4.31 Europe: a.d. 1701 to 1800  (Page 19/28)

As to philosophy and religion, Britain preceded continental Europe both in the collapse of the old feudal system and the near collapse of the Christian religion. The Established Church was rent by all varieties of dissenting sects and perhaps hit hardest of all by the campaign of the Deists to reduce Christianity to a belief in God and immortality only.

Thomas Woolston, Matthew Tendal, Conyers Middleton and others wrote, spoke and ridiculed. The upper classes were predominately counter-religious and the lower classes in great part had no religion at all, even though there were state penalties for being absent from church, a statute seldom enforced. Not more than 5 or 6 members of the House of Commons went to church. The Anglican clergy seldom mentioned heaven or hell and stressed social virtues rather than other-worldliness. In this setting flowered Methodism, founded by John and Charles Wesley, with a few friends, especially George Whitefield, as they organized a little group of 15 students and teachers at Oxford, resolved to practice Christianity with "Methodical" thoroughness. All were devout Anglicans and most became Anglican clergy. On a trip to Georgia as a missionary, John was impressed by the piety and creed of some Moravian Brothers and soon adopted some of their intensity and ideas. In the next few years, Whitefield's and John Wesley's emotional oratory and preaching and Charles' hymns took over lower class England for Methodism. They preached essentially the old Puritan Creed with the message of sin and repentance, a faith based on fear, not love, but they gave an ethical code that shared in the moral rehabilitation of England in the 2nd half of the century. By the time of John Wesley's death there were 79,000 followers in England and 40,000 in the United States. By 1957 there were 40,000,000 Methodists all over the world. Methodism placed all hopes on faith in the great conflict between reason and faith. (Ref. 54 ) By the end of the 18th century there were 20,000 Jews in London, hated and given little or no opportunities. (Ref. 260 )

Literature and music continued to flourish. In addition to the early century writers mentioned at the beginning of this section, there were Henry Fielding, who wrote the well known Tom Jones in 1730, Thomas Gray, known particularly for his "Elegy in a Country Courtyard", the caustic Samuel Johnson, and the transplanted Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume. We should not omit mention of Handel's music

The first medical school in London was founded by William Hunter, interested primarily in dentistry and obstetrics. His delivery of various members of the royal family helped to raise obstetrics from its medieval obscurity. William's brother, John Hunter, was even more famous as a surgeon and was a student of two other famous surgeons, William Cheselden and Percival Pott. John Hunter developed a method of closing off an aneurysm, thus preventing the necessity for amputation of limbs of thousands of soldiers and civilians. The surgeons finally achieved equality with their traditional rivals, the physicians. Most prominent among the latter was William Heberden, who described angina pectoris and nodules of osteoarthritis of the fingers, which still bear his name. The most important drug development was digitalis, used for "dropsy" by William Withering in 1785. James Lind, a British naval surgeon, proved the efficacy of fresh lemons and oranges in curing scurvy in 1753, but the Admiralty did not act until 1795 and even then used cheap, West Indies' limes (rather than the Mediterranean variety), and these lacked the necessary Vitamin C. Thus, scurvy outbreaks continued on British ships for another 100 years, although the mortality rate did decrease. (Ref. 125 , 211 )