The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1897-06-11

Hosack and Remeyn, and Griscom and
Valentine Mott, of the generation just
past. honored God and fought back
death with their keen scalpels.
II we who are laymen in medicine
would understand what the medical
profession has accomplished for the in
sane, let Us look into h dungeons
where the poor creatures used to be in
Observation-Disclosures chained naked to
the wall, a kennel OF rotten straw their
only sleeping place, room unventitated
and unlighted, the worst calamity OF
the race punished with n very worst
punishment-and hen come and look
at the 8 asylumS OF Utica n
Kirkbride-sofaed and pictured. libra
ried, concerted, until all the arts and
adJrnments come to coax recreant rea-
son to assume her throne. Look at Ed
ward Jenner, the great hero Of medi-
cine. Four hundred Thousand people an
nuaily dying in Europe from the small
pox, Jenner finds that by the inocuia-
ton of people with vaccint from a COW
the great scourg of nations may be ar
rested. The ministers Of tn gospel de-
nounced vaccination, small wits carica-
tured Edward -Jenner as riding in a
great procession on the back Of a COW
and grave men expressed 1t as their
OPINION nat oil lllt uIoNdSNo VI Iii-
brute ~creation would be transplanted
into thehuman family, and they gave
instances where, they said, actually
horns had come out on the rehea OF
innocent persons and people had be-
gun to chew the cud. But DR.. Jenner,
the hero of medicine, went on fighting
for vaccination until 1t has been esti-
mated that one doctor in fifty years
has saved more lives than all the bait
ties Of any one century destroyed.
MEDICAL PROGRESS.
Passing along the streets of Edin-
burgh a few weeks after the death Of
Sir James Y. Simpson, I saw the pho
tOgraph Of the doctor in all the win
dows of the shops and stores, and we'll
might that photograph be put in every
window, for he first used chlOrofOrm as
an an~aesthetic agent. In other days
they tried to dull human pain by the
~hasheesh of the Arabs and the mad
repore Of the Roman n the Greek,
but it was left to DR.. James SimD-
son to introduce chlOrOfOrm as an
anaes thetic. Ala for the writhing SUD-
iects Of surgery of other centuries!
Blessed be God for hat wet sponge or
vial in the hand of the operating SUR
geOn in the clinical department. OF the
medical college OF in the sickroom of
Inc tJllltSIIC CllClc VI Ol Xix pdIIiN
field amid thousands of computations.
Napoleon after a battle rode along the
line and saw nde a tree standing in
the snow Larrey, the surgeon, Oper-
aLing upGn the wounded. Napoleon
passed on. and twenty-fOur hours af-
terWard Came along the same place,
and he saw the same surgeon opera
ting in the same place, and he had not
left it. Alas for the battlefields With
out ~chlorofOrm. Bnt now the soldier
boy takes a few breaths from the
sponge n forgets all the pang Of the
gunshot fracture, and while the sur
geons of the field hospital are stand
ing around him he lies there dreaming
of home and mother and heaven. No
more parents standing around a suf-
fering child, struggling 70 get away
from the sharp instrumeA but mild
,slumber instead of excruHatiOn, and
the child wakes UP and says: Father,
what's the matter? What's he doctor
here today fOr?" On, blessed be God
for James Y. Simpson and the heaven
descended mercies of chlorofOrm.
The medical profession steps into the
courtroom and after conflicting wit
nesses have left everything in a fog, by
chemical analyses shows the guilt or
~innOcenSe of the prisoner, as by mathe-
NAUTICAL demonstration, thus adding
hOnOrS to medical jusirprudence.
This profession has done wonders for
puglic 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 pestilence 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, eWerag gle,
drainage and fumigation, until their
sentiments were we'll expressed by Lord
Palmerston, when he said to the Eng
lish nation at the time a fast had been
proclaimed to keep off a great pesti-
lence: "Clean your streets or death
will ravage, Notwithstanding all the
praye 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 satisfaction from human life
that there was a prospect that within a
few centuries this world wOul be left
almost inhabitantless, Adam start
ed with a whole eternity of earthly ex-
istence before him, but he cut off the
most Of it and only comparatively few
years We're left-only 700 years of life,
and then 500, and then 400, and then