The Penn's Grove record., 1897-06-11

The In1rInIty OF King Asa Is Made
the Text of an Eloquent Tribute 60 thu
Medical Profession - Good Reason'
WHY All Doctors should BE Christians
'sAnd Asa, in the thirty and ninth year Of
his reign. was diseased In his feet until his
disease was exceeding great. yet In hi:
disease be sought not to the Lord, but &C
the physicians. And Asa slept with his
fathers. III. Chronicles xvii, IL, Is.
At this season OF the year, when medical
colleges OF all schools OF medicine are Civ
ing diplomas TO young doctors. and at tht
capital and in many OF the cities medical
associations are assembling TO consult
about tho advancement Of 1.-THE interests oil
their profession, / feel this discourse is APP
propriate.
In my text is King Asa with the govt,
High living and no exercise have vltiated
his blood, and my text presents him with
his innamed and b~andaged feet on an otto
man. In defiance Of God, whom he hated,
he sends for certain ~conjurors or Guacks.
They come and give him all sorts Of lotions
and panaceas. They bleed him. They
sweat him, They manipulate him. They
blister him. They poultice him They
scarity him. They drug him. They cut
him. They kill him. He was only a young
man and had q disease which, though very
painful. seldom proves fatal to q young
man, and he ought to rave got well, but he
fell a victim to charlatanry and empirlcism.
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 dis
ease he sought not to the Lord, but to the
physicians. And Asa slept with his ia
theirs" 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. II Asa had
said: 90 Lord. l am sick. Bless thei In
strumentality employed for my recovery"
Now. servant, go and get the best doctor
you can nnd"-he would have recovered.
In other words, the world wants divinely
directed physicians. There are a great
many such. The diplomas they received
from the academies Of medicine were
nothing compared with the diploma they
received 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 ~dispensares and In
flrmarles and asyIums and domestic circles
of the earth respond. Amen"
Men of the medical profession we often
meet in tho home of distress. We shake
hands across the table o fagOnized infancy.
We Join each other in al attempt at solace
where the paroxysm of grief demands an
anodyne as we'll as a 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 to-day In order to greet each
other, for our professions ARE In full SYM
patty. You, 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 II.
In the closing moments OF cur earthly exist
ence, when the hand of the wife or mother,
or sister or daughter, shall hold our right
hand, 1t will give strength to our dying mo-
ments II we can feel the tips Of your fingers
along the pulse of the left wrist. We do
not meet to-day, as on other days, In houses
Of distress, but by the pleasant affairs of
God, and ! propose a sermon of h~elpiulness
and good cheer. As In the nursery children
sometimes re-enaet oil the scenes Of the
sick room, SO to-day you play that you are
the patient and that I AN the physician, and
take my prescription Just once. 1t shall be
a tonic, a sedative, a dietetic, q disinfect-
ant, a stimulus and an anodyne at the same
time. us there not balm In Gilead2 Is
there not O physician there?"
In the first place, / think all the medical
profession should become Christians be-
cause 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 Hn honor as yours.
Christ himself was not only preacher, but
physician surgeon, aurist, ophtbalmoloGist,
and under His mighty power optic and au-
ditory nerve thrilled with light and sound,
and catalepsy arose from its ut, and the
clubfoot was Strengthened, and a~nchylosis
went out OF the stifIened tendons, and the
foaming maniac became placid as a child,
and the streets OF Jerusalem became IN ex-
temporized hospital crowded with con-
valescent victims Of casUa4ty-SsA-Aa<~I-
ism. All ages have woven the garland for
the doctors brow. Homer said:
A wise physician, skilled our wounds to
heal,
Is 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 10 other men, Charles X.
made proclamation that all the Protestants
In France should be put to death on st,
Bartholomew day, but made n excep-
tion, and that the case Of Pare, the father
of French surgery. The battlefelds OF the
American Revolution welcomed Dr3, Mercer
and Warren and Rush. When the French
army was entirely demoralized by fear OF
the plague, the leading surgeon OF 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 has honored his
profession all the way through. oh, the
advancement from the days when Hippo
crates tried to cure the great Pericles with
bellebore and flaxseed poultiees down to
lar later centuries when Halter announced
the theory of respiration, and Harvey the
circulation of the blood, and Asceiit the nses
OF the Emphatic vessels, and Jenner baked
the worst disease that ever seourged Eu-
rope, and SydeDham developed the re-
operative forces OF the physical organism.
and einehona bark stopped the shivering
agues OF the world, and Sir Ashley Cooper
and ~Abernethy, n Hosack and Romeyn,
and Griscom and Valentine Mott, OF the
generation Just past, honored God and
fought back death with their keen scaipels.
II we who are laymen In medicine would
understand what the medical profession
has accomplished forthe insane, let us look
into the dungeons where the poor creatures
used to be Observation-Disclosures chained
axe to the wall, q kennel Of rotten straw
their only sleeping place, room snven-
tilated and unlighted, the worst calamity
OF the race punished with the very worst
punishment-and then come and look at
the insane asylums Of Utica and Kirkbride
-sofaed and pictured, libraried, concerted,
uheii All bhe arts uuu huOrnmentS come TO
coax recreant reason to assume her throne.
Look at Edward Jenner, the great hero OF
medicine. Four hundred thousand people
annually dying in Europe from the small
pox, Jenner finds that by the incubation OF
people with vaccine from a cow the great
scourge of nations may be arrested. The
ministers OF the gospel denounced vaceina-
ton, small wits caricatured Edward Jenner
as riding In o great procession on the back
OF a cow and grave men expressed II 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 a begun to chew the cud. But
Dr.. Jenner, tho hero Of medicine, went on
lighting for vaccination until II has been
estimated that one doctor in 1fty wears has
saved more lives than all the battles of any
II century destroyed. :
See what this profession has done for hu-
man 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 started with a whole eternity Of
earthly existence before him, but he cut of
the most of it and only comparatively few
years were ~left-only 700 years OF life, and
then 500, and then 400, and Their 200, and
then 100, and then so, and then the average
OF human life came to 40, and then II
dropped to IS, But medical science camC
in, and since the sixteenth century the
average OF human life has risen from Il