The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1915-03-19
Counted Not His Life Dear Unto Himself

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In the press dispatches of yesterday
was announced the death from lep-
rosy of DR.. George Turner. He con-
tracted the disease from giving him
self up to the study of leprosy in the
leper camp at Pretoria with view
of discovering cure. DR.. Turner dis
covered a cure for the rinderpest and
did much by his reaserches to stay
the ravages of typhoid fever in South
Africa. Like Father Damien, the
Christ-like priest, who also gave his
life to ameliorate the condition of
those who suffered from leprosy, a
disease which in its last stages is IN
speakably loathsome and disgusting,
the entire body rotting away, DIR.
Turner, with mighty love for such
afflicted in his heart and with an eye
single to the discovery, even at the
sacrifice of his own life, of some cure
that would make generations to come
immune from the dreadful disease,
took his life in his hand, went down
into the deeps of darkness and fell
at last victim of leprosy for which
he so nobly tried to find a cure.
Such heroic lives as that of DIR.
Turner ring out like a bugle call
amid selfish and materialistic age
and reveal the Divine spark that
testifies to mans kinship with God.
When these and like stories are read
of men who count not their lives dear
unto themselves but pour it out upon
the altar of self-sacrifice for the
common good, it adds wings to our
faith in the divinely illuminated burst
of light one of old sent forth in the
statement: Thou hast made him
IMAM little lower than God" One
such act coming out now and then in
all the walks of life restores our
faith in human nature and grounds
us in the conviction that the creation
of man, despite his long list of wrong
and shame, has not been a mistake
We must altogether revise our
ideals of what a true hero is. We
have been taught to look for heroism
on the tented field where armies meet
and cannon answers cannon and men
rush to death at the command of
noble cause, or one which is fancied
noble, as to festival. We think of
an Arnold Winkelreid, of Bruce, of
Caesar at the head of Rome's mighty
legions, of Pickett leading the death
less but forlorn hopes up the bloody
slopes of Gettysburg, of Joan hiding
her woman's heart under an armor
of steel and battling for the liberties
of France. But these are not our
only heroes. Only to a few rare souls
is 1t given to thus win a deathless
name in the imminent and deadly
breach. Science has its heroes: the
home and hearth have their lists to
immortals who by kindly and self
sacrificing ministries to loved ones, in
sickness, through long nights of pain,
show heroism that places them
if not far in advance, of
any military chieftain who led a
charge or withstood the thunder
shock of attack.
Naturally when We read of what
DR.. Turner tried to do for the lepers
we recall the self-sacrificing life of |
Louis Pasteur, to whom the world
owes so much. When the silk indus
try of France bade fair to be exter-
Pasteur went to live with
themoths and the larvae in a hot
house and spent FIVE years there, in
the course Of which he found the
cause Of the disease that was destroy
ing the silk worm and it's cure, but he
came out a hopeless paralytic. !,
through Lister he gave the world
that revolutionized sur