The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1897-06-18
ADVICE TO DOCTORS.
Rev. DR.. Talmage Touches Up the
Medical Profession.
Doctors. of An Others, Ought to be
lstians-Tbeir Opportunities for
Christian Usefulness Are
Never Ending.

was exceedingly great; yet in his disease h
bought not to the Lori, but to the physicians
And Asa slept with his fatherS-u. Chronicles
! xvL,'12
At this season of the year, wher
medical colleges of all schools of medi
cine are giving diplomas to young doc
tors, and at the capital and in many Of
the cities medical associations are as
sembling to consult about the advance
ment of the interests of their profes
sion, feel this discourse is appropriate
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 inflamed and
bandaged feet on an ottoman. In de
fiance of God, whom he hated, he sends
for certain cOnjurors or quacks. They
come and give him all sorts of lotions
and panaceas. They bleed him. They
sweat him. They manipulate him.
They blister him. They poultice him.
They scarify him. They drug him.
They cut him. They kill him. He
was only a young man, and had dis
ease which, though very painful, SCI
dom proves fatal to young man, and
he ought to have got well; 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 exceedingly great;
vet in his disease he sought not the
Lord, but to the physicians. And Asa
slept with his fathers" That is, the
doctors killed him.
In this sharp and graphic way tn e
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: 20 Lord, l am sick;
bless the instrumentality employed for
my recovery" Now, servant, go and
get the best doctor you can find"-he
would have recovered. In other words,
the world wants divinely-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 cast out the devils of
pain, and open the blind eyes, and I'M
stop the deaf ears" God bless the
doctors all the world over! and let all
the hospitals, and dispensaries, and in
6rmaries, and asylums, 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 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 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 sympathy. 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 go out of it.
In the closing moments of our earthly
existence, when the hand of the wife, or
mother, or sister, or daughter, shall
hold our right hand, it will give
strength to our dying moment if we
IAN feel the tips of your fingers along
she 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-en-
act all the scenes of the sick room, so
to-day you play that you are the pa
tient and that l am physician, and
take my prescription just once. 1t
shall be tonic, a sedative, a dietetic,
disinfectant, a stimulus and an ano-
dyne at the same time. rs there not
balm in Gilead ? Is there not physi-
clan there"
In the first place, L think all the
medical profession should become
Christians because of the debt of graft
tude 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 re-
ceived so great an honor as yours.
Christ Himself was not only preacher,
but physician, surgeon, aurist, ophthal-
motologist, and under His mighty pow
er optic and auditory nerve thrilled
with light and sound, and catalepsy
arose from it's fit, and the club foot was
Strengthened, and anchyloSis went out
of the stiffened tendons, and the foam
ing maniac became placid as child,
and the stree is of Jerusalem became
an extemporized hospital crowded
with convalescent victims of casualty
and invalIdism. All ages have woven
the garland for the doctors brow.
Homer said:
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. Bartho-
lomew's day, but made once exception,
and that the case of Pare, the father
of the French surgery. The battle
fields of the American revolution well
coined Drs. Mercer and Warren and
Rush. When the French army was en-
tirely demoralized at fear of the plague,
the leading surgeon of that army inoc-
ulated himself with the plague to show
the soldiers there was no contagion 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 Hippocrates tried to cure the
great Pericles with hellebore and flax
seed poultices down to far later CEN
turtles when Halter announced the the
DRY of respiration, and Harvey the cir
culation of the blood, and Ascei the
uses of the Emphatic vessels, and
Jenner baked the worst disease that
ever scourged Europe, and Sydenham
developed the recuperative forces of
-
bark stopped the shivering agues of
the WI rid, and Sir Ashley Cooper and
Alternately, and Hosack, and Romeyn,
&C.,. I'D Wn1an tina AInA+ -