I am not a doctor, a medical expert, a scientist, nor a historian of science and medicine. Like most people, I have to rely on others – on various experts in the relevant fields. So when it comes to controversial issues in science and medicine, I have to read and study as best I can, trying to form my own views on certain topics. The contentious issue of vaccinations is clearly one such topic. I make no claim to being any sort of expert on anything related to this. I can only draw upon what others have said, try to weigh up the evidence, and proceed from there.

That modern science, including modern medicine, in large measure grew out of the Judeo-Christian worldview has been documented by many experts. As to science in general, the words of Rodney Stark are worth recalling: “Science was not the work of Western secularists or even deists; it was entirely the work of devout believers in an active, conscious, creator God.”

Or as John Lennox wrote: “Galileo, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, Babbage, Mendal, Pasteur, Kelvin, and Clerk-Maxwell were all theists, most of them Christians. Their belief in God, far from being a hindrance to their science, was often the main inspiration for it.”

People like Alfred North Whitehead and Robert Oppenheimer – neither of them Christian – have emphasized the importance of  the Christian worldview in the development of modern science. So it should be no surprise that in the area of medicine, Christians have tended to lead the way as well. Here are just a few names that can be mentioned:

Many very important discoveries in many medical fields were made by people who held a Christian commitment and there is not room to mention them all here: William Harvey (circulation), Jan Swammerdam (lymph vessels and red cells) and Niels Stensen (fibrils in muscle contraction) were all people of faith, while Albrecht von Haller, widely regarded as the founder of modern physiology and author of the first physiology textbook, was a devout believer; Abbe Spallanzani (digestion, reproductive physiology), Stephen Hales (haemostatics, urinary calculi and artificial ventilation), Marshall Hall (reflex nerve action) and Michael Foster (heart muscle contraction and founder of Journal of Physiology) were just some among many others.

The same can be said of the advance of surgical techniques and practice. Ambroise Pare abandoned the horrific use of the cautery to treat wounds and made many significant surgical discoveries and improvements. The Catholic Louis Pasteur’s discovery of germs was a turning point in the understanding of infection. Lister (a Quaker) was the first to apply his discoveries to surgery, changing surgical practice forever. Davy and Faraday, who discovered and pioneered the use of anaesthesia in surgery, were well known for their Christian faith, and the obstetrician James Simpson, a very humble believer, was the first to use ether and chloroform in midwifery. James Syme, an excellent pioneer Episcopalian surgeon, was among the first to use anaesthesia and aseptic techniques together. William Halsted of Johns Hopkins pioneered many new operations and introduced many more aseptic practices (eg rubber gloves), while William Keen, a Baptist, was the first to successfully operate on a brain tumour. www.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=article&id=827

One also thinks of things like modern nursing, and famous names such as Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale. Numerous books could be appealed to here which tell this story more fully. Let me mention just one book that is worth reading in this regard.

Consider Physicians, Plagues and Progress: The History of Western Medicine from Antiquity to Antibiotics by English historian Allan Chapman (Lion, 2016). In some 500 pages and in great detail, he offers us a fascinating tour of how medicine has developed, and the Christian connection to it.

He of course acknowledges other foundation stones, but Christianity did have a major role to play: “If Greek independence and intellectual curiosity supplied one foundation for a specifically Western style of medicine, I would argue that the Judeo-Christian religion supplied another.”

There is plenty one could share from this book but let me focus on just one aspect. Given all the controversy today over things like vaccines, let me look just a bit at some of the figures – including devout Christians – who were involved in this from early on.

One of the key players was the devout English physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823). He was involved in creating the world’s first vaccine, the smallpox vaccine. It “caused a sensation. Here was a simple, cheap, quick method, using easily accessible ingredients, that had the power of conferring lifelong immunity against one of the most feared scourges of the age.”

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