Decorah public opinion. (Decorah, Winneshiek County [Iowa]) 1895-1928, 1897-06-15


wv bling to consult
about the advance
ment of the interests of their profess
sion, feel this discourse is appropri-
ate.
In my text is King Asa with the
govt. High living and no exercise have
vitiated his blood, and my text presents
him with his infamed and bandaged
| feet on an ottoman. In defiance OF
God, whom he hated, he sends for GER
tain conjurers or quacks. They come
and give him all sorts of lotions and
panaceas. They bleed him. They sweat
| him. They manipulate him. They bis
ter him. They poultice him. They
scarify him. They drug him. They
cut him. They kill him. He was on
ly a young man, and had disease
which, though very painful, seldom
proves fatal to a young man, and he
ought to have got we'll; but he fell a
victim to charlatanry and empiricism.
"And Asa in the thirty and ninth year
Of his reign was diseased in his feet.
until his disease was exceeding great;
| yet in his disease he sought not to the
Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa
slept with his fathers" That is, the
doctors killed him.
Men of the medical profession We Oft
en- meet in the home of distress. We
shake hands across the cradle Of agon-
| lied infancy. We join each other in
an attempt at solace where the parox-
ysm of grief demands an anodyne as
well as prayer. We look into each
others sympathetic faces through the
dusk, as the night of death is falling in
| the sick room. We do not have 10
climb over any barrier today in order TO
greet each other, for our professions
are in full sympathy. You, doctor, are
our first and last earthly friend. You
stand at the gates of life when VIC en-
ter this world, and you stand at the
gates of death when we 90 out of it..
In the closing moments of our earth
Iy existence when the hand of the wife,
or mother, or sister, or daughter, shall
strength to our diving moments II we
can feel the tips of your fingers along
the pulse of our left wrist. We do not
meet today, as on other days, in houses
of distress, but by the pleasant affairs
Of God, and propose sermon of help
fulness and good cheer. AS in the
nursery children sometimes re-enact all
the scenes of the sick room, so today
you play that you are the patient and
that / am the physician, and take NY
prescription just once. 1t shall be a
tonic, a sedative, dietetic, q disinfect-
ant, stimulus, and an anodyne at the
same time. rs there not balm in Gill
cad? Is there not physician there?"
In the first place, think all the med
zeal profession should become Chris
tians because OF the debt of gratitude
they owe to God for the honor he has
put upon their calling. No other call
ing in all the world, except it be that
of the Christian ministry, has received
so great an honor as yours. Christ
himself was not only preacher, but ply
stefan. surgeon, aurist, ophthalmolo-
gist, and under his mighty power optic
and auditory nerve thrilled with light
and sound, and catalepsy arose from its
fit, and the club foot was Strengthened,
and anchylosis went out of the stiffened
tendons, and the foaming maniac be-
came placid as child, and the streets
of Jerusalem became an extemporized
hospital crowded with convalescent vic
tins of casualty and invalidism. All
ages have woven the garland for the
doctors brow. Homer said:
A wise physician. skilled our wounds
to heal,
Is more than armies to the public veal.
Cicero said: There is nothing in
which men so approach the gods as
when they try to give health to other
men," Charles TX made proclamation
that all the Protestants OF France
should be put to death on ST. Bartholo-
news day, but made one exception.
and that the case of Pare, the father of
French surgery. The battlefields of the
American revolution welcomed Drs.
Mercer and Warren and Rush. When
the French army was entirely democrat
lieu dL iedI VI thC pldSuS, L!lP iedQlnS
surgeon of that army innoculated him
self with the plague TO show the SOL
diers that there was no contagicn In II:
and their courage rose, and they went
on to the conflict. God has honored
this profession all the way through
Oh, the advancement from the days
when Hippocrates tried TO cure the
great Pericles with hellebore and flax
seed pouitices down TO far later CEN
turtles when Halter announced the the
DRY of respiration, and Harvey the cir
culation of the blood and Asceli the use
of the Emphatic vessels, and Jenner
baked the worst disease that ever
scourged Europe, and Sydenham deyel-
oped the recuperatiye forces of the
physical organism, and cinchona bark
stopped the shivering agues of the
world, and Sir Ashley Cooper and Aber-
nethy, and Hosack. and Romeyn. and
Griscom, and Valentine Mott of the
generation just passed, honored God
and fought back death with their keen
scalpels.
II we who are laymen 49, medicine
would understand what the mediisc.'
profession has accomplished for the
u ....