The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1890-04-25
DIVINE HEALING.
Dr. Talmage's Familiar Talk
About; Christ as a
Surgeon.
How He Made the. Blind See.
the Lame Walk, and
the Dead Arise.

BROOKLYN SPBcIAL.-Dr Talmage discours-
ed on the professional healing. His text was
Matthew 11:5 1.-The blind receive their sight,
and the lame walk, thelepers are cleansed, and
the deaf hear" He said:
Doctor said to a distinguished sur
geon, .sdo you not get worn out with con-
stantly seeing so many wounds and broken
sbones and distortions Of the human body?"
"Oh, no., he answered, 'all and is over come
by my joy in. curing, thsm." sublimer or
more beautiful. 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 doc
tor. Our crippled and agonized human race
called for surgeon and family physician for
many years before they came. The first sur
geons who anwered this call were ministers
of religion, namely, the Egyptian priests.
And what grand thing if all
clergymen were also doctors, all D. DIS
were NJ. D. s, for there are SO many cases
where body land soul need treatment at
the same time, consolation and medicine,
theology and therapeutics. As the first sur
geons ofthevworld we're also ministers of re-
ligion may these two professionals always
be in full sympathy! But under what disad-
vantages 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 un-
folded for physiological and anatomical ex-
plOrations, 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 beginning
kept calling for surgeons, and their first
skill ia spoken OF in Genesis, where they en-
ployed their art for the missions of a sacred
rite. God making surgery the predecessor of
baptism; and We see it again in II. 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 hesent
to the village of Ekron for aid; and Escula-
Plus. who wrought such wonders ofsurgery
that he was deifed, and temples were built
for his worship at Pergamos; and Epidaurss
and Podeliriue introduced for the relief of
the world phlebotomy; and Damocedes cured
the dislocated ankle of King Darirs, and the
cancer of his queen; and Hippocrates put
successful hand on fractures, and introduced
computations and Praxagoras removed OBJ
-structions; and Herophilus began dissection;
and Erasistratus removed tumors; and Ces-
.lus, 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 cauterized for the prevention of
hydrophobia; and Pereival Pott came to
combat disease of the spine; and in our
own century we have had a Roux and a Lar
ray in France, an Ashley Cooper and an
Abernethy in great Britain, and Valentine
Mott aHd Willard Parker and Samuel D.
Gross in America, and galaxy of living
surgeons as brilliant az their predecessors.
What mighty progress in the battling of dis
ease since the crippled and sick of ancient
cities were laid along the streets, that peo-
pie who had never been hurt or disorded in
the same way might suggest what had
better be done for the patients; and the
priests OF olden time, who were constantly
suffering from colds received in walking bare
foot over the temple pavements, had to pre-
scribe for themselves, and fractures were con-
sidered SO far beyond 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 tenac.
ity 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 ] oh and Hezekiah; the pal
pitation of the heart spoken of in Deuteron-
omy; the sun-stroke of a child carried from
the fields of Shunenem, crying MY head! my
head!'' King Asa's disease of the feet which
was nothing but gout detection of teeth
which, quite equal to anything modern, is
still seen in the file d m GLARS 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
pusture;~ the withered hand, which in Bible
times, as now, came from the destruction of
this 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, pour
ing in oil and wine-wine to cleanse the
would, and oil to soothe it. Thank God for
what surgery has done for the alienation
and cure of human suffering. But the
world wanted surgery without pain. Doc
tors PARE and Hickman and Simpson
and Warner and Jackson, with their amaz-
ing genius, came on, and with their an@s-
thetc benumbed the patient with narcotics
and others as the ancients did with has
heesh and mandrake, and Quoted him for
while, but at the return of consciousness dis
tress returned. The world has never seen
but one surgeon who could straghten the
crooked limb, cure the blind eye, or recon-
struct the drum of soundless ear, or reduce
dropsy, without any pain at the time or
pain after, and that surgeon was Jesus
Christ, the mightiest, grandest, gentest
and most sympathetic. surgeon the
world ever saw, or ever will see; He
deserves the confidence and love and
worship and hosannas 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"
l notice this Surgeon had tondness for
chronic cases. Many surgeon, when he
has had patient brought to him has said
why was not this attended to five years
ago? 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 ligaturcs are formed, and
ossiication has taken place 1t ought to
have been attended to long ago." But
Christ the Surgeon seemed to prefer inveter-
ate cases. One was hemorrhage of II
years, and He stopped it. Another was