Peninsula enterprise. [volume] (Accomac, Va.) 1881-1965, 1897-06-12

and Hosack and Romeyn, und Griscom
and Valentine Mott, Of the generation
just past, honored God and fought back
death with their keen scalpcls.
If we who are laymen in medicine
would understand what the medical
profession has accomplished for the in
sane, let US look into the dungeons
where the poor creatures used to be in
rcerated-madncn chained naked to
the WALL kennel of rotten straw their
only sleeping place, room unventilated
and unlighted the worst calamity III
the race punished with the very worst
punishment-and then come and look
ut the insane asylums OF Utica aud
Kirkbride- sofaed and pictured, libra
ried, concerted, until all the arts and
adornments come to coax recreant rea-
son to assume her throne. Look at Ed
ward Jenner, the great hero of meGl-
cine Four hundred thousand people an
nually dying i'll Europe from the small
pox, Jenner finds that by the inocula-
ton of people with vaccine from COW
the great scourge of nations may be ar
rested. The ministers of the gospel de-
nounced vaccination, small wits carlca-
tured Edward Jenncr as riding Ill u
great procession Oh the back of COW
and grave men expressed it as 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 oud. But DR.. Jenner tho hero of
medicine, went Oil fighting fer vacclna-
ton until it has been estimated that one
doctor in 90 years has saved more lives
than all the battles of any one century
destroyed.
Medical Progress.
Passing along the streets of Edin-
burgh few wcoks after tho death or
Sir James Y. Simpson, saw the pho
tograph of tho doctor in all the Will
dows of the shops and stores, and well
might that photograph be put i'll every
window, for he first used chloroform as
All anmsthetic agent. In other days they
tried to dull human pain by the hasheesh
of the Arabs and the madrepore Of the
Roman and the Greek, but it was left
to DR.. James Simpson to introduce chic
reform as an ;.nnsthodic. Alas for the
writhing subjects of surgery III other
canturfe.! Blessed be God for that wet
sponge or vial in the hand Of the opcr-
ating surgeon i'll the clinical department.
of the medical college or il the sick
room of the domestic circle or OIL the
battlefield amid thousands of amputa-
tons
Napoleon after battle rode along tho
line and saw under tree standing III
the SHOW Larrey, the surgeon, oper-
ating upon the wounded. Napoleon
passed on, and "a hours afterward came
along the Same place, and he saw the
same surgeon operating in the same
place, and he had not left it. Alas for
the battleholds without chloroform. But
now the soldier boy takes a few broaths
from the sponge and forgets all the
pang of tho gunshot fracture, and
while the surgeons of the field hospital
are standing around him he lies there
dreaming Of home and mother and heay-
en No more parents standing around
q suffering child, struggling to get
away from tho sharp instrument, but
mild slumber instead of excruciation,
and the child wakes up and says: "Fa-
Their. what's the matter? What's the
doctor here today for?" Oh blessed be
God for James Y. Simpson and the
heaven dee 3ended mercies Of chloroform.
The .edical profession steps into the
courtroom, and after conflicting wit
nesses have left everything in fog, by
chemical analyses shows the guilt or in
nocence of the prisoner, as by mathe-
NAUTICAL demonstration, thus adding
honors to medical Jurisprudence.
This profession has done wonders for
public hygiene. How often they have
stood between this nation and Asiatic
cholera and the yellow fever. The mon
uments in Greenwood and Mount Au-
burn and Laurel Hill tell something of
the story of those men who stood face
to face with pestilenco in southern cit
les, until staggering in their own sick
ness they stumbled across the corpses Of
those whom they had come TO save.
This profession has been the successful
advocate of ventilation, sewerage,
drainage and funigation, until their
sentiments were well expressed by Lord
Palmerston, when he said 10 the Eng
lish nation ct the time fast had been
proclaimed to keep off a great pesti-
lence: "Clean your streets or death
will ravagc, Notwithstanding all the
prayers of this nation. Clean your
streets and then call on God for help. .
See what this profession has done for
human longevity. There was such a
fearful subtraction from human life
that there was prospect that within a
few centuries this world would be left
almost inhabitantless. Adam start
ed with whole eternity of earthly ex-
istence before him, but he cut off the
most of 1t and only comparatively few
years were left only 700 years of life,
and then 500, and then 400, and then
200, and then 100, and then 80, and
then the average of human life came to
40, and then it dropped to IS. But
medical science came ill., and since the
sixteenth century the average of human
life has risen from IS years to IA, and
it will continue to rise until the average
of human life will be 80, and it will be
60, aud it will be 10, and man will
have 10 right to die before 90 and the
prophecy of Isaiah will be literally full
filled, land the child shall die 100
years old. Tho millennium for the
, souls of men will be the millennium
for the bodies OF men. Sin done, disease
| will be done, the clergyman and the
physician getting through with their
, work at the same time.
Doctors For the Poor.
| But it seems to me that the most
: beautiful benediction of the medical
profession has been dropped upon the
poor. No excuse now for any ones not
having scientific attendance. Dispensa'
ries and infrmaries everywhere, under
4Lo oontro1 of tbe hest doctors some Of