by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
As the shrill siren echoed along the street, everyone knew they had to clear a path for the fire engine. It bustled and roared along, red and furious, to fight the fire in a hotel. Its crew, qualified and equipped, were bursting with adrenalin, knowing that their training in the science of fighting fires would save the lives of many people in what otherwise would have been a total disaster.
As we look back at history, we see that even the Romans had fire-fighting teams, but it was a Christian called James Braidwood who would turn this brave action into a scientific skill, and thus save many lives. Braidwood, who was born in Edinburgh, would go on to pioneer the world’s first municipal fire service in the city of his birth in 1824. Only six years later, after his team had battled the Great Fire of Edinburgh, he put together a manual on how to improve the methodology of fire-fighting, using the best available practice. It was this manual which would become the blueprint for the service in Britain and the world.
In 1832 he was given the task of heading up the London Fire Engine Establishment, and would be called upon to lead the fight against the huge blaze at the Palace of Westminster shortly after. It was there that he established London’s first full-time fire brigade. A memorial near St Giles’ in Edinburgh has a text with the words, “This statue is dedicated to the memory of James Braidwood, a pioneer of the scientific approach to fire-fighting… he developed new fire-fighting techniques, many of which are still used today.” His book, which was published after he died trying to save lives in a terrible fire at Tooley St in London, was entitled Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction (1866). He was so appreciated that his funeral procession was measured at about 1.5 miles long.
James Braidwood was a dedicated Christian whose inspiration for fire-fighting came from the prophet Zechariah in the Bible, who spoke of Joshua the high priest as “a brand plucked from the fire” (Zechariah 3:1-2, NKJV). For Braidwood, God’s calling for his life was to save as many people as he could from the fires of destruction, just as he believed the gospel of Christ could save people from the fire of hell. Using his skill, he determined to develop the scientific understanding of fire-fighting to increase the success rates of the firemen. The text on his tombstone in London has a Scripture: “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” (Revelation 14:13, KJV). His wife Mary, equally devout, chose the words of the famous hymn about Christ for when she would be buried alongside him ten years later:
“Just as I am without one plea,
But that Thy blood was shed for me.
And that Thou Bidst me come to Thee,
O Lamb of God, I come.”
Braidwood, concerned with both the physical care of people and their spiritual wellbeing in this heart-breaking work, made sure that Christian chaplains from London City Mission would be appointed to come alongside those in need. This was for both the firemen, their families, and the victims of fire who have survived, as well as the grieving families who have lost loved ones.
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image: James Braidwood (1800-1861): Grein at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
Robert William Thomson (1822-1873): Inventor of the Pneumatic Tyre
Every so often there is a mad scramble for the credit to be given to an inventor of something. Here in Scotland, we tend to think of John Boyd Dunlop of Dreghorn in Ayrshire as the inventor of the pneumatic tyre, which he patented in 1888, but he was beaten to this invention by another Scot. Robert Thomson of Stonehaven received a patent for what he called the “aerial wheel” in 1845, which was a hollow leather tyre surrounding a rubber tube filled with air. He demonstrated his invention in Regent’s Park in London in 1847, but Dunlop’s improved version proved to be cheaper. Both were Presbyterian Christians.
Robert Thomson’s inventive mind was not just applied to the pneumatic tyre. Among his patents were the fountain pen; steam boilers; steam omnibuses; applying steam power in agriculture; elastic wheel tyres; road steamers; the ribbon saw, and a host of other inventions or developments.
Revd Patrick Bell (1799-1869): Inventor of the Combine Harvester
From time to time, I love to stop and watch a combine harvester at work. What an extraordinary machine it is! Just think of all the labour it saves, and the efficiency with which it serves us. Taking the history of the development of the combine harvester back to its beginning, we arrive at Revd Patrick Bell, the minister of Carmyllie Parish Church in Scotland. Before his ordination he had worked on his father’s farm in Auchterhouse in Angus where he invented what he called the “reaping machine”, which in those days was pushed along by horses. By 1828 his invention was being used successfully in this area of Scotland.
Bell was more eager to use his skills for the benefit of humanity, than to make his name as an inventor; for this reason, he did not apply for a patent. It was the Americans, William Manning (1831) and Obed Hussey (1833) who copied Bell’s invention, receiving patents, and Cyrus McCormick (1834), an evangelical Christian who developed the machine more effectively, putting this technology on the agricultural map before the invention of traction engines from 1858-1880s, when motors began to replace horses.
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image 1: Robert William Thomson (1822-1873) and Kwik Fit for tyres: No machine-readable author provided. Taras assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
Image 2: Revd Patrick Bell (1799-1869) with his Reaping Machine, George Heriot Swanston, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In 2018 the £45 million Bayes Centre building was opened by HRH The Princess Royal. The University of Edinburgh is proud of its new addition, bringing into this building a collaboration of scientists, business people and the public, to pioneer advances in data science and artificial intelligence. The university website tells us that the Revd Thomas Bayes was “a statistician, philosopher and minister who came to Edinburgh to study logic and theology in 1719 [1719-1722]”. This Christian is “famous for Bayes’ Theorem, which provides an elegant and simple way of calculating how likely a certain hypothesis is, given some observed evidence.” The website goes on to say that Bayes’ Theorem “is considered by many to be that foundation of modern-day machine learning, one of the key methods used in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.” Bayes’ Theorem has been vital, not only in data science, computer programming and astrophysics, but also in medical and weather predictions, and for the Stock Exchange. Furthermore, it was Bayes’ Theorem that was used by Alan Turing in the Second World War to crack the German Enigma Code, and help win the war against tyranny.
Bayes was a modest English Presbyterian pastor who did not publish his papers. If it had not been for his friend and fellow church minister, Revd Richard Price, who made Bayes’ work public, his genius would have been buried. It has been suggested that Bayes was inspired by the logic of probability to try and refute David Hume’s writings against divine miracles, and provide evidence against naturalism and for creation. Bayes’ formula is found in his paper entitled An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances, and it is this which Revd Price used as another arrow in his theological quiver in the 1760s against Hume’s sceptical book, Of Miracles.
Today, many modern-day apologists for the Christian faith use the same logic, based on Revd Bayes’ Theorem, often without realising it. They might use the evidence of probability when discussing the existence of God with atheists who believe that life emerged by a purely naturalistic process. For example, John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford, wrote that “the probability of getting 100 amino acids in the correct order [by natural processes] would be (1/20)100, which is about 1 in 10130, and therefore vanishingly small.” Indeed, it is more than the calculated sum total of atoms in the universe, which is between 1078 and 1082. The problem of producing a “workable set of enzyme proteins”, by correctly assembling amino acids, would be even worse. “The odds against producing these by chance is more than 1040,000 to 1,” says Lennox.
Imagine a person winning a global lottery two weeks in a row. The world would be shocked at such incredibly good luck. Imagine that same person winning the global lottery every week for three weeks in a row. People everywhere would be saying that the result had been manipulated by someone. Now imagine that same person winning the global lottery every week for millions of years, and then try and persuade people that it all happened by chance! It’s no wonder that the astrophysicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, could state that it is as if “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics as well as chemistry and biology.”
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image: Revd Thomas Bayes (c.1701-1761): [2][3], Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
Having been born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, William Thomson (1824-1907) went on to study at the University of Glasgow, and then ended up being Professor of Physics at the same university from 1846, where he remained for fifty-three years. His great contribution to science was the formulation of the four Laws of Thermodynamics, which had a huge impact on the way we understand the universe. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but can be changed from one form to another. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is often called Entropy, which means that all systems in the universe, in a closed system, tend to move from order to disorder. Both of these laws together are powerful evidence of the universe having a beginning, but pointing to an outside power that began the process in the first place. This, of course, has metaphysical implications, which Thomson clearly understood as a dedicated Christian.
Thomson’s discovery of the absolute temperature scale of -273.15 degrees, when gas particles stop moving and the volume of gas becomes zero, was also another significant advance in scientific understanding. The unit on this scale has been named Kelvin, after William Thomson, Lord Kelvin.
In 1844, the American Christian, Samuel Morse, had invented telegraph communication. Thomson was appointed to supervise the laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable to America, for which he was knighted in 1866 by Queen Victoria. Besides this, he also patented about seventy inventions. During his lifetime he received twenty-one honorary doctorates and was appointed as President of the Royal Society in Edinburgh, with the later title of Baron Kelvin of Largs being granted to him in 1892. He is buried with honour in the nave of Westminster Abbey, as one of Britain’s most influential scientists, near to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton, another prominent Christian.
Thomson was a devout Christian and the Chairman of the Christian Evidence Society, who spoke out clearly against the rise of atheism in his day. As a Church of Scotland elder and leading scientist, his position was reported in The Times newspaper on 2nd May, 1903, in which he said: “Do not be afraid of being free thinkers. If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all Religion. You will find science not antagonistic, but helpful to Religion.”
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image: William Thomson (1824-1907), Lord Kelvin: T. & R. Annan & Sons, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
As a teenager I remember using the double-slit experiment to see how light behaves in physics; it is something that is staple diet in the science department of our education system. The pioneer of the double-slit experiment was an Englishman, Thomas Young (1773-1829). Young was a child prodigy: at the age of two he had learnt to read; by the age of four he had read through the Bible twice; and by the age of six he had already become a Latin scholar! He was so gifted that by the age of fourteen he had become a private tutor in the classics, and had mastered twelve languages. In 1792-1794 he went to the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, where he was known as “Phenomenon Young” because of his unique genius, and later became a doctor at St George’s in London and Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Royal Institution, focusing on physics.
It was while he was there in 1803 that he demonstrated before the Royal Society for the first time, that light behaves as a wave. Up until then scientists who followed Isaac Newton’s work thought that light only behaved as a particle. This critical discovery of Young, through his double-slit experiment, meant that light is now understood to act both as a particle and as a wave, mystifying physicists who like to have everything working in a smooth, orderly and predictable way. It was this discovery of the duality of light that has led to quantum physics, a branch of science pioneered by the German church deacon, Max Planck. Albert Einstein acknowledged Young in his preface to Isaac Newton’s Opticks in 1931, expressing that the critical discovery of Young’s wave-theory had to wait a hundred years.
Besides this, Thomas Young was one of the key scholars who began the process of decoding the Egyptian hieroglyphs after the archaeological discovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799. This large slab of stone was found in Egypt with three languages: Egyptian hieroglyphs; Egyptian demotic script; and Greek, the latter, being a known language, was the key to unlocking the mystery of the ancient Egyptian languages.
As a Christian he was shy about sharing his faith. He grew up as a Quaker and through his marriage to Eliza Maxwell, joined the Church of England. However, he believed that God had given him a sharp mind to be used for science, to advance understanding for the benefit of his fellow human beings. Henry Brougham from Edinburgh criticised some of his work on physics, but Young’s response was: “For the talents which God has not given me, I am not responsible, but those which I possess, I have hitherto cultivated and employed as diligently as my opportunities have allowed me to do; and I shall continue to apply them with assiduity, and in tranquillity, to that profession which has constantly been the ultimate object of all my labours.”
The Christian physicist, Sir David Brewster, wrote in the Edinburgh Journal of Science that Young’s “religious sentiments were by himself stated to be liberal, though orthodox. He had extensively studied the Scriptures, of which the precepts were deeply impressed upon his mind from his earliest years; and he evidenced the faith which he professed; in an unbending course of usefulness and rectitude.”
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image: Thomas Young (1773-1829): Henry Perronet Briggs, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
David Brewster (1781-1868) went to the University of Edinburgh from Jedburgh, at the age of twelve. In 1813 he presented his paper to the Royal Society on various scientific instruments, and on the evidence of 200 substances that can refract, or disperse light. As a result, he was welcomed into the fellowship of this society a few years later. During his life he won many top awards for his work in science. He invented the kaleidoscope and helped improve the stereoscope, but he is especially remembered for his work in optics, in which he discovered what became known as Brewster’s Law. He demonstrated that “a beam of light can be split into reflected and refracted portions at right angles to each other, both beams retaining full polarization.”It was this discovery that was critical in the development of laser technology later.
Besides this, Brewster also collaborated with the English Christian, William Henry Fox Talbot, in the invention of the calotype process in 1841, which meant fixing photographic images to paper by using silver iodine. Talbot had sought to demonstrate that he had produced the first proper photographic images by using the “salted paper” method, five years before Daguerre had applied for his patent in 1839. After his calotype process had been patented, Brewster encouraged two fellow Edinburgh Christians, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, to produce the world’s first photographic portraits in 1843. By 1850 they based their studio at Rock House, Calton Hill.
Brewster worked with indefatigable energy to support the growth of empirical science, raising financial provision for struggling researchers, editing and writing in the science sections of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and co-founding the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) in 1831 with fellow Christians, Revd Vernon Harcourt, Charles Babbage (Cambridge pioneer of the mechanical computer), William Whelwell, and James Finlay Weir Johnston, a Scottish Presbyterian and chemist who was sympathetic to the Free Church and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The agreed reason for the founding of the BAAS was to ensure that science moved forward using strict measures of empirical testing, and rejected pseudo-science. Furthermore, its founders were determined to see the Christian democratic model being introduced into science to prevent the well-to-do set dominating the field, as in the Royal Society, and to encourage and welcome good scientists, irrespective of their class status.
These Christian founders of the BAAS believed, as Babbage expressed it, “that the study of the works of nature with scientific precision, was a necessary and indispensable preparation to the understanding and interpreting their testimony of the wisdom and goodness of their Divine Author.” It was the BAAS that also hosted the famous debate between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Huxley, over Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in 1860 at Oxford.
When the Free Church broke away from the Church of Scotland at the Disruption of 1843, Brewster joined the Free Church and was a licensed preacher. He would rise early to pray and study his Bible, believing that a thorough testing of all things with both Scripture and science, was vital. Brewster spoke of his certainty of Christ and thought “it can’t be presumption to be SURE [of our forgiveness] because it is Christ’s work, not ours; on the contrary, it is presumption to doubt His word and work.” Before he died, he reiterated his strong faith. “I shall see Jesus,” he said, “and that will be grand. I shall see Him who made the worlds.”
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV).
Image: Sir David Brewster (1781-1868) on the Disruption Painting in the Presbytery Hall of Edinburgh Theological Seminary. The painting was done by David Octavius Hill. It took 23 years to complete. Photo taken by Paul James-Griffiths, courtesy of ETS.
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In a nation famous for scientific inventions and advancements, one person is voted regularly as Scotland’s greatest scientist ever: James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). Frequently three people are placed on the mantle-place of world scientific achievement: Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein. Einstein himself said, “I stand not on the shoulders of Newton, but on the shoulders of James Clerk Maxwell.”
Maxwell was born at 14 India St, Edinburgh, and attended the Edinburgh Academy. At the age of only 15, his paper was presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, entitled On the Description of Oval Curves, and those having a plurality of Foci. Following a degree in maths and science at the University of Edinburgh, he pursued further qualifications at the University of Cambridge. By 1856 he had become a Professor of Natural Philosophy (Science) at Marischal College in Aberdeen, as well as being appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Awards and promotions accompanied his career as he transferred to become Professor of Natural Philosophy at King’s College, London. It was there that he gave the world’s first demonstration of colour photography in 1861, and then his famous breakthrough in physics came three years later, with his presentation of the Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field. His “Maxwell Equations”, which combined light, magnetism and electricity, became the foundation stone for our technological advances: the inventions by others of the computer, X-ray machine, radio, television, and more, followed his great pioneering work.
Maxwell’s rise to prominence was so astounding that he was chosen as the first Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, and was asked to pioneer the Cavendish Laboratory. As a committed Christian he was keen to make sure that credit was given to God, so at his instigation Psalm 111:2 was inscribed above the door in Latin, with the translation in English being: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (KJV). It was the Cavendish Laboratory that produced J.J. Thomson, an Anglican Christian, who discovered the electron, Ernest Rutherford, who discovered the neutron, and the atheists Crick and Watson who decoded the DNA.
Maxwell was a church elder for much of his adult life, showing a humble and devout faith which was expressed in his regular and caring visits to those in hospital. This strong faith was reflected in a prayer which he had written for his personal use:
“Almighty God, who has created man in Thine own image, and made him a living soul that he might seek after Thee, and have dominion over Thy creatures, teach us to study the works of Thy hands, that we may subdue the earth to our use, and strengthen the reason for Thy service; so to receive Thy blessed Word, that we may believe on Him Whom Thou has sent, to give us knowledge of salvation and the remission of our sins. All of which we ask in the name of the same Jesus Christ, our Lord.”
He was repeatedly requested to become a member of the Victoria Institute, a society of Christian scholars and scientists. In March 1875 he received another request by the secretary, which again he turned down. He stated in his reply: “I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of.” When he was dying with stomach cancer, his last words to his pastor were, “I rest in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.”
Today, his name is honoured with the James Clerk Maxwell building being part of the prestigious King’s Buildings of the University of Edinburgh, and a statue of him was erected in George St in this city.
“Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them” (Psalm 111:2, KJV)
Image: The statue of James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879), on George St, Edinburgh. Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In 1872, Joseph Lister was becoming frustrated as he worked as the Professor of Clinical Surgery in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. This Christian had introduced antiseptics and hygiene in healthcare, and by now his methods were being introduced in many hospitals, saving the lives of countless people. However, right under his nose, he saw another kind of infection in the Royal Infirmary – that of the immorality and bad practice of the nurses. At his instigation, the hospital board appointed Deputy Surgeon General Charles Hamilton Fasson to liaise with Florence Nightingale, who had become famous during her nursing exploits among the wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and who became known as the “Lady with the Lamp”.
This dedicated Christian lady became the pioneer of modern nursing, teaching her students to be professionals with Christian values at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. When Fasson contacted her about the possibility of sending “Nightingale Nurses” to improve the nursing standards at the Royal Infirmary, she wrote in 1872: “Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We are going to undertake the nursing of this beastly “den of thieves”. (Nothing that I have ever known except the Vienna General Hospital approaches it in badness…).”Thus, a team of 17 Nightingale Nurses came up to Edinburgh, led by the English Quaker Christian, Elizabeth Barclay, to pioneer professional nursing in our capital, and set up the first Scottish school for training nurses. Although Barclay was the first Superintendent of the nurses, the stress of trying to deal with “the drinking, profligate (old) night nurses” and the uncooperative doctors, drove her nearly to a breakdown, and she resigned in the first year, in December 1873, leaving a vulnerable staff.
Florence Nightingale sent a powerful Christian rallying call to her team at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on 6 December, 1873. “My dear friends, our good nurses…”, she wrote, “What is His will for us nurses? I will not tell you how He likes His wards kept, for that you know right well, as well as I do. Nos.1,2,3-20 medical wards, and Nos. 1,2,3-20 surgical wards, are His wards, are they not? And all those patients in them are His patients, and we are His, His nurses… In nursing, each of us may be about her “Father’s business”, each in her degree, as Christ was.”
Florence chose Angélique Pringle (1846-1920) to replace Elizabeth Barclay as the superintendent of the nurses. Angélique had trained under Florence Nightingale at St Thomas’ in London in 1868, and was soon noticed for her exceptional qualities, becoming her favourite “disciple”. The other nurses endearingly called Angélique “Pearl”, for she was a pearl of great price in nursing. This young woman of 27 took the bull by the horns and turned Edinburgh Royal Infirmary nursing into a professional arm of Scotland’s healthcare, for which it became famous worldwide. She was a Scottish woman from Hawick, with a strong Christian faith, which can be seen in the motivational letters between her and Florence, as she led the work in Edinburgh between 1873 and 1887.
After her ground-breaking work in Edinburgh, Angélique was promoted, as Florence’s protégée, to being the Superintendent of the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St Thomas’ in London. However, she resigned under pressure in 1890, because she had converted to Roman Catholicism in an era that was still suspicious of this expression of church.
Her book, A Study of Nursing (1905), became an important influence in practical nursing, in which she also wrote that one of the important tasks of the nurse with dying patients is to “prepare them to enter the Dark Valley” and direct them to Christ, the light of the world. She also encouraged the nurses to attend regular prayer meetings at the hospital. A plaque has been dedicated to her inside the chapel at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
“I was sick and you looked after me” (Matthew 25:36, NIV).
Image: Angélique Lucille Pringle, (1846-1920), Display No.26, from the Florence Nightingale Museum Collection
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
In 1865 Britain was astir with a great controversy: a medical man called Dr James Barry was found upon his death to be a woman called Margaret Anne Bulkley. Margaret had been so desperate to practice medicine that she went to extraordinary lengths to hide her identity, deceiving almost everyone for 56 years. Going under the name of James Barry, she applied to the Edinburgh Medical School in 1809, to train to become a doctor because they would not accept women. She was nearly turned down because the board thought this applicant was a pre-pubescent boy whose voice had not broken. However, she was accepted and qualified as a doctor in 1812, passing her exam at the Royal College of Surgeons the next year. The same year that James Barry’s secret came to light in 1865, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson qualified as Britain’s first woman medical doctor.
After the disturbance concerning James Barry had died down, the discussion about women doctors grew. After all, the English woman, Elizabeth Blackwell, had become America’s first qualified medical doctor in 1849, and she had successfully pioneered the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her sister Emily in 1857. Elizabeth grew up as a cultural Episcopalian Christian, moved to the Quaker denomination, then slipped away into the Unitarian Church for a while, before coming full circle back to her Episcopalian roots as a committed Christian.
On her return to England, Elizabeth Blackwell practiced as a doctor and supported Sophia Jex-Blake who led the charge of the “Edinburgh Seven” to petition the government for women to be allowed to study medicine at the University of Edinburgh. These seven women became the first to study at a British university, in 1869. However, they were not allowed to practice as doctors until the UK Medical Act of 1876.
Jex-Blake was overjoyed and wrote to her friend, Lucy Sewell: “It is a grand thing to enter the very first British University ever opened to women, isn’t it?” Jex-Blake went on to pioneer the first college for training women in medicine in 1886, called the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women, but it closed in 1898 because of her ultra-disciplinarian approach. However, one of her pupils, called Elsie Inglis (1864-1917), was destined to develop a model that would last.
In 1889, Elsie Inglis co-founded the Edinburgh College of Medicine for Women, with the support of her father, John Inglis, and their friend Sir William Muir, the Principal of the University of Edinburgh. All three were evangelical Christians. The college began in 30 Chambers St, opposite the National Museum in Edinburgh, and it eventually merged with the School of Medicine of the Royal Colleges of Edinburgh in 1916. The original building of Elsie’s college was demolished in 1927 and a new building was erected as the Edinburgh Dental Hospital and College, also pioneered by Christians.
Elsie went on to become a successful surgeon and became the founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Services in 1914. By the end of World War I, her team had established 14 medical units with women doctors, nurses and staff, in Corsica, France, Malta, Romania, Russia, Salonika and Serbia. It has been estimated that through Elsie’s women staff, hundreds of thousands of people were saved during the war. The people of Serbia are especially grateful to her, with Denis Keefe, the UK ambassador to that country, stating, “In Scotland she became a doctor; in Serbia she became a saint.”
At her funeral in St Giles’ in Edinburgh, the Dean of the Thistle Chapel celebrated her life of service, saying “… her name is linked forever with the great souls who have led the van of womanly service for God and man.”
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: Elsie Inglis, photo by Lady Frances Balfour, CC BY 4.0 httpscreativecommons.orglicenses by 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
“Gardee loo!”came a shrill voice from one of the upper windows in a dark alleyway in Edinburgh’s Old Town. With little time given to step aside, the pedestrian sought to avoid the effluence hurled from above, and with an angry shout, he sought to clean his trousers of faeces and other nasties that had splattered on him. Welcome to old Edinburgh! Much of the stench in the city, which gave it the unenviable name of Auld Reikie, came from the thick smoke from the abundant chimneys; but this other stench was stomach-wrenching and disease-ridden, a breeding-ground for plagues. According to Professor MacLennan of the Royal Infirmary, eleven plagues stalked the crowded apartments and houses in the Old Town, between 1349 and 1645, leaving a death toll of between 20% and almost 50% of the population at various times. However, it was not just these plagues, but the epidemics of cholera, smallpox, typhoid and diphtheria, which destroyed the lives of multitudes later in the 19th century.
Back in 1761 Revd John Wesley the revivalist could cry, “How long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea, and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common sewer? Will no lover of this country, or of decency and common sense, find a remedy for it?” Wesley’s cry would be answered in 1865 through a fellow Christian, Sir Henry Littlejohn (1828-1914), an elder at St Giles’. Three years earlier he had been appointed as the first Municipal Medical Officer in Scotland. With precise research he mapped out the city, painstakingly collecting accurate statistics about the sanitary conditions, and presenting the evidence and solutions for a new sanitary system to the leaders of the nation with a shrewd confidence. In his 120-page Report he had analysed the social and sanitary conditions of over 1,000 streets, closes and tenements. His careful data had demonstrated that disease spread most virulently in the crowded hovels of poverty.
Readily assisting him were the missionaries, especially from Edinburgh City Mission (ECM), who were the social workers of that period. Bailie Pollard, being one of the directors of ECM, became the natural bridge between the missionaries and the town council later in 1896, with the development of the revolutionary and new underground sanitation system, as he was appointed Chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Town Council. This was legally enacted the following year as part of the Public Health Act (Scotland).
Henry Littlejohn’s Report of the Sanitary Condition of the City of Edinburgh (1865), was shocking and revealing, but it led to a transformation of our sanitary conditions in Edinburgh and Scotland, with doctors being required to report cases of early disease on their districts, and the establishment of Fever Hospitals to quarantine and care for the infected people. Besides this, the town council, on the advice of Littlejohn, implemented a revolutionary programme of urban regeneration. This included not only an underground sewage system, but a cleaner, more efficient water supply, food hygiene regulations, waste disposal, legal building standards and the demolition of many houses which were deemed to be in the worst slums. These were replaced with Victorian houses for the poor, specifically designed on wider streets.
Sir Henry Littlejohn’s work became a model to many other cities in the world to copy, thereby saving the lives of millions, and he was frequently requested to advise the British government on issues of public health. Besides this vital work, he was the first person to correctly link cigarette smoking with lung cancer, 62 years before the Royal College of Surgeons issued their report. He was also the co-pioneer of forensic science, with another Edinburgh Christian, Sir Joseph Bell.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: Sir Henry Littlejohn (1828-1914): [1], CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
Although American surgeons had had limited success in surgical kidney transplants in the 1950s, credit for the first successful kidney transplant in the UK goes to Michael Woodruff. It was in 1960 that he performed the first kidney transplant from a living donor in Edinburgh, through an identical adult twin.
Michael Woodruff (1911-2001) was born of English parents in London, but the family moved to Australia two years later so his father, a Methodist Christian, could pursue his career as Professor of Veterinary Pathology and Director of the Veterinary Institute at the University of Melbourne. Woodruff studied electrical engineering and maths at the same university, but then chose to pursue a medical degree there, eventually becoming a surgeon at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. During World War II he was a captain in the Medical Corp at the Singapore General Hospital, but when Singapore fell to the Japanese, he was taken, along with many British soldiers, to Changi Prison Camp. It was here that his ingenious enterprise of extracting nutrients from grass, soya beans, rice polishings and agricultural waste, was the means of saving many lives by replenishing vital vitamins among the poorly fed prisoners.
After the war, Woodruff moved back to England where he worked in Sheffield for a short while. He applied for the post of Senior Lecturer in the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, which included the appointment of Honorary Consultant in surgery to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. It was in Edinburgh, however, that his great breakthrough came when he surgically removed a healthy kidney from a twin to replace the faulty one in his brother. The kidney operation went well for six years, and then the donor died, but of coronary thrombosis; the recipient twin died soon after from stomach cancer. “Between 1960 and 1976,” wrote Woodruff, “127 patients with end-stage renal failure were treated by kidney transplantation in Edinburgh.” As a result of his pioneering work, he was knighted.
In his autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win (1996), Sir Michael Woodruff wrote a whole chapter entitled The Faith of a Scientist,in which he sought to combine his Christian faith with that of a leading medical scientist; for him, both complemented each other. His faith came alive at the University of Melbourne when he joined the Australian Student Christian Movement (ASCM) and would remain with him throughout his life. “Many students, especially perhaps those reading science, dismiss religious belief as superstition,” he wrote, “others – and their number appears to be increasing – seem content to oscillate between two different views of reality without trying to unify them. For me, and many of my generation, however, the question of whether religious belief, and in particular Christian belief, is compatible with scientific knowledge, was of great concern… I record here that it was through contact with the ASCM that I arrived at an affirmative answer.”
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: Sir Michael Woodruff (1911-2001), Wikipedia Public domain
by Paul James-Griffiths | Mar 28, 2024 | The Nineteenth Century Awakening
An example of the way in which Christianity was hugely significant in developing healthcare, can be seen by what happened with the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, one of Scotland’s leading hospitals. One of the students from Scotland who studied under the Christian, Hermann Boerhaave, in the Medical School at the University of Leiden, was John Munro. Inspired by Boerhaave’s model he became the catalyst and mover for a charity hospital in Edinburgh when he produced a plan in 1720. The project for the hospital was supported by the Royal College of Physicians, who had already been giving free health care for the poor, the Incorporation of Surgeons and Apothecaries, and the University of Edinburgh, represented by his son Alexander Munro, who was the Professor of Anatomy there. After discussions, the leading group of men wrote that “As men and Christians we have the strongest inducements and even obligations to this sort of charity as it is warmly recommended and enjoined in the gospel.” As such, they were also following the vision laid out in the Reformers’ First Book of Discipline of 1560.
With funding from the stock holders of the Fishery Company and donations from private individuals, alongside the support of numerous Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches, the Hospital for the Sick Poor was established at the head of Robertson’s Close on 6th November, 1729, which was run by six surgeon-chemists. Seven years later, in 1736, King George II granted it a Royal Charter, and it was named the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
By the late 1730s it was soon realised that this hospital was far too small, and plans were made to build a bigger, and better one. Alexander Munro and the Lord Provost, George Drummond, led the movement to raise funding for this new hospital. After going through a crisis of faith because of personal issues, he was warmed by the preaching of the evangelical minister, Revd Alexander Webster of the Tolbooth Kirk, who encouraged him in the process of building the new infirmary, and so the funding drive began; Drummond remarked “The Lord gives remarkable success to all our applications.”Of those who gave funding there were many wealthy individuals, but again, a powerful support came from the churches, including the special fundraising of George Whitefield the evangelist. In 1741 the new Royal Infirmary was opened with 228 beds.
When the Christian, Joseph Lister, was the leading Professor of Surgery at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh in the 19th century, he was keen to see that the standards of hygiene were kept sharp at the hospital. However, he deplored the poor quality of the nurses there who were badly trained. At his instigation the hospital board appointed Deputy Surgeon General Charles Hamilton Fasson to liaise with Florence Nightingale, who had become famous during her nursing exploits among the wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and became known as the “Lady of the Lamp”. This dedicated and unorthodox Christian lady became the pioneer of modern nursing, teaching her students to be professionals at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. When Fasson contacted her about the possibility of sending “Nightingale Nurses” to improve the nursing standards at the Royal Infirmary, she replied in 1872: “Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We are going to undertake the nursing of this beastly “den of thieves”. (Nothing that I have ever known except the Vienna General Hospital approaches it in badness…)”Thus, a team of Nightingale Nurses came up to Edinburgh, led by the Quaker Christian, Elizabeth Barclay, to pioneer professional nursing in our capital and set up the first Scottish school for training nurses in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
At the instruction of the Lord Provost, Thomas Boyd, a new site was again found for this hospital in 1879, and it opened at Lauriston Place, near the university. Only recently was a new Royal Infirmary built in Little France on the outskirts of Edinburgh in 2003. The Royal Hospital for Sick Children (popularly known as the Sick Kids hospital) at Sciennes in Edinburgh, moved to a new building at the Royal Infirmary in 2019, making it one of the top medical facilities for children in the world. This hospital for children was founded in 1859 through the tireless work of the Christian dental surgeon, John Smith, and by a board, which was chaired by the Revd Dr James Hodson, Rector of The Edinburgh Academy. The hospital opened the following year. Its first surgical ward was begun by the Christian, Sir Joseph Bell, famous, along with another Edinburgh Christian, Sir Henry Littlejohn, for pioneering forensics and being the inspiration behind Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes’ character.
“Heal the sick…” (Matthew 10:8, NKJV).
Image: The Old Surgical Hospital, Drummond St, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh: Kim Traynor, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
