He held the key of treasures which would have freed mankind from ages of error and misery.

With his discoveries as a basis, with his method as a guide, what might not the world have gained! Nor was the wrong done to that age alone; it was done to this age also.

The nineteenth century was robbed at the same time with the thirteenth.

But for that interference with science the nineteenth century would be enjoying discoveries which will not be reached before the twentieth century, and even later.

Thousands of precious lives shall be lost, tens of thousands shall suffer discomfort, privation, sickness, poverty, ignorance, for lack of discoveries and methods which, but for this mistaken dealing with Roger Bacon and his compeers, would now be blessing the earth.
In two recent years sixty thousand children died in England and in Wales of scarlet fever; probably quite as many died in the United States.