The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-08-03
THE GREAT SURGEON
REV. DR.. TALMAGE ON ONE OF THE
MISSIONS OF CHRIST
The Efficacy of the Divine Power In
Healing the Worlds Wounds and
Deformities-The Intimate Relations
of Surgery and Theology.

Is now travelling in EuropS) puts IL an
unusual light the mission Of Christ
and shows how divine power will yet
make the illness of n world fall back;
text. Matthew xi, 3, The bhind receive
their sight. and the lame walk. the
Iepers are cIeansed and the leaf hear"
Doctor 1 said to a distinguished
surgeon do you not get worn out with
constant seeing 50 many wounds and
broken bones and distortions OF the
human body" oh, no." he answer
ed: "aIl tha is overcome by my joy
in curing them A sublimer and more
mercifuI art never came down from
heaven than that of urger Catas-
trophe and disease entered the earth
so early that one of the first wants
of the world was a doctor. Our Grip
pie and agonized human race called
for surgeon and family physician for
many years before they came The
first surgeons who answered this call
were ministers of religion, the Egyp-
tian priests. And what a grand thing
if all clergymen We're also doctors, all
d. DIS We're VI. DIS, for there are SO
so many cases where body and soul
need treatment at the same time, con-
ISOLATION and medicine, theology ana
therapeutics. AS the first surgeon OF
the world were also ministers OF relS-
ion may these two professions always
be in full sympathy! But under what
disadvantages the early surgeons work
ed, from the fact that the dissection
of the human body was forbidden, first
by the pagans and then by the early
Christiansi Apes, being the brutes
most like the human race, were dlsSec-
ted, but no human body might be un-
folded for physiological 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
We're prosecuted and driven out OF the
city, as was Archagathus because of
his bold but unsuccessful attempt to
save a patient.
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 Tor the
fncisiOns of a sacred rite, God making
surgery the predecessor of baptism,
and we see it-again in II Kings, where
Ahaziah, tn monarch, stepped on some
cracked latticewOrk in the palace, n
it broke, and he fell from upper TO the
lower floor, and he was so hurt that
he sent to the village of Ekron for aid,
and EeSculapiuS, who rough sucn
wonders of urger that he was dened
and temples were bull for his worship
at ergamo and Epidaurus and Po-
delirius introduced for the relief of the
world ~phlebotomy, and Damacedes
cured the dislocated ankle OF KING
Darius and the cancer of his queen,
and HippicrateS put SucceSS1ul nand
on fractures and introduced amputa-
49, 20 nnro rnT1nN-n6 nhGrrlIr-
tions, and Herophilus began dissection,
and Erasistratus removed tumors, and
CELSIUS. the Roman surgeon,
cataract from the eye and used the
panish fly; and HeIiOdOrus arrested
disease of the throat, and
of Tralles treated the eye, n Rhazas
cauterized for the prevention of hydro
phobia, and Percival Pott came TO
combat diseases of the spine, and in
our own century we nave 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 ID.
Gross in America and a galaxy of Hv-
ing surgeons as brilliant astheir pred
ecessOrs. What might progress in the
bathing of disease since the crippled
and sick of ancient cities We're laid
along the streets, that people who had
ever been hurt or disordered in the
same way might suggest what had
better be done for the patients, and
the priests of olden time, who We're
constantly suffering from colds recelv-
ed in walking barefoot Over the temple
had to prescribe for them
selves, and fractures were considered
so far beyond all human cure that in
stead of calling in the surgeon the
people only invoked the gods!
But Notwithstanding all the surgl-
cal and medical skill of h world, with
what tenacity the old diseases hang
on to the human race, and most OF
then are thousands of yearS old and
in our Bibles we read of them-thec car
buncles of Job and Hezekiah, the pal
pitation of the heart spoken OF in Deu-
teronOmy, the SunStrOke of a child car
ried from the fields of Shunem, cy1nS
MY head, my head" King ASa'S dis
ease of the feet, which was nothing
but govt; detection of teeth, that called
for dental the skill Of which,
almost equal to anything modern, is
still seen in the filled molarS OF the
unrolled Egyptian mummles; the oph-
thalmia caused by the juice of the
newly ripe fig, epilepsy, as in the case
of the young man often falling into
the fire and oft into the water; hy-
pOchOndria, as of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS,
who imagined himself an OK and going
out to the fields to pasture; the with
cred mana, winch IN bfDlc lllleS, dS
now, came from the of the
main artery or from paralysis of the
chief nerve; the wound of the man
whom the thieves left for dead in the
road to Jericho and when the good
Samaritan nursed, pouring in oil and
wine-wine to cleanse the wound and
oil to soothe it. Thank God for what
surgery has done for h alienation
and cure of human suffering!
SURGERY WITHOUT PAIN.
But the world wanted a surgery with
out pain. Drs. Parre and Hickman
and Simpson and Warne n Jack
son., with their anaeSthetics benumbed
the patient with narcotics and others
as h ancients did with hasheeSh and
mandrake and quieted him for awhile
but at h return of consciousness
distress returned. The world has new
er seen but n surgeon who could
straighten b crooked limb, cure n
blind eye or reconstruct the drum OF a
soundless ear or reduce a dropsy with
out any pain at the time or any pain
after. and that surgeon was Jesus
Christ, the mightiest, grandest, gentl-