The L'Anse sentinel. (L'Anse, L.S., Mich.) 18??-current, 1897-06-19

uses VI tuc iymphdtiC vcoocis, nho
Jenner baked the worst disease tina,
ever scourgcd Europe, and Sydenham
developed the recuperative forces of
the physical organism. and cinchona
bark stopped the shivering agues OF
the world, and Sir Ashley Cooper and
Abern athy, and Hosack, and Romeyn,
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 the dungeons
where the poor creatures used to be In
carcerated. Madmen, chained naked
to the wall. A kennel of rotten straw
their only only sleeping place. Room
unventilated and unlighted. The
worst calamity Of the race punished
with the very worst punishment And
then come and look at the insane asy-
lums of Utica and Kirkbride-sofaed,
and pictured, libraried, concerted, un-
til all the arts and adornments come to
coax recreant reason to assume her
throne. Look at Edward Jenner, the
great hero of medicine. Four hun
dred thousand people annually dying
in Europe from the smallpox, Jen-
ner finds that by the inocula-
ton of people with vaccine from q
COW, the great scourge of nations may
be arrested. The ministers of the Cos
pei denounced vaccinations; small wits
caricatured Edward Jenner as riding
in great procession on the back of .
COW; and grave men expressed it as
their opinion that all the diseases of
the brute creation would be trans
planted 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 cud!
But DR.. Jenner, the hero of medicine,
went on fighting for vaccination until
it has been estimated that one doctor,
in fifty years, has saved more lives
than all the battles of any one century
destroyed!
Passing along the streets of Edin-
burgh few weeks after the death Of
Sir James Y. Simpson, saw the photo
graph of the doctor in all the windows
of the shops and stores, and well might
that photograph be put in every win
dow, for he first used chloroform as an
agent. In other days they
tried to dull human pain by the has
heesh of the Arabs and the Inadrepore
Of the Roman and the Greek; but it was
left to DIR. James Simpson to introduce
as an anaesthetic. Alas
for the writing subjects of surgery in
other centuriesl Blessed be God for
that wet sponge or vial in the hand of
the operating surgeon in the clinical
department. of the medical college, or
IN the sick room of the domestic circle,
DR. on the battlefield amid thousands
Of amputa tons. Napoleon, after a
battle, rode along the line and saw
under tree, standing in the
snow, Larrey, the surgeon, oper-
ating upon the wounded. Napoleon
passed on, and twenty-four hours af-
came along the same place,
and he saw the same surgeon operating
n the same place, and he had not left
t. Alas for the battle-felds without
But now the soldier boy
axes few breaths from the sponge
md forgets all the pang of the gun
'hot fracture, and while the surgeons
If the field hospital are standing
around him he lies there dreaming of
home, and mother, and Heaven. No
more parents standing around suffer
ing child, struggling to get away from
he sharp instrument, but mild slumber
instead of excruciation, and the child
wakes up and says: Father, what's
he matter? What's the doctor here
o-day for?" Oh, blessed be God for
James Y. Simpson and the heave n-de-
cended mercies of chloroform.
The medical profession steps into the
and, after conflicting wit
,esses have left everything in fog, by
analyses shows the guilt or
innocence of the prisoner, as by mathe-
natical demonstration, thus adding
,onors to medical Jurisprudence.
This profession has done wonders for
public hygiene! How often they have
TODD between this nation and Asiatic
:holera, and the yellow fever! The
in Greenwood, and Mount
Auburn, and Laurel Hill tell some
hing of the story of those men who
tood face TO face with pestilence in
outhern cities, until, staggering in
heir own sickness, they stumbled
Icross the corpses of those whom they
lad come to save. This profession has
,een the successful advocats of ven
ilation, sewerage, drainage and fumi-
'ation, until their sentiments were
veil expressed by Lord Palmerston,
When he said to the English nation at |
he time fast had been proclaimed to
'eep off great pestilence: "Clean your
treets or death will ravage, notwith-
all the prayers of this nation.
lean your streets, and then call on |
Tod for help.
See what this profession has done |
or human longevity. There was such |
! fearful satisfaction from human life |
hat there was prospect that within
J few centuries this world would be |
eft almost inhabitantless. Adam |
tarted with n whole eternity of earth
y existence before him; but he cut off |
he most OF 1t and only comparatively
ew years were left-ouly 700 years of |
life, and then 500, and then 400, and |
hen 200, and then 100, and then so, and |