Medicine holds a great place in unbelieving societies. The more man moves away from Christian truths, the more he clings to life.  Whether he believes he is reserved for nothingness, whether the thought of another life sometimes comes to torment him, living for a long time is his main business; for his nature abhors nothingness, and his conscience is afraid of eternity.
He fears illness not only because it is the deprivation of enjoyment, the only happiness to which he knows how to aspire, not only because it is pain (the price of which he does not know and against which his soul is without strength), but because it is the announcement or the threat of this death which is going to either destroy him like a vile animal, or perhaps deliver him imperishable and defiled to the judgments of the supreme justice. As long as he is well, he is willingly sceptical and irreverent towards the art of healing, [but] at the first shiver, medicine becomes his only hope. He puts himself into its hands, docile to the point of cowardice, credulous to the point of stupidity.

The cult of medicine knows no atheist among those who deny everything else. How many of these strong spirits do we not see?  Superb mockers of religious practices and abstinence, who, once afflicted with a real or imaginary evil, become sober, continent, flee the world and business, make retreats in the country to the countryside and pilgrimages to the baths, go far away to consult scientists and hypnotists, wear a piece of camphor as a scapular on their person or some bottle of perfume as a scapular!  There is nothing that the doctor cannot get from them. This body that inspires them with so much worry, they subject to painful treatments. They pay for and swallow the most infamous drugs without a murmur, they guard the prison, they beat the countryside with forced marches, they flog themselves, they go into exile, they immerse themselves in icy or putrid waters. What would they not do?

If the doctor told them to spend two hours every day on their knees on the flagstones, in front of a lighted candle, they would certainly clutter up our churches and force the State to build new ones!