The Brookhaven leader., 1890-05-01
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
An Interesting Discourse on the
Art of Healing.
The Diseases of the Body and Those Of
the Soluble Earthly Physician May
Cure the Former; Christ Alone
Can Cure the Latter.

the following discourse in the Brook yn
Academy of Music, taking for his text:
The blind receive their sight, and the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed. and the deaf
hear.-Matthew IL. 5,
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-
full 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-
lied 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 a grand thing if all clergy
men were also doctors, all d. DIS were
M. DIS, for there are so many cases
where body and soul need treatment at
tho same time, consolation and medi-
cine, theology and therapeutics. AS
the first surgeons of the world were also
ministers of religion, may these two
professions always be in full sympathy!
But under what disadvantages the early
surgeons worked from the fact that the
dissection of the human body was for
hidden, 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-
tcal 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 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
tncisions of a sacred rite, God making
surgery the predecessor of baptism; and
we see it again in III. Kings, where
Ahaziah, 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 SO hurt that
he sent to the village of Ekron Tor aid;
and Esculapius, who wrought such won
dcrs of surgery that he was deifed, and
temples were built for his worship at
Porgamos; and Epidaurus and Ponde-
lirius introduced for the relief of the
world phlebotomy; and Damocedes
cured the dislocated ankle of King Da-
RUS, and the cancer of his Queen; and
Iiippocrates put successful hand on
fractures and introduced amputation;
and PraXagOraS removed distractions;
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 Ashley Cooper and an Aberneithy
in Great Britain, and Valentine Mott
and Willard Parker and Samuel d.
Gross in America, and a galaxy Of liv
ing surgeons as brilliant as their pre-
decessors. What might 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 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-
You'd 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
head! my head!" 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 any thing modern, is still seen in
the filled molars of the unrolled Egyp-
tian mummies;th the ophthalmia caused by
the juice of the newly ripe fig, leaving
the people blind at the roadside; cpl
lepsy, as in the case of the young man
often falling into the fire, and oft into
the water; hypochondria, as OF Nebu-
chadneZzar, who imagined himself an
OK, and going out 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@sthetics benumbed the patient
with narcotics and others as the ancients
did with haSheesh and mandrake, and
uuieted him for awhile, but at the return
of consciousness distress returned. TThe
world has never seen but one surgeon
i