Conversion by example

Doctor became Catholic after watching church workers fight cholera

This story is particularly interesting because it tells of the conversion of a man who was very much an intellectual, but who was first moved to conversion by the example of the Catholics around him rather than by an intellectual appeal.

William Edmonds Horner, who as a medical student and doctor treated soldiers wounded in the War of 1812, was so impressed with the work of Catholic priests and nuns during a cholera epidemic that he became a Catholic himself.

This year's bicentennial of the War of 1812 provides a time to remember Horner, dean of the Medical School of Pennsylvania for 30 years, who wrote the first pathology textbook printed in America and discovered a muscle in the eye that is named for him.

For full story see The B.C. Catholic website.