The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1900-07-28
A MISSION OF CHRIST
DR.. Talmage Discourses on the
Great Surgeon.
Emcacy of the Divine Power In Heal
Ing the Worlds wounds and De-
fOrmitieS-ReIatiOn of SUR
gerry and Theology.
copyright. 1900. by Louis KIopsch.l
Washington,

II now travelling In Europe) puts IN al
unusual light the mission of Chris
and shows how Divine power will ye
make the illnesses of the world fal
back; text, Matthew XII, 5: The blint
receive their sight, and the lame walk
the lepers are cleansed and the deai
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?" "Oh, 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 en-
tered the earth so early that one of
the first wants of the world was a
doctor. Our crippled and agonized
human race called for surgeon and
family physician for many years be-
fore they came. The first surgeons
who answered this call were minis
tiers of rengion-namely, the Egyp-
tian priests. And what grand thing
If all the clergymen were also doe
tors, all d. DIS were NJ. DIS, for there
are so many cases where body and
soul need treatment at the same time,
consolation and medicine, theology
and therapeutics. AS the first sur
geons of Il e world were also ministers
of religion, may these two professions
always be in full sympathy! But I'M
der what disadvantages the early sur
geons worked, from the fact that the
dissection of the human body was for
hidden, 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 physiological
and anatomical exploration, and the
surgeons had to guess what was in
side the temple by looking at the out
side of it. If they failed in any surgi-
cal operation, they were prosecuted
and driven out of the city. as was
Archagathus because of his bold but
unsuccessful attempt to save a pa
tient.
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
missions 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 Epidaurus and Podelirius intro
duced for the relief of the world
phlebotomy, and Damocedes cured
the dislocated ankle of King Darius
Hippocrates put successful hand on
fractures and introduced amputa-
ton, and Praxagoras removed obstruc-
tions, and Herophilus began dissec-
ton, and Erasistratus removed tu-
mors, and CELSIUS, the Roman surgeon,
removed cataract from the eye and |
used the Spanish fly; and Heliodorus
arrested disease of the throat, and AL |
exander of Tralles treated the eye, and |
Rhazas cauterized tor the prevention |
of hydrophobia, and Percival Pott |
came to combat diseases of the spine,
and in our own century we have had,
among others, Roux and 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 bril-
liant as their predecessors. What
mighty progress in the battling of dis
ease since the crippled and sick of
ancient cities were 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 were constantly
suffering from colds received in walk
ing barefoot over the temple pave
ments, 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 surgical
and medical skill of 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 Shunem, crying: my
head, my head!" King Asas disease of
the feet, which was nothing but govt;
detection of the teeth, that called for
dental surgery, the skill of which, al
most equal to anything modern, is still
seen in the filled molars of the unrolled
Egyptian mummies; the ophthalmia
caused by the juice of the newly ripe
fig, leaving the people blind by the road
side; epilepsy, as in the case of the
young man often falling into the fire
and oft into the water; hypocLondria,
as of Nebuchadnezzar, 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 destruction of the main ar
terry or from paralysis of the chief
nerve; the wounds of the man whom
the thieves left for dead on the road
to Jericho and whom the good Samari-
tan nursed, pouring in oil and wine
wine to cleanse the wound and oil to
soothe it. Thank God for what surgery
has done for the alienation and cure of II
human sufferingl /,
But the world wanted a surgery with