Connecticut western news., 1897-06-10
PRAISE OF DOCTORS.
REV. DR. TALMAGE PAYS A HIGH TRlB- UTE TO THE MEDICAL PROFESSION.

REV. DR. TALMAGE PAYS A HIGH TRlB-
 UTE TO THE MEDICAL PROFESSION. He Takes the Case of King Asa, Who Had
 the Gout, and Shows Why the Doctors
 Could Not Cure Him-Piety and Medical
 Skill.
 NEW YORK, June 6.--It is not often that men of one profession have much encouragement for men of another pro- fession, but this sermon prepared by Dr. Talmage contains enthusiastic words of a clergyman to physicians. The text is II Chronicles xvi, 12, IS, "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. ''
 At this season of the year, when 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.
 King Asa's Gout.
 In my text is King Asa with the gout. High living and no exercise have vitiated his blood, and my text presents him with his inflamed and bandaged feet on an ottoman. In defiance of God, whom he hated. he sends for certain conjurors or quacks. They come and give him all sorts of lotions and pana- ceas They bleed him. They sweat him. They manipulate him. They blister him. They poultioe him. They scarify him. They drug him. They cut him. They kill him. He was only young man and had disease which, though very painful, seldom proves fatal to young man, and he ought to have got we'll, but he fell victim to charlatan- " and empirioism. "And Asa in the thirty and ninth year of his reign was diseased in bis 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 fa- 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: 70 Lord, 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 physi- cians. There are a great many such. The diplomas they received from the academies of medicine were nothing compared with the diploma they re- ceived 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 unstop the deaf ears.'' God bless the doctors all the world over. and let all the hospitals and dispensaries and infrmaries and asylums and domestic circles of the earth re- spond, Amen
 Men of the medical profession we of ten meet in the home of distress. We shake hands across the cradle of ago nized infancy We join each other in an
 
 of grief demands an anodyne as well as 8 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 today in order to greet each other, for our professions are in full sympathy. Yon, 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 clos ing 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 can feel the tips of your fingers along the pulse of the left wrist. We do not meet today, as on other days, In houses of distress, but by the pleasant altars of God, and propose sermon of helpfulness and good cheer. As in the nursery children sometimes re-enact all the scenes of the sickroom. so today you play that you are the patient and that am the physician, and take my prescription just once. It shall be a tonic, sedative, dietetic, disinfeot- ant, stimulus and an anodyne at the same time. 'Is there not balm in Gil cad? Is there not physician there?"
 An Honorable Calling.
 In hefirst place, think all the med ical profession should become Christians because 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 clubfoot was strengthened, and anchylosis went out of the stiffened ten dons, and the foaming maniac became placid as a child, and the streets of Je- rusalem became an extemporized hospi- tal crowded with convalescent victims of casualty and invalidism. All ages have woven the garland for the doctor $ brow. Homer said:
 4 wise physician, skilled our wounds to heal, ls 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 exception, and that the case of Pare. the father of French surgery. The battlefields of the Amer ican revolution welcomed Drs. Mercer and Warren and Rush. When the French army was entirely demoralized by feal of the plague, the leading surgeon o1 that army inoculated himself with the plague to show the soldiers there was no contagion in 1t. and their courage rose, and they went on to the conflict God haa hnnorad thia rrofession all tha