Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1890-05-02
REV. DIR. TALMAGE.
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S sun
DAY SERMON.
Subject: Christ the Surgeon.

a
geOn. do you not get worn out with con-
stantly seeing 50 many wounds and broken
bones and distortions of the human body
''Oh, no. he answered. all that Is over
come by my JOY i'll curing them" A subllmer
or more merciful art never came down from
heaven than the art of surgery. Catastrophe
and disease entered the earth 50 early that
of the first wants OF the world was a doc
tor. 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 minis
ters OF religion, namely, the Egyptian priests.
And what grand thing If all clergymen
were also doctors, all d. DIS were NJ. DIS,
for there are 50 many cases where body and
soul need treatment at the same time, cOnsO-
latiOn and medicine theology and therapeu-
tics
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 Christians!
Apes being the brutes most like the human
race, were disSeCted, but no human body
might be unfOlded for physiological and ana
tomical exploration, and the surgeons had 10
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, Archagathus
to patient.
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 a sacred rite,
God making surgery the predecessor of bap-
tism; and see 1t again in Ii Kings, where
AhaZlah, the monarch, stepped on some
cracked lattice work In the palace and 1t
broke, and he fell from the upper to the low
CT floor, and he was so hurt that he sent to
Of
who wrought such wonders of surgery that
he deified, and temples built
for his worship at Pergamos; and Epi-
daurus and Podelrius introduced 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 distractions; and He
rOphilus began dissection; and Erasistratus
removed tumOrs; and CELSIUS, the Roman
surgeon, removed cataract from the eye and
used the Spanish fly; and HeliOdOrus arrested
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 i'll our own century we have had
a ROux and a Larray in France, Ashley
Cooper and an Abernethy in Great Britain,
and a Valentine Mott and Willard Parker
and Samuel d. Gross in America, and gal
dAN Oh llN ing surgeons do DFlLlldnJ as Eu0lr
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
diSOrdered in the same way might suggest
what had better be done for the patients; and
the priests Of Olden time, who were con-
stantly suffering from colds received in
walking barefoot over the temple pavements,
had to prescribe for themselves and frac-
lures were considered so far beyond all
hmm hot Of %hn
surgeons the people only invoked the gods!
But notwithstanding all the surgical and
medical skill of the world, with what tenacity
the old diseases hang on to the human race,
and most of them are thousands of years old,
and in Bibles we read of them: the car
bunCleS of Job and HeZeklah the palpitatiOn
of the heart spoken of in Deuteronomy; the
sunstrOke of a child carried from the fields of
Shunem, crying: my head! my headw
King Asa's 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
an the filled 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 Nebuchadnezzar, who imagined
himself an OK, and going out to the fields to
pasture; the withered hand, which in Bible
times, 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, and whom the good Samaritan
nurSed, pouring in oil and wine-wine to
clease the wound and oil to soothe it. Thank
God for what surgery has done for the allie
Walton and cure of human suffering
But the world wanted a surgery without
pain. Drs. PARE and Hickman and Simp-
son and Warner and Jackson, with their
and fha1r.
anRsthetics benumbed the patient with mar
cOticS and others as the ancients did with
oasheesh and mandrake, and quieted him for
while, but at the return of consciousness
distress returned. The world has never seen
out one surgeon who could straighten the
crooked limb, cure the blind eye or recon-
struct the drum of a sOundleSS ear or reduce
drOpSy, without any pain at the time or
any pam alter, ana that surgeon was Jesus
Christ the mightest, grandest gentIest and
most sympathetic surgeon the world ever saw
or ever VIII see: and He deserves the COntf-
denCe and love and Worship and hoSanna OF
all the earth and halleluiahS 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 surgeon, when he has
had a pat ent brought to hipa. has said:
"Why was not this attended to five wears
ago: on bring him to me after all power
OF recuperatlOn Is gone. You have waited
until there IS a complete contraction of the
muscles, and false Hgatures are formed, and
oSSltcation has taken place. 1t ought to have
been attended to long ago" But Christ the
Surgeon seemed TO prefer inveterate cases.
One was hemOrrhage Of twelve wears and
He stopped it. Another was a curvature of
eighteen years, and He Strengthened it, An
other was a cripple of thirty-eight years and
he walked out well. The eighteen-vear pa
tient was woman bent almost double. If