Audubon Republican. [volume] (Audubon, Iowa) 1894-1925, 1900-07-26
TALMAGE'S SERMON.
TALK ON ONE OF THE MISSIONS
OF CHRIST.
Enhcacy of Divine Power In Healing the
Worlds Wounds and The
Intimate Relations of Surgery and
Theology,

Copyright, 1900. by Louis Klopsch)
In this discourse DR.. Talmage (who
is now travelling in Europe) puts in an
unusual light the mission of Christ
and shows how divine power will yet
make the illnesses of the world fall
back; text, Matthew XII, 5, THE blind
receive their sight, and the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed and the deaf
hear"
Doctor" l said to a distinguished
surgeon, do you not get worn out
with constantly seeing so many
wounds and broken bones and distor-
tions Of the human body?" ooh, no."
he answered, "all that is overcome by
my Joy in curing them. A sublimer
and more merciful art never came
down from heaven than that of sur
gerry. Catastrophe and disease entered
the earth so early that one of the first
wants of the world was a doctor. Our
crippled and agonized human race call
ed for surgeon and family physician
for many years before they came The
first surgeons who answered this call
were ministers of religion-namely,
the Egyptian priests. And what
grand thing If all clergymen were also
doctors, all d. DIS were M. DIS, for
there are so many cases where body
and soul need treatment at the same
time, consolation and medicine, the
ology and therapeutics. AS the first
surgeons of the world were also minis
ters of religion, may these two profess
sions always be in full sympathy! But
under what disadvantages the early
surgeons worked, from the fact that
the dissection of the human body was
forbidden, first by the pagans, and
then by the early Christians! Apes,
being the brutes most like the human
race, were dissected. but no human
body might be unfolded for physi-
illogical and anatomical exploration,
and the surgeons had to guess what
was inside the temple by looking at
the outside of it. If they failed in
any surgical operation, they were per-
secuted and driven out of the city, as
was Archagathus because Of his bold
but unsuccessful attempt to save pa
tient.
The Surgeon in History.
But the world from the very begin
ming, kept calling for surgeons, and
their first skill Is spoken of in Genesis,
where they employed their art for the
incisions Of sacred rite, God making
surgery the predecessor Of baptism,
and we see it again in II Kings, where
Ahaziah, the monarch, stepped on
some cracked latticework in the pal
ace, and it broke, and he fell from the
upper to the lower floor, and he was
so hurt that he sent to the village Of
Ekron for aid, and Aesculapius, who
wrought such wonders of surgery, that
he was deified and temples were built
for his worship at Pergamos; and Epi-
daurus and Podelirius introduced for
the relief of the world phlebotomy,
and Damocedes cured the dislocated
ankle of King Darius and the cancer
of his queen, and Hippocrates put sue
cessful hand on fractures and intro
duced amputation, and Praxagoras re-
moved distractions, and Herophilus
began dissection and Erasistratus
removed tumors, and CELSIUS, the Ro-
man surgeon, removed cataract from
the eye and used the Spanish fly; and
Heliodorus arrested disease of the
throat, and Alexander of Tralles treat
ed the eye, and Rhazas cauterized for
the prevention of hydrophobia, and
Percival Pott came to combat diseases
of the spine, and in our century we
have had, among others, a Roux, and
a Larray in France, an Ashley Cooper
and an Abernethy in Great Britain and
a Valentine Mott and Willard Parker
| and Samuel d. Gross in America and
a galaxy of living surgeons as brilliant
as their predecessors. What mighty
progress in the battling of disease since
the crippled and sick of ancient cities
were laid along the streets, that peo-
pie who had ever been hurt or disor-
dered in the same way might suggest
what had better be done for the pa
tients, and the priests Of olden time,
who were constantly suffering from
colds, received in walking barefoot
| over the temple pavements had to pre-
scribe for themselves, and fractures
were considered so far beyond all hui
man cure that instead of calling in the
surgeon the people only invoked the
gods!
But Notwithstanding all the surgi-
cal and medical skill in the world,
with what tenacity the old diseases
hang on to the human race, and most
of them are thousands of years old,
and in our Bibles we read of them
the carbuncles of Job and Hezekiah,
the palpitation of the heart spoken of
in Deuteronomy, the sunstroke of
child carried from the fields of Shu-
mem, crying, MY head, my head"
King Asa's disease of the feet, which
was nothing but govt; detection of
teeth, that called for dental surgery,
the skill Of which, almost equal to any
thing modern, Is still seen in the filled
molars Of the unrolled Egyptian num-
mics; the ophthalmia caused by the
juice of the newly ripe fig, leaving the
people blind by the roadside; epilepsy,
as in the case Of the young man often
falling into the fire, and oft into the
water; hypochondria, as of Nebuchad-
nezzar, who imagined himself an OK
and going out to the fields to pasture;
the withered hand, which in Bible
times, as now, came from the destruc-
tlon OF the main artery or from paraIy-