Remondino, Chapt. 9, part 3
Posted: Thu Jul 11, 2002 7:54 pm
Remondino, Chapter IX
Philosophical Considerations Relating to Eunuchism and Medicine.
The science of medicine, or what might be called the natural ways of nature through its physical laws, is true to itself; the fault lied in our interpretation of its phenomena, which we fail to study with sufficient discriminative precision and nicety. We have repeatedly mistaken causes and results from this want of close observance and of precision, attributing results to causes which did not exist. As an example, when the early disciples of homeoepathy in ancient Palestine undertook to revive poor, old, withered King David, by putting him to bed with a young and caloric-generating Sunamite maid, when it was by like incontinent practices that he had brought himself to that state of decrepitude, it is plain that they misunderstood the principle. Boerhaave - who, as a true eclectic practitioner, followed these ancient and Biblical homoeopaths in their practice in a similar case, the subject being an old Dutch burgomaster, whom he sandwiched between a couple of rosy Netherland maids - also failed to grasp the true condition of the nature of things, or the true philosophical explanation. The exhalations from the aged are by no means an elixir of health or life to the young, and the fact that the young were apt to lose health by sleeping with the aged was wrongly attributed to their loss being to others gain, and the result of its passing into the bodies of their aged companions, and not to its true cause, - the deteriorating influence to which they were subjected; and, further, when we analyze the subject still more, we can understand how a full-blooded and active, lithe-bodied, thin, and active-skinned Sunamite maid might and would impart caloric to King David; but, from our knowledge (not altogether practical) of the difference that exists between differently constitutioned and differently built maids in imparting caloric, and from our knowledge of the physique of the Netherland maids, who are cold and impassive, with a layer of adipose tissue that answers the same purpose as that of the blubber in the whale, -that of retaining heat and resisting cold, -we can well believe that the poor, shriveled burgomaster could receive but little heat, even when sandwiched between the two; but, on the contrary, he was, in fact, more liable to lose the little he had, unless we look at the subject in another light, and consider that sentiment that is common to both animals and men of spirit, a sentiment that has furnished the subject for more than one canvas in the hands of the true and sympathetic artist, as seen on the awakening and alert attitude of the worn-out and old decrepit war-horse, browsing in an inclosed pasture, as he hears from afar the familiar bugle-notes of his early youth, or some cavalry regiment with prancing steeds and jingling accoutrements, with bright colors and shining arms, going past the pasture, restoring for a time to the stiffening joints and dim eyes the suppleness and fire of bygone times, with visions of gallant charges and prancing reviews; or, how the same sentiment erects once more the bowed and withering frame of the old veteran, and one again fires his soul with the martial zeal of his prime as he sees the passing colors and active-stepping regiment which he followed in the bright sunshine and flush of his youth. Aside from these sentiments, which might possibly have inspired David and the Dutch burgomaster with an infusion of a new and transient good feeling, it is unquestionable but that some heated brickbats or stove-lids, curocoa jugs or old stone Burton ale-bottles filled with hot-water, would have been more effectual in imparting warmth than either Sunamite or Netherland maids.
It is hard to reconcile the beliefs of some people or nations with their manners and customs. For instance, there is the Turk; when a Jew becomes a Mohammedan he is made to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, is the expected Messiah, and that none other is to be expected; they know of Christ's speech on the cross, made to the repentant thief; they believe in a heaven full of houris, with large black eyes and faces like the moon at its full, in which all good Moslems are to have continual rejoicings, and yet they go on performing the most barbarous and inhuman forms of castration imaginable, which not only deprives its victims of their virility, but subject more than three-fourths of those operated upon to a painful death, and the remaining to a life of continual misery. Have these poor subjects no right to future bliss, or in what shape will they reach there? If the heaves of these eunuchisers were like the heaven of Buddhism, or, as the Chinese call it, the Paradise of the West, were, although all forms of sensual gratifications are to be enjoyed, no houris are to be supplied to the saints of Buddhism, -as even the women who enter this paradise must first change their sex, -we might understand that, the genitals not being needed in the eternal world, it might be considered a matter of small moment to compel a man to go through this short and transient life without them; but where a robust condition of the sexual organs is suggested as one of the heavenly requisites, it would seem as if the Turk would look upon the suffering, misery, and death that they cause, in connection with the inhuman mutilation they inflict, with horror. Doctrinal theology, whether in the East or West, is something incomprehensible.
FROM: History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present, by P. C. Remondino, M.D. Philadelphia and London: F.A. Davis, Publisher, 1891, pp. 105 - 116.
Philosophical Considerations Relating to Eunuchism and Medicine.
The science of medicine, or what might be called the natural ways of nature through its physical laws, is true to itself; the fault lied in our interpretation of its phenomena, which we fail to study with sufficient discriminative precision and nicety. We have repeatedly mistaken causes and results from this want of close observance and of precision, attributing results to causes which did not exist. As an example, when the early disciples of homeoepathy in ancient Palestine undertook to revive poor, old, withered King David, by putting him to bed with a young and caloric-generating Sunamite maid, when it was by like incontinent practices that he had brought himself to that state of decrepitude, it is plain that they misunderstood the principle. Boerhaave - who, as a true eclectic practitioner, followed these ancient and Biblical homoeopaths in their practice in a similar case, the subject being an old Dutch burgomaster, whom he sandwiched between a couple of rosy Netherland maids - also failed to grasp the true condition of the nature of things, or the true philosophical explanation. The exhalations from the aged are by no means an elixir of health or life to the young, and the fact that the young were apt to lose health by sleeping with the aged was wrongly attributed to their loss being to others gain, and the result of its passing into the bodies of their aged companions, and not to its true cause, - the deteriorating influence to which they were subjected; and, further, when we analyze the subject still more, we can understand how a full-blooded and active, lithe-bodied, thin, and active-skinned Sunamite maid might and would impart caloric to King David; but, from our knowledge (not altogether practical) of the difference that exists between differently constitutioned and differently built maids in imparting caloric, and from our knowledge of the physique of the Netherland maids, who are cold and impassive, with a layer of adipose tissue that answers the same purpose as that of the blubber in the whale, -that of retaining heat and resisting cold, -we can well believe that the poor, shriveled burgomaster could receive but little heat, even when sandwiched between the two; but, on the contrary, he was, in fact, more liable to lose the little he had, unless we look at the subject in another light, and consider that sentiment that is common to both animals and men of spirit, a sentiment that has furnished the subject for more than one canvas in the hands of the true and sympathetic artist, as seen on the awakening and alert attitude of the worn-out and old decrepit war-horse, browsing in an inclosed pasture, as he hears from afar the familiar bugle-notes of his early youth, or some cavalry regiment with prancing steeds and jingling accoutrements, with bright colors and shining arms, going past the pasture, restoring for a time to the stiffening joints and dim eyes the suppleness and fire of bygone times, with visions of gallant charges and prancing reviews; or, how the same sentiment erects once more the bowed and withering frame of the old veteran, and one again fires his soul with the martial zeal of his prime as he sees the passing colors and active-stepping regiment which he followed in the bright sunshine and flush of his youth. Aside from these sentiments, which might possibly have inspired David and the Dutch burgomaster with an infusion of a new and transient good feeling, it is unquestionable but that some heated brickbats or stove-lids, curocoa jugs or old stone Burton ale-bottles filled with hot-water, would have been more effectual in imparting warmth than either Sunamite or Netherland maids.
It is hard to reconcile the beliefs of some people or nations with their manners and customs. For instance, there is the Turk; when a Jew becomes a Mohammedan he is made to acknowledge that Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, is the expected Messiah, and that none other is to be expected; they know of Christ's speech on the cross, made to the repentant thief; they believe in a heaven full of houris, with large black eyes and faces like the moon at its full, in which all good Moslems are to have continual rejoicings, and yet they go on performing the most barbarous and inhuman forms of castration imaginable, which not only deprives its victims of their virility, but subject more than three-fourths of those operated upon to a painful death, and the remaining to a life of continual misery. Have these poor subjects no right to future bliss, or in what shape will they reach there? If the heaves of these eunuchisers were like the heaven of Buddhism, or, as the Chinese call it, the Paradise of the West, were, although all forms of sensual gratifications are to be enjoyed, no houris are to be supplied to the saints of Buddhism, -as even the women who enter this paradise must first change their sex, -we might understand that, the genitals not being needed in the eternal world, it might be considered a matter of small moment to compel a man to go through this short and transient life without them; but where a robust condition of the sexual organs is suggested as one of the heavenly requisites, it would seem as if the Turk would look upon the suffering, misery, and death that they cause, in connection with the inhuman mutilation they inflict, with horror. Doctrinal theology, whether in the East or West, is something incomprehensible.
FROM: History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present, by P. C. Remondino, M.D. Philadelphia and London: F.A. Davis, Publisher, 1891, pp. 105 - 116.