e alchemists, but really
dealing a terrible blow at the beginning of chemical science. He
therefore called on all rulers, secular and ecclesiastical, to hunt
down the miscreants who thus afflicted the faithful, and he especially
increased the power of inquisitors in various parts of Europe for this
purpose." It will be seen that, as I have said, Dr. Cruikshank's words
are almost a verbatim quotation from this paragraph. It is true that
he has strengthened the expressions quite a little and added some
trimmings of his own, still I suppose his expressions could be
justified if those of President White had a foundation in fact. A
little comparison of the two sets of phrases will show how a history
lie grows as it passes from pen to pen. _Crescit eundo_--like rumor,
it increases in size as it goes.

In defense of this passage in the History of the Warfare of Science
with Theology in Christendom, Dr. White wrote a letter of reply to Dr.
Cruikshank, which was incorporated into Dr. Cruikshank's response to
my article in the Medical Library and Historical Journal. I presume
that this was done with Dr. White's permission. {123} In this letter
he admitted that Pope John's decretal had no such significance as he
originally claimed for it, but he still maintained his previous
opinion, that this decretal, like Boniface's bull for anatomy, had
actually prevented, or at least greatly hampered the study of
chemistry. To this I replied with a brief story of chemistry in the
fourteenth century, and though that article was published more than a
year ago, no admission has been made and nothing further has been
published on the subject. The material of the reply to Dr. White, to
which as yet there has been no answer, is comprised in this chapter.

As I have already hinted, the most surprising thing about this
citation of a Papal decree forbidding chemistry, is that it proves on
investigation to be founded on just exactly the same sort of
misinterpretation of a Papal document as happened with regard to
anatomy. The bull of Pope Boniface VIII. forbidding the boiling of
bodies and their dismemberment for burial in distant lands, did
nothing to hinder the progress of anatomy, had no reference to any
preparations required for dissection, and was not misinterpreted in
any such sense until the nineteenth century, and then only for the
purpose of discrediting the Popes and their relations to science. Pope
Boniface's bull, far from being harmful i