I do not now recollect that
I heard Bard express any opinion as to a future state of existence. In
that particular he was probably an agnostic. When in later years I saw
a plaster cast of the head of Voltaire at the Cambridge Museum of
Comparative Anatomy, I was impressed with the resemblance between
Bard's head and that cast.
His success as a physician was due probably to his ingenuity and keen
powers of observation rather than to his learning. All his faculties
were active, and he appreciated the importance of the laws of progress.
When homeopathy had taken some hold upon public opinion, he said:
"There is nothing in it, but then it has done a great deal of good. It
has taught us not to give so much medicine. We killed a great many
people with medicine, but it is several years now since I killed a
man." This remark was made in 1842 or 1843.
In my boyhood the Rev. David Damon was the minister. He was a graduate
of Harvard College, a man of learning, of good standing in the
profession, and a satisfactory preacher. His temper was mild, and it
was not easy for Bard to engage in bitter contests with him. Mr. Damon
left Lunenburg about 1827, and settled in West Cambridge, where he died
suddenly in the pulpit. Among the constant attendants upon Mr. Damon's
Sunday services at Lunenburg was a blacksmith named Kimball, who was
afflicted with deafness.
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