The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-12-12
THE ATHEISTS MASS.
PART 1.-THE MYSTERY.


 It is we'll known that Dr Btanchon, to whom medical science is indebted for a noble theory of physiology, and who. while still young man, secured posi-. ton among the leading lights of the Yorld.renoSned Ecole de Paris, prac- ticed surgery for many years ere he finally devoted himself exclusively 10 medicine. His first tutor in the former branch of the healing art was one of our great French surgeons. the illustrious Deiplein, whose professional career may be aptly likened to that of a meteor, which traverses the starry sky, and dis. appears forever, leaving no trace of it's orilliance behind it, For even Desplen's enemies admit that his method was in- trausmissible, and perlshed with him.
 Like all the sons of genius, he had no heirs his special gift, were born with him, and with him they died. Indeed, the glory oi the great surgeon resembles that of the great actor, which lives only while he lives to tread the stage. and dwindles to a mere tradition when he de- parts. Actors and surgeons, like those great singers and virtuosi whose brilliant execution decuples the power of music, are, each and all of them, the heroes oi an hour. Desplein's fate is a striking proof of this similarity between the des tinies of these transitory geniuses. His name, yesterday so celebrated, to. day we'll nigh forgotten, will henceforth be unknown beyond the narrow limits of his specially. And, in truth, exception al iu- deed must be the circumstances under which the reputation of a savant tran scends the boundaries of science and 6nds place in the general history ot mankind But did Desplein possess that encyclopedia kno ~ledge which renders man the voice or the figure of his age ? Desplein was endowed with superhu man sweep and depth of vision. An in tuition. native or acquired, enabled him to read the patient and his malady through, to seize the disgn sites peculiar to the individual, and to determine the very hour, nay, the very moment, when - atmospherical and temperamental inAu- ences duly considered and allowed for any given operation ought to be per- formed. How did he contrive thus to keep sten with nature2 Was it that he had studied the constantly proceeding combination of the living organism with those elementary materials which man receives from the air ana from the earth. and works up into the form peculiar to each individual2 Or did he rely upon that powerful process of deduction and analogy which was the special feature of Cuviers intellect2 Be this as it may, Desplein had succeeded in making him. self the con6dant of the flesh, and learned to decipher its future and its past from the aspect of its present condition. But vas he, like Hippocrates, GAlen, and Aristotle, the living incarnation of the learning of his timer Dld he lead a whole school of followers toward new and undiscovered worlds2 No. Although 1t cannot be denied that this perpetual observer of the chemistry of the hum an body was familiar with the old world science of .magism "-in other words, the knowledge of the elements in . state of fusion, of tho sources of lie, of life antecedent to life, of incipient or germi- nal existence-it must in justice be con. , tessed that he was, unfortunately, the vesy embodiment of persouality and the 1gotism which isolated him during his