Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1897-06-11
The Infirnity of King Asa l. Made
the Text of an Eloquent Tribute to the
Medical Profession - Coed Reasons
WHY All Doctors should Re Christians.


They come and give him all sorts Of lotions
and panaceas They bleed him. They
sweat him. They manipulate him. They
blister him. They pOulticc him. They
scarify him. They drug him. They cut
him. They kill him. He was onlya young
man and had a disease which, though very
painful, seldom proves fatal to young
man, and he ought to have got well, but he
fell victim to charatanry and empiricism.
And Asa in the thirty and ninth year OF
his reign was diseased in his feet until his
disease was exceeding great. vet in his dis
ease he sought not to the Lord but to the
physicians. And Asa slept with his IA
thers' That is, the doctors killed him.
In this sharp and graphic way the Bible
sets forth the truth, that you have no right
to shut God out from the realm of
pharmacy and therapeutics. If Asa had
said: 80 Lord. | am sick Bless the in
strumentality employed for my recovery"
Now, servant, go and get the best doctor
YOU can iind'-he would have recovered.
In other words, the world wants diviney
directed physicians. There are a great
many SUCH The diplomas they received
from the academies of medicine were
nothing compared with the diploma they
received from the Head Physician of the
universe on the day when they started out
and He said to them Go heal the sick and
tdSl 'ul lHf htNllS Oh pam anu open tne
blind eyes and unstOp the deaf ears God
bless the doctors all the world over, and let
all the hospitals and dispensarles and in
ilrmaries and asvlums and domestic circles
of the earth respond, Amen
Men of the medical profession we often
meet in the home of distress. We shake
hands across the table of agonized infancy.
We join each other in an attempt at solace
where the paroXysm of grief demands an
anOdyne rs well as a 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 to climb over
any barrier to-day in order to greet each
other, for our professions are in full SYM
pathy. You, doctor, are our first and last
earthly friend. You stand at the gates of
life when we enter this world and you stand
at the gates of death when we 20 out of it
In the closing moments of our rthly exist
ence, when the hand of the wife or mother
or sister or daughter, shall hold our right
hand, it will give strength to our dying mo-
ments if We can feel the tips of your fingers
along the pulse of the left wrist. We do
not meet to-day, as on other days in houses
of distress, but by the pleasant affairs of
! God, and propose a sermon of helpfulness
and good cheer. As in the nursery children
| sometimes re-enlct all the scenes of the
sick room, SO to-day you play that YOU are
the patient and that am the physician and
take my prescription just once. 1t shall be
tonic, sedative, a dietetic, a dsinfect-
ant, stimulus and an anodyne at the same
time. as there not balm in Gilead? Is
there not a physician there?"
In the first place, think all the medical
profession should become Christians be-
cause of the debt of gratitude they owe to
God for the honor He has put upon their
calling. No other calling 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
physician surgeon, aurist. ophthalmologist
and under His mighty power optic and au-
ditory nerve thrilled with light and sound,
and catalepsy arose from its fit, and the
clubGOot was Strengthened, and anchylosis
went out of the stiffened tendons, and the
foaming maniac became placid as a child,
and the streets of Jerusalem became an cx-
temporized hospital crowded with con-
valescent victims Of casualty and invalid
ism. 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
in France should be put to death on st.
| Bartholomew day, but made one eXcep-
| ton, and that the case of Pare, the fathcr
of French surgery. The battlefeIds of the
American Revolution welcomed Drs Mercer
| and Warren and Rush. When the French
| army was entirely demOralized by fear of
the plague, the leading surgeon of that
army inoculated himself with the plague to
| show the soldiers there was no contagon
IN it, 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 Hippo
crates tried to cure the great Perices with
hellebore and flaxseed poultices down to
far later centuries when Halter announced
| the theory of respiration, and Harvey the
| circulation of the blood, and Asceli the uses
| OF the Emphatic vessels, and Jenner baked
| the worst disease that ever scourged Eu-
! rope, and Sydenham developed the re-
Operative forces of the physical organism
| and cinchOna bark stopped the shivCring
agues of the world and Sir Ashley Cooper
| and Abernethy. and HOsack and Romeyn
and GriscOm and Valentine Mott, of the
! generation just past, honored God and
| fought back death with their keen scalpels.
| If we who are laymen in medicine would
| understand what the medical profession
| has accomplished for the insane let us look
| into the dungeons where the poor creatures
used to be rcerated-madmen chained
naked to the wall a kennel of rotten straw
their only sleeping place, room unven-
! tilated and unlighted the worst calamity
of the race punished with the very worst
punishment then come and look at
the insane asylums of Utica and Kirkbride
-sOfaed and pictured, lbraried, concerted
until all the arts and adornments come to
coax recreant reason to assume her throne
Look at Edward Jenner the great hero OF
medicine. Four hundred thousand people
annually dying in Europe from the small.
pox, Jenner finds that by the incubation Of
people with vaccine from COW the great
scourge of nations may be arrested. The
ministers of the gospel denounced vaccina
tion small wits caricatured Edward Jennel
as riding in great procession on the bach
OF COW ana grave men expressed it ~
their opinion that all the diseases of the
brute creation would be transplanted into
the human family, and they gave instances
where, they said, actually horns had come
out on the foreheads of innocent persons
and people had begun to chew the cud But
DR.. Jenner, the hero of medicine went OF
fighting for vaccination until it has beel
estimated that one doctor in fifty years ha
saved more lives than all the battles of an,
one century DESTROYED
The profession has done wonders for pub
lie hygiene. How often they have stoot
between this nation and Asiatic choler
and the yellow fever The monuments il
Greenwood and Mount Auburn and Laure
Hill tell something of the story of thos
men who stood face to face with pestllenc
in southern cities until staggering in thei
own sickness they stumbled across tn
corpses of those whom they had come
save. This profession has been the sue
cessful advocate of ventilation, sewerage
drainage and immigration. until thei
sentiments were we'll expressed by Lor
Palmerston, when he said to the Englis
nation at the time fast had been pre-
claimed to keep off great pestilenc,
Clean your streets or death will ravagc
notwithstanding all the prayers of TIL
nation. Clean your streets and then ca
on God for help"
See what this profession has done for hi