluctantly relinquish their octopus hold. The old schools of medicine, clad in the ancient mantle of utter conservatism, whose ample robes, as they swept down the corridors of the centuries, caught and held so much of the teachings of Hippocrates, Celsus and Galen, hoary with antiquity, ever reverently worshiping the old while they invariably combatted innovations and viewed with cynical skepticism each new discovery. Can such a body be regarded safe to trust one's physical happiness with? Every irregular move in medicine has been a protest against the barbarities of the old irrational conglomerate. It must be remembered that every step taken has been bitterly contested by those in power, but after failing to crush the beneficial innovation they have been compelled to embrace it. Come, wake up and move on said the people to the old school, accept the new teaching or we will leave you thus in spite of their conservatism they have had to move on, to be sure always away behind the times, but still they crawled snail-like and painfully along, far in the rear of the startled standard bearers of progressive thought. Slowly and rebelliously they had to accept the discoveries of those whom they denounced as dangerous quacks. Many have been the rude awakenings that this time honored old school has suffered from progressive thought. But fame is earned, not merely by things written, but by arduous greatness of deeds accomplished. Every assault upon the impregnable citadel of true science has added numberless recruits to its cause. The ammunition of calumny has been exploded. The deadly projectiles hurled have missed their destination. The shafts and arrows lie broken at the feet of victory. And when Aurora's rays shall have pierced the smoke of the battle, the name of the histogenetic system of medicine will glitter a bright and imperishable sun in the diadem of science, when those who tried to wind their slimy coils around its snowy throat have mouldered in oblivion and their epitaphs have vanished from the face of the earth.