Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-04-21
CHRIST THE HEALER.
Miraculous Cures Which the Master
Performed While On Earth,
WITHOUT MONEY, WITHOUT PRICE.
The Great Physicians Services Still offered
Freely to All Men.
CURING HURTS OF BODY AND OF SOUL
ESPECIAL TELEGRAM TO THE p1sPArcH.l

gregation to the shelter OF the Academy o
Music, have been something phenomenal
This evening the spacious building wa
filled in every part. The popular preacher
discoursed on the profession of healing. Hi
text was Matthew xi:5. "The blind receive
their sight, and the lame walk, the leper:
are cleansed, and the deaf hear" He said
Doctor" 1 said to distinguished surgeon
''do you NOT get worn out with constantly see
ing so many wounds and broken bones and dis
tortions of the human body?' "Oh.no," he an
swered, 'all that is overcome by my joy in cur
ing them" A sublimer more merciful arr
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
human 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 a grand thing il
all clergymen were also doctors all d. d. IS were
Nj. DIS, for there are SO many cases where body
and soul need treatment at the same time, con-
ISOLATION and medicine. theology and therapeu-
tics. As the first surgeons of the world were
also ministers of religion, may these two pro-
fessions always be in full sympathy! But under
what disadvantages the early surgeons worked
from the fact that the dissection of the human
body forbidden, first by the pagans and
then by the early Christians! Apes, being the
brutes most like the human race, were dis
sected, but no human body might be unfolded
for physiological and anatomical 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 unsuc-
cessful attempt to save patient,
PROGRESS OF THE HEALING ART.
calling for surgeons, and their first skill is
spoken of in Genesis, where they employed
their art for the incisions of a 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 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 wonders
of surgery that he was deihed, and temples
were built for his worship at Pergamos; and
Epldaurus and PodeliriuS introduced for the
relief of the world phIebotomy; 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 Pra1agoras removed obStruc-
tonS; and Herophilus began dissection; and
Erasistratus removed tumoTs; 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
Perciyal POtt came to combat diseases of the
spine; and in our own century we have had a
Rou1 and Larray in France, an Ashley Cooper
and an Abernethy in Great Britain, and a
Valentine Mott and Willard Parker and Sam
uel ID. Gross in America, and galaxy of liv-
ing, surgeons as brilliant as their prede-
ceSsors
What mighty progress in the battling of dis |
ease 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 better be |
done for the patients; and the priests of olden |
time who were constantly suffering from colds
received IN walking baref oot over the temple
pavements, had to prescribe for themselves
and fractures were considered SO far beyond
all human cure that instead of calling in the |
surgeons the people only invoked the godsI
SURGERY WITHOUT PAIN.
But notwithstanding all the surgical and med |
ical skill of the world with what tenaeiuy 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 a child carried from the fields of Shunem.
CRYING, "My head! my headr' King Asa's |
disease of the feet which was nothing but |
gout; 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 Egyptian mummies; the oph-
thalmia 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 fall
ing into the fire, and oft into the water; hypo-
chOndrla, as OF Nebuchadnezzar, who imagined
himself an OK, and going out to the fields to |
pasture; the w1thered 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-wlne to cleanse the wound and oil to |
soothe it Thank God for what surgery has
done for the alienation and cure of human
Sufferipgi
But the world wanted a surgery without main
Doctors Parre and Hickman and Simpson and
Warner and Jackson, with their amazing
genius, came on. and with their anesthetics be-
nunbed the patient with narcotics and ethers
Rs the ancients did with hasheesh and man
drake, and Quieted him for a while but at the
return OF consciousness distress returned. The
world has never seen but one surgeon who
could straighten the crooked limb cure the
b. nd eye, or reconstruct the drum of a sound |
less ear, or reduce 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 de-
serves the confidence and love and worship and
hosanna 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"
CHRONIC CASES CURED.
notice that this Surgeon had a fondness 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 com
plete contraction of the muscles, and false liga-
lures are formed, and ossfication 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 Il
years. and He stopped it. Another was a |
curvature of Is years, and he Strengthened it |
Another was cripple of 3S years. and he
walked out well. The l8-year-old patient was |
woman bent almost double
II you could call a convention of all the sur
geons of all the centuries their combined skill
could not cure that body so drawn out of shape
Perhaps they may stop it from getting any
worse, perhaps they might contrive braces by j
but it Is, humanity speaking incurable | I
Yet this divine Surgeon put both HIS
hands on her. and from that doubed-up ost- !
1re she began TO rise, and the empurpled face
began to take a healthier hue, and the 9
muscles began to relax from their rigidtv and | 5
the spinal column began to adjust ITSELF and :
5he cords of the neck began to be more supple |
and the eyes, that could see only the ground
before, now looked into the face of Christ with
gratitude, and up toward heaven in transport '
Straight! After Is weary and exhaustive years,
straight! The pcise, the gracefulness, the :
beauty of healthy womanhood reinstated.
The IS years case was a man who lay on !
mattress near the mineral baths at Jerusalem. g
There were five apartments where lame I
Deopie were brought, so that they could get the
advantage of these mineral baths. The stone
'asiu of the bath is still visible although the
waters have disappeared probably through
ONE convulsion of nature, the bath l20 feet
ong, 40 feet wide and feet deep.
A SURGEON WHO ALWAYS HEALS.
All, poor man; If you have been lame and
elpless 3S years, that mineral bath cannot re-