The Russellville Democrat., 1890-05-01
THE HEALING ART.
Sermon by Rev. T. Dewitt Tal-
 mage in Brooklyn.
Physical and Spiritual Maiadies Com. pared-Christ the Great Physician of the Soul Whose Remedies
 Firing Life Eternal.

DfOOkiYn ACdutuy OA 4AuotV 1hoh Anc text:
 The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed. and the deaf hear.--Aiatthew II. ,.
 s'Doctor" l said to a distinguished surgeon, 'do you not get worn out with constantly seeing so many wounds and broken bones and distortions of the human body?" 'Oh, no," he answered, "all that is overcome by my joy in cur ing them" A sublimer or more merci- ful 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 doctor. Our crippled and agon- ized 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- ligion, namely, the Egyptian priests. And what grand thing if ali clergy men were also doctors, all D. D.. were NJ. D.'s, for there are so many cases where body and soul need treatment at the same time, consolation and medi- cine, theology and therapeutics. As
 
 ministers of religion, may these two professions always be in full sympathyl But under what disadvantages the early surgeons worked, from the fact that the dissection of the human body was for. bidden, 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 anatom- ical exploration and the surgeons had to guess what was inside tho temple by looking at the outside of it. If they failed in any surgical operation they were perseeuted and driven out of the city, as was Archagathus because of his bold but unsuccessful attempt to save a patient.
 But the world from the very begin ming kept calling for surgeons, and their first skill is spoken of in Genesis, where they employed their art for the incisions of sacred rite, God making surgery the predecessor of baptism; and we see it again in IL Kings, where Ahaziah. the monarch, stepped on some cracked lattice-work in the palace, and 1t broke, and he fell from the upper to the lower floor, and he was so hurt that he sent to the village of Ekron for aid; and Esculapius, who wrought such won ders of surgery that he was deified and temples were built for his worship at Pergamos; and Epidaurus and Ponde- lirius introduced for the relief of the world phlebotomy; and Damocedes cured the dislocated ankle of King Da- rius, and the cancer of his Queen; and Hippocrates put successful hand on fractures, and introduced amputation; and Praxagoras removed Instructions; and Herophilus begun dissection; ard Erasistratus removed tumors; and Gel sus, the Roman surgeon, removed cata- ract from the eye, and used the Spanish fly; and Heliodorus arrested disease of the throat; and Alexander, of Tralles, treated the eye; and Rhazas cauterized for the prevention of hydrophobia; and Percival Pott came to combat diseases of the spine; and in our own century we have had Roux and Laray in France. and Astley Cooper and an Aberneithy in Great Britain, and Valentine Mott and Willard Parker and Samuel D. Gross in America, and galaxy of liv- ing surgeons as brilliant as their pre- decessors What might progress in the baffiing of disease since the crippled and sick of ancient cities were laid along the streets, that people who had ever been hurt or disordered in the same way might suggest what had bet ter be done for the patients; and the priests of old time, who were constantly suffering from colds received in walk ing barefoot over the temple pave- ments, had to prescribe for themselves, and fractures were considered so far be- yond all human cure that instead of calling in the 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 our Bibles we read of them; the carbuncles of Job and Hezekiah; the palpitation of the heart spoken of in Deuteronomy; the sun-stroke of child carried from the fields of Shunem, crying: My headl my head" King Asa's disease of the feet, which was nothing but gout; defection oT teeth, that called for dental surgery, the skill of which, quite equal to any thing modern, is still seen in the filled molars of the unrolled Egyp- tian mummies;the ophthalmia caused by the juice of the newly ripe fig, leaving the people blind at the roadside; epi- l.. su q of often falling into the fire, and oft into the water; hypochondria, as of Nebu- chadnezzar. who imagined himself an OK. and going ont to the fields to past ure; the withered hand, which in Bible times, as now, came from the destruc- ton of the main artery, or from paraly- sis of the chief nerve; the wounds of the men whom the thieves left for dead on the road to Jericho, and 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 allevia- ton and care of human suffering.
 But the world wanted a surgery with out pain. Drs. Pare and Hickman and Simpson aud Warner and Jackson, with their amazing genius, came on, and with their an@stheties benumbed the patient with narcotics and ethers as the ancients did with hasheesh and mandrake, and quieted him for awhile, but at the return Of consciousness distress returned. Tho world has never seen but one surgeon who could straighten the crooked limb, cure the blind eye, e, reconstruct 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 mightiest, grandest, gentlest and most sympathetic surgeon the world ever saw, or ever will see; and He deserves the confidence 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 cleaned and the deaf near"
 notice this Surgeon had fondness for chronic cases. Many a surgeon, ha b.e ,,a f;o,,t 4s,