Daily tobacco leaf-chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1890-1895, 1890-04-21

AN ELOQUENT SERMON PREACHED
BY REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE.


Lame Walk, the Lepers Are Cleansed and
the Deaf Hear" the Text Of the Doctors
Remarks April go.
BROOKLYN, April 20-The audiences DR..
Talmage has had on Sunday evenings, since
the burning of the Tabernacle drove his con
gregation to the shelter of the Academy Of
Music, have been something phenomenal.
This evening the spacious building was filled
in, every part. The popular preacher dis
coursed on the profession of healing His
text was Matthew xi, 8; THE blind receive
their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear.n He said;
doctor" said to distinguished surgeon,
do you not get worn out with constantly
seeing SO many wounds and broken bones and
distortions of the human bodyf' ooh, no,n
he answered; "all that is overcome by my
joy in curing them" A sublmer or more
merciful art never came down from heaven
than the art Of surgery. Catastrophe and
disease entered the earth so early that one of
the first wants of the world was a doctor.
Our crippled and agonized human race called
for surgeon and family physician for many
years before they came The first surgeons
who answered this call were ministers Of re-
lgion, namely, the Egyptian priests. And
what grand thing il all clergymen were also
doctors all D. DIS were NJ d. IS, for there
are so many cases where body and soul need
treatment at the same time, consolation and
medicine, theology and therapeutics.
AS the first surgeons of the world were also
ministers OF religion, may these two profess
sions always be in full sympathy But I'M
der what disadvantages the early surgeons
worked, from the fact that the dissection Of
the human body was forbidden, first by the
pagans and then by the early Christiansl
Apes being the brutes most like the human
race, were dissected, but no human body
might be unfoded for physiological and ana
tomical exploration, and the surgeons had to
guess what was inside the temple by looking
at the outside of it. If they failed in any
surgical operation they were prosecuted and
driven out of the city, as was Archagathus
because of his bold but unsuccessful attempt
TO save patient.
EARLY SURGERY.
But the world from the very beginning
kept calling for surgeons, and their first skill
is spoken Of in Genesis, where they employed
their art for the missions of sacred rite, God
making surgery the predecessor of baptism;
and we see it again in II Kings, where Aha
ziah, the monarch, stepped on some cracked
lattice work in the palace and it broke, and
he fell from the upper to the lower floor, and
he was 80 hurt that he sent to the village of
Enron for aid; and Esculapius, who wrought
such wonders of surgery that he was deifed,
and temples were built for his worship at
Pergamos; and Epidaurus and Podelirius in
troduced for the relief of the world phlebot-
omy; and Damocedes cured the dislocated
ankle of King Darius and the cancer of his
queen; and Hippocrates put successful hand
on fractures and introduced amputation; and
Praxagoras removed obstructions and He
rophilus began dissection; and Erasistratus
removed tumors; and CELSIUS, the Roman sur
geon, removed cataract from the eye and
used the Spanish fly; and Heiodorus arrest
ed disease OF the throat; and Alexander, of
Tralles, treated the eye; and Rhazas cauter-
lied for the prevention Of hydrophobia, and
Percival Pott came to combat diseases of the
spine and In our own century we have had
q Roux and a Larray in France, an Ashley
Cooper and an Abernethy in Great Britain,
and Valentine Mott and Willard Parker
and Samuel d. Gross in America, and gal
axy Of living surgeons as brilliant as their
predecessors. What mighty progress in the
battling OF disease since the crippled and sick
Of ancient cities were laid along the streets,
that people who had ever been hurt or disor-
dered in the same way might suggest what
had better be done for the patients; and the
priests of olden time, who We're constantly
suffering from colds received in walking bare
foot over the temple pavements, had to pre-
scribe for themselves, and fractures were
considered so far beyond all human cure that
instead Of calling in the surgeons the people
only invoked the godsl
SURGERY WANTED WITHOUT PAIN.
But Notwithstanding all the surgical and
medical skill of the world, with what te-
nacity the old diseases hang on to the human
race, and most of them are thousands Of
years old, and in our Bibles we read of them;
the carbuncles OF Job and Hezekah; the pal
pitation of the heart spoken Of in Deuteron-
omy; the sunstroke of n child carried from
the fields of Shunem, crying, MY headl my
headp King Asas disease of the feet, which
was nothing but govt; detection of teeth,
that called for dental surgery, the skill OF
which, quite equal to anything modern, is
still seen In the filed molars of the unrolled
Egyptian mummies; the ophthalmia caused
by the juice of the newly ripe fig, leaving the
people blind at the roadside; epilepsy, as In
the case of the young man often falling into
the fire, and oft into the water; hypochon-
dria, as of Nebuchadnez2ar who imagined
himself an OK, and going out to the fields to
pasture; the withered hand, which in Bible
times, as now, came from the destruction of
the main artery, or from paralysis of the
chief nerve; the wounds of the man whom
the thieves left for dead on the road to
Jericho, aud whom the good Samaritan
nursed, pouring in oil and wine-wine to
cleanse the wound and oil to soothe it. Thank
God for what surgery has done for the ale
Walton and cure OF human sutfering
But the world wanted n surgery without
pain. Drs PARE and Hickman and Simp-
son and Warner and jackson, with their
amazing genius, came ON, and with their
an@sthetics benumbed the patient with mar
cotics and others as the ancients did with
hasheesh and mandrake, and quieted him for
a while, but at the return of consciousness
distress returned. The world has never seen
but one surgeon who could straighten the
crooked limb, cure the blind eye or recon
struct the drum Of a soundless ear or reduce
a dropsy, without any pain at the time, or
any pain after, and that surgeon was Jesus
Christ, the mghtiest, grandest, gentlest and
most sympathetic surgeon the world ever saw
or ever will see; and he deserves the conf
dence and love and worship and hoSanna of
all the earth and hallelujahs of all heaven.
''The blind receive their sight and the lame
walk the lepers are cleansed and the deaf
hear
notice this Surgeon had a fondness for
chronic cases. Many a surgeon, when he has
had patient brought TO him, has said;
"Why was not this attended to five years
agoi You bring him to me after all power
OF recuperation is gone You have waited
until there is a complete contraction of the
muscles, and false ligatures are formed, and
.,s.ificntinn has fnken nlnce II onEht TO hnve