Chapter VII: The Man of Science

The Doctor admires certain of his scientific colleagues greatly: he is candidly a hero-worshipper. “I love Cushing and Finney,” he says outspokenly of the noted Harvard and Johns Hopkins surgeons. A clinic by Dr. George de Schweinitz or an operation by Dr. John B. Deaver is a rare treat to him. Sir Frederick Treves, the great English surgeon, has been among his closest friends since Grenfell served under him in a London hospital: he has leaned on him always for perceptive advice and sympathy unfailing. It is one of the paramount satisfactions of his life to meet other minds in his profession that stimulate his own. In the ceaseless round of his activities little time is left him to read books: but if he could he would enjoy no pastime more than to browse in a well-chosen library. The victories of science hold for him the fascination of romance.

The discovery of the electron, in his opinion, might make it possible to have an entire city in which every material substance should be invisible. “There is no reason why the forces in action should make a visible city. We believe today in the unity of matter. It has almost been demonstrated that we can turn soda into copper. Uranium passes into radium. Carrel is growing living protoplasm outside the body. Adami has shown how an electric stimulus applied to the ovum of frogs produces twins. The electron is the manifestation of force.

“It is almost certain that there is no such thing as physical life. No matter could exist without movement—the sort of movement you behold when the spinthariscope throws the radiations from bromide of radium on a fluorescent screen. If there is no physical life, there is no death. So many things exist that we do not see. We cannot see ether or weigh it, but we know that it exists. There is a physical explanation of the resurrection. The whole universe is incessant motion, just as sound is vibration—the ordinary C with 256 vibrations, the octave with 512, the next octave with 1,024 vibrations to the second.

“Tin is a mass of whirling electrons. Gold is composed of a different number of electrons. That’s why we can’t cross from one to the other.”

It is not quite fair to put down these random remarks, on an extremely abstruse matter—thrown over the Doctor’s shoulder as he flits about a village, the dogs at his heels—without quoting his more deliberate formulation of his ideas in an article in “Toilers of the Deep.” In that article he writes:

“If chemistry of today has made it certain that there is no such thing in the human body as a transcendental entity called ‘life,’ and every function and every organ of the body can be chemically or physically accounted for, then it is obvious that we have no reason to weep for it. More infinitely marvellous the more we learn of it, so marvellous that no one can begin to appreciate it but the man of science, it helps us to realize how easily He who clothed us with it can provide another equally well adapted to the needs of that which awaits us when we go ‘home.’ We have learned to enlarge our physical capacities, our ‘selves,’ the microscope, the ultramicroscope, the spectroscope, the electroscope, the spinthariscope, the ophthalmoscope, the fluoroscope, the telescope, and other man-made machines have made the natural range of the eye of man a mere bagatelle compared with what it now commands and reveals. The microphone, the megaphone, the audophone, the wireless and other machinery have as greatly enlarged our command of the field of sound. Space has been largely conquered by electric devices for telephoning, telegraphing, and motor power. On the land, under the sea, in the air, man is rapidly acquiring a mastery that is miraculous.

“The marvels of manufacture are miracles. Machinery can now do anything, even talk and sing far beyond the powers of normal human capacities. The plants and animals of normal nature can be improved beyond recognition. The old deserts are being forced to blossom like roses; the most potent governing agencies of the life of the body, like adrenalin, can be made from coal tar. Seas are linked by broad water pathways, countries are united by passages through mountains and under the water. We can see through solid bodies, we can weigh the stars in balances, we can tell their composition without seeing them. We can describe the nature and place of unseen heavenly bodies, and know the existence and properties of elements never seen or heard of. We know that movement is not a characteristic of life, unless we are to believe that the very rocks are alive, for we can see that it is movement alone that holds their ultimate atoms together.

“The mere ‘Me,’ the resultant of all past and present influences on the ‘I,’ is so marvellous, that we must find it ever increasingly impossible to conceive that we are the products of blind chance, or the sport of a cruelty so horrible as to make the end one inconceivable tragedy.

“No, if science teaches that there is no entity called ‘life,’ and it seems to do so, I for my part gladly accept it as yet another tribute at the feet of the Master Builder who made and gave my spirit—mine, if you please—a spirit so insignificant, so unworthy, such an unspeakable gift as that of a body with capacities such as this one, to be the mechanical temple and temporary garment of my spirit, and to offer me a chance to do my share to help this wonderful world. ‘No life,’ says science, ‘there is no life.’ But a knowledge more reliable than current knowledge, that entered the world with the advent of man, and that has everywhere in every race of mankind been in the past his actually most valued possession, replies ‘Yes, and there is no death either.’”

One day his morning greeting was: “Nitrogen is gone!” “Too bad!” I said. “You can search me. I haven’t got it.” “I mean,” he explained, “that here in this copy of the ‘Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’ Sir Ernest Rutherford sets forth the theory that the molecule of nitrogen is a helium universe with hydrogen for its satellites and helium as the sun.” He was almost as much interested in the discovery as if it were a hole in the bottom of his boat.

“I’ve just been reading a magazine article on the subject of psychic research by Booth Tarkington,” he added presently. “It’s well written and exceedingly interesting. Most men of science have been convinced of the reality of the spiritual body.”

He is an artist of no slight attainment and in his home at St. Anthony specimens of his handicraft abound, but not obtrusively. Dr. Grenfell never puts anything that he is or has done on view to be admired.

He is a keen ornithologist, and even when he is at top speed to get back to his boat and weigh anchor he will pause to note the friendly grackles hopping about a wharf or the unfettered grace of the gyrations of the creaking gulls. He is a collector of butterflies. “I was out driving with a man who didn’t see the butterflies and had no interest in them. Just think what such a man misses in his life!”

He also collects birds’ eggs, flowering plants (many of which have been named at Cambridge), seaweed and shells. The great book he wrote and edited on Labrador gives a clear idea of his interest in the geology as well as the fauna and flora of the region.

I found him the last thing at night at St. Anthony trying to discover why one of a pair of box kites he had made wouldn’t remain aloft as it should.

He is perpetually acquisitive and inquisitive: the diversity of his interests rivals the appetite of Roosevelt for every sort of information. Sir Frederick Treves mourned that a great surgeon was lost to London when Grenfell embarked on the North Sea to the healing and helping of fishermen. But Grenfell has become much more than a great surgeon. With all that he is and does, he gives to every part of his almost boundless field of interests a careful, methodical, analytic intellect. Haste and the constant pressure of his over-driven life have not made him superficial. He sets a sail with the same care he gives to the setting of a compound fracture: he is of the number of those who believe that there is but one right way to do everything. Of such is the kingdom of science and of inestimable service.