In the heat of sectarian feeling
the new remedy was stigmatized as "an invention of the devil";
and so strong was this opposition that it was not introduced into
England until 1653, and even then its use was long held back,
owing mainly to anti-Catholic feeling.
What the theological method on the ultra-Protestant side
could do to help the world at this very time is seen in the fact
that, while this struggle was going on, Hoffmann was attempting
to give a scientific theory of the action of the devil in causing
Job's boils. This effort at a _quasi_-scientific explanation which
should satisfy the theological spirit, comical as it at first
seems, is really worthy of serious notice, because it must be
considered as the beginning of that inevitable effort at
compromise which we see in the history of every science when it
begins to appear triumphant.[[62]]
But I pass to a typical conflict in our days, and in a
Protestant country. In 1847, James Young Simpson, a Scotch
physician, who afterward rose to the highest eminence in his
profession, having advocated the use of anaesthetics in
obstetrical cases, was immediately met by a storm of opposition.
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