The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1890-05-07
CHRIST, THE SURGEON.
Jesus Of Nazareth, Divine Healer
of Human Ills.
Even Yet Can the Blind See and the Deaf
Hear-Dr. Talmage's Sermon.

Even Yet Can tho Blind See and the Deaf
Hear-Dr. Talmage's Sermon.
Sunday evening Rev. T. Dewitt Tai
mage, D. D.. preached in the Brooklyn
Academy Of Music. His text was Mat
thew H., 5-"The blind receive their
sight and the lame walk, the lepers are
tleansed and the deaf hear" He said:
Doctor" I said to a distinguished
surgeon, do you not get worn out with
constantly seeing so many wounds and
broken bones and distortions Of the hu.
man body?" "Oh, no." he answered;
"all this 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 agonized hui
man race called for surgeon and family
physician for many years before they
came. The first surgeons who answered
this call were ministers Of religion,
namely, the Egyptian priests. And
what grand thing II all clergymen
were doctors, all D. DIS were M. DIS,
for there as so many cases where body
and soul need treatment at the same
time, consolation and medicine, theol-
ogy and therapeutics As the first sur
geons 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 dissec-
ton Of tho 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 unfolded for
physiological and anatomical explora'
ton, and the surgeons had to guess what
was inside the temple by looking at the
outside Of it. II they failed in any sur
gical operation they were prosecuted and
driven out Of the city, as was Archa-
gathus, because of his bold but unsuc-
sessful attempt to save patient.
But the world from the very begin
ming kept calling for surgeons, and their
Hrst skill is spoken Of in Genesis, where
they employ their art for the incisions
Of q sacred rite, God making surgery
the predecessor of baptism. and we see
1t again in II. 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 Escula-
plus, who wrought such wonders Of sur
rery that he was deified, and temples
were built for his worship at Pergamos
and Epidaurus and Podelirius introduced
TOR the relief Of the world phlebotomy
and Damocedes cured the dislocated
ankle of King Darius, and the cancer o.
bis Queen; and Hippocrates put success
full hand on fractures, and introduced
amputation; and Praxagoras removed
distractions; and Herophilus gan dis
section; and Erasistratus removed tum
ors; and CELSIUS, the Roman surgeon, re
moved cataract from the eye, and used
J the Spanish fly; and Heliodoru'
, arrested disease of tho throat; ani
Alexander, of Tralles, treated the eye
and Rhazas cauterized for the proven
ton of hydrophobia; and Percival Pot
came to combat diseases Of the spine
and in our own century we have had {
Roux and Larray in France, an Astley
/ Cooper and an Abernethy in Great Bri
, tain, and Valentine Mott and Willard
} Parker and Samuel d. Grossi in America
and galaxy of living surgeons as brill
, liant as their predecessors. What mighty
, progress in the battling of disease since
) the crippled and sick of ancient cite!
were laid along the streets, that people
who had ever been hurt or disordered il
the same way might suggest what ha(
. better be done for the patients; and TIT
priests Of olden time, who were con
stantly suffering from cold received il
walking barefoot over the temple pave
; ments, had to prescribe for themselves
and fractures were considered so far be
yond all human cure that instead O
calling in the surgeons the people onl.
invoked the gods!
But Notwithstanding all the surgica
and medical skill of the world, will
what tenacity the old diseases hang OF
to the human race, and most of then
, are thousands of years old, and in GU
Bibles we read of them: the carbuncl'
of Job and Hezekiah; the palpitation o
the heart spoken Of in Deuteronomy
the sun-stroke of a child carried from
, the fields of Shunem, crying: ''My head
l my head?" King Asa's disease Of tn
feet, which was nothing but the govt
| detection Of teeth, that called for denta
surgery, the skill Of which, quite eqaa
! to any thing modern, is still seen in tn
filled molars of the unrolled EgyptiaI
5 mummies; the ophthalmia caused by tn
, juice of the newly ripe fig, leaving tn
people blind at the roadside; epilepsy
8 Is in the case Of the young man fallin
a into the fire, and oft into the water
q hypochondria, as Of Nebuchadnezzal
who imagined himself an OK, and goin
9 out to the fields to pasture; the withere
hand, which in Bible times as now
Q came from the destruction Of the mai
Q artery or from paralysis Of the chic
s nerve; the wounds of the man whom tn
g thieves left for dead on the road to Jel
a icho, and whom the good Samantha
nursed, pouring in oil and wine-win
4 to cleanse the wound and oil to soothe il
t Thank God for what surgery has don
;. for the alleviation and euro Of huma
Q suffering!
{ But the world wanted surgery with
/. out pain. Drs. PARE, and Hickman, an
Simpson, and Warner, and jackson, wit
! their amazing genius, came on, and wit
D their anmasthetics benumbed the patien