Great Doctors and Scientists As Free Masons*

Great doctors and scientists as free masons*

ERWIN H. ACKERKNECHT

During the summer of 1898, the nineteen year old Russian student Lew D. Bron• stein was retained in the prison of Odessa, where he, on his visits to the library, encountered works dealing with freemasonry. He was fascinated by the extension and contradictions of this, now, two and a half centuries old movement and he wrote a Marxist book on it. The manuscript was lost and Bronstein turned to other subjects. Under the name of LeoTrotski, he became together with W.I. Lenin, the author of one of the most fatal events in history: the Russian October Revolution of 1917. The fascination of the young man is not difficult to understand. The order has had six English and seven German kings in its ranks, including Frederic the Great. Many of the leaders of the American Revolution (Washington, Franklin, Jefferson) were also Masons, and so were at least fifteen presidents in the U.S.A. Freemason vocabulary was used in the Declaration of Independence, and military lodges existed during wars of revolutions and of states on both sides. Most of Napoleon's marshalls were freemasons, as well as their adversaries Wellington, Nelson, Gneisenau, BlUcher and Kutusow. The generals McArthur, Marshall and Bradley continued the conspicuous tradition of military masonry. During the French Revolution, freemasons acted as moderates (Condorcet, Lafayette), or as terrorists (Cauthon, Marat), but also as reactionaries (J. de Maistre, the brother of the king, and later Guizot and Decazes). In more recent times we know mason-statesmen like Gambetta, Stresemann, Cecil Rhodes, Churchill, Eugen Debs, Rob. La Follette and W.J. Bryan. Also leaders of national uprisings were often masons: Bolivar, Rizal, Kosziusko, Kossuth, Garibaldi and Chiang Kai-shek. Among prominent business leaders we only mention here Astor, Krupp and H. Ford. Famous mason writers were: Boswell, A. Pope, J. Swift, Rob. Burns, Sir Walter Scott, 0. Wilde, R. Kipling, Mark Twain and the whole classic school of German literature from Lessing to Goethe and Ruckert. As freemason musicians, we mention: Haydn, Mozart, Liszt and Sibelius. Last but not least: many great scientists and doctors, to be dealt with later in this article, were masons. And there still exist ten thousands of lodges in non-totalitarian countries 1• Such a movement seems to be an important historical phenomenon and it is amazing that professional historians have rarely tackled it. The majority of the more than 60,000 books on the subject are either accusations or apologies. Perhaps the historians who abstained from dealing with secretive masonry were wise, and I, as a 'profane', was unwise in yielding to the temptation to examine the facts at least in my speciality: the history of medicine and science. I hope to find lenient judges for this fragmentary experiment, and a few continuators.

Clio Medica, Vol. 17, Nos. 2/3, pp. 145-156

Freemasonry in the modem sense dates from John the Baptist's Day of 1717, when four London lodges united under a Grand Master to form the Grand Lodge of England. These lodges of 'speculative' masons originated from medieval guildlike structures of actual ('operative') masons. During the 17th century these lodges (like many other guilds in other places) 'accepted' more and more outsiders, non• masons. Clergymen had frequently been members before, as in the time of the cathedrals architects were often clergymen. Lawyers, doctors, officers, noblemen, businessmen etc. were added as 'accepted', or 'speculative' masons till the majority of the lodges' members were speculative masons. The best known of such 17th century additions in England are the alchemist Elias Ashmole and the many• side genius Sir Christopher Wren 2 • We do not need to discuss attempts to connect our forefather Adam, Hiram, the Gnostics, the quatuor coronati (martyrised in 298, because they refused to make a statue of Asclepius), the Knights Templar or the old Rosicrucians with the history of the masonic lodges, because these legends might be of high symbolic value, but lack historical foundation. The first Grand Masters of the London Grand Lodge were Anthony Sayer, George Payne and the physicist John Theophilus Desaguliers. With the Duke of Montagu (MD and FRS, died in 1749), an uninterrupted line of royal or noble Grandmasters started in 1721. In 1723 James Anderson, a Scotch clergyman and genealogist, published the famous 'Constitutions' for the Grand Lodge, which contained a number of 'Old Charges', masonic guild oaths (their form reminds us of the Hippocratic Oath). In 1724 the important committee of charity was started. In 1725, sixty-eight lodges had already joined the Grand Lodge. In 1729, the movement spread out abroad (first French Lodge 1729, first German Lodge 1737). In spite of the first papal edict against freemasonry in 1738 (the bull is maintained up to this day), the number oflodges increased rapidly everywhere3 • Although freemasonry is neither a political party nor a religion, it had in common with them its continuous scissions. In England the movement split into the so• called 'ancients' and 'modems' in 1751, to be reunited in 1815. Another source of division was the question of the High Grades (so-called Scottish rite, supposedly originating from the Templars), connected with the name of David Ramsey, a Jacobite refugee in France, who also promoted the idea of the Encyclopedie. During the eighteenth century, a number of other movements entered the lodges in order to use them for their own purposes, e.g. the Rosicrucians (alchemists), the Martinists (and other spiritists), the Illuminati (political reformers)4 • Even notorious crooks like Cagliostro founded lodges. In 1797, a French Jesuit emigre, abbe Barruel, needed five volumes to 'prove' on the basis of a number of hallu• cinations that the French and all other revolutions were a conspiracy of Free• masons (and jews). In spite of their absurdity, these lies (also used by the Nazis) never sank into oblivion.