Connecticut western news., 1897-06-10


 and big pocket, small pocket in which to put your fees, large pocket in which to put your annoyances.
 In the first place. the physician has no Sabbath. Busy merchants and lawyers and mechanics cannot afford to be sick during the secular week. and so they nurse themselves along with lozenges and horehounl candy until Sabbath morning comes, and then they say, "I must have doctor" And that spells the Sabbath morning church service for the physician. Besides that, there are great many men who dine but once a week with their families During the secular days they take nasty lunch at the restaurant, and on the Sabbath they make up for their six days abstinence by especial gormandizing, which, before night, makes their amazed digestive or gans cry out for a doctor. And that spells the evening church service for the physician.
 Then they are annoyed by people coming too late. Men wait until the last fortress of physical strength is taken and death has dug around it the trench of the grave, and then they run for the doctor. The slight fever which might have been cured with footbath has become virulent typhus, and the hacking cough killing pneumonia. AS though a captain should sink his ship off Amagansett, and then put ashore in yawl, and then come to New York to the marine office and want to get his vessel insured. Too late for the ship, too late for the patient.
 Wise Doctors.
 Then there are many who always blame the doctor because the people die, forgetting the divine enactment, "It is appointed unto all men once to die." The father in medicine who an- nounced the fact that he had discovered the art by which to make men in this world immortal, himself died at 47 years of age, showing that immortality was less than half century for him. Oh, how easy it is when people die to cry out, Malpractice. Then the phy- sician must bear with all the whims. and the sophistries. and the deceptions, and the stratagems, and the irritations of the shattered nerves and the becloud- ed brains of women, and more especially of men, who never know how graceful ly to be sick, and who with their sali- vated mouths curse the doctor, giving him his dues, as they say-about the only dues he will in that case collect. The last bill that is paid is the doctors bill. It seems so incoherent for a re- stored patient, with ruddy cheeks and rotund form, to be bothered with a bill charging him for old calomel and jalap. The physicians of this country do more | missionary work without charge than all the other professionals put together. From the concert room, from the merry party, from the comfortable couch on cold night, when the thermometer is | fl ye degrees below zero, the doctor must | go right away-he always must go | right away. To keep up under this ner- vous strain, to go through this night | work, to bear all these annoyances, | many physicians have resorted to strong drink and perished. Others have appeal ed to God for sympathy and help and | have lived. Which were the wise doc I tors, judge ye? Again, the medical profession ought | to be Christians because there are pro- | fessional exigencies when they need /! God. Asa's destruction by unblessed physicians was warning There are owful crises in every medical practice when doctor ought to know how ro pray. All the hosts of ills will some- times hurl themselves on the weak points of the physical organism, or with equal ferooity will assault the entire line of susceptibility to suffering. The next dose of medicine will decide whether or not the happy home shall be broken up. Shall 1t be this medicine or that medicine? God help the doctorl Between the five drops and the ten drops may be the question of life or death. Shall it be the five or the ten drops? Be careful how you put that knife through those delicate portions of the body, for if it swing out of the way the sixth part of an inch the patient perishes. Under such circumstances physician needs not so much consulta- tion with men of his own calling as he needs consultation with that God who strung the nerves and built the cells and swung the crimson tide through the arteries. You wonder why the heart | throbs, why 1t seems to open and shut. There is no wonder about it. It is God s hand, shutting, opening, shutting, open ing, on every heart. When a man comes to doctor the eye, he ought be in com munication with him who said to the blind, Receive thy sight" When a doctor comes to treat paralytic arm, he ought to be in communication with him who said, Stretch forth thy hand, and he stretched it forth. !" When man comes to doctor bad case of hemor- rhage, he needs to be in communication with him who cured the issue of blood,
 saying, "Thy faith hath saved thee." | Piety and Medical Skill.
 do not mean to say that piety will make up for medical skill. A bungling doctor, confounded with what was not a very bad case, went into the next room to pray. A skilled physician was called in. He asked for the first practitioner. "Oh," they said, he's in the next room praying. !" "Well," !" said the skilled doc- tor, "tell him to come out here and help. He can pray and work at the same time.' It was all in that sen- tence. Do the best we can and ask God to help us. There are no two men in all the world, it seems to me, that so much need the grace of God as the minister who doctors the sick soul and the phy- sician who prescribes for the diseased body.
 Another reason why the medical pro- fession ought to be Christians is because there opens before them such grand field for Christian usefulness. You see so many people in pain, in trouble, in bereavement You ought to be the voice of heaven to their souls. Old Dr. Cash erie De Witt, practitioner of New York, told me in his last days, 'I al- ways present the religion of Christ to my patients, either directly or indirect | lY and find it is almost always accent