The Alaska daily empire., 1918-01-29
ACKNOWLEDGES A PUBLIC DEBT
 TO PHYSICIANS Text of Sermon Delivered By Rev. Geo. B. Bruce
 in Presbyterian
 Church HELP TO HUMANITY Brief Glance Into What Has Been Accomplished
 During the Worlds Progress

in the Presbyterian church and con
 tinued:
 Let us hasten to confess the debt
 of society to it's physicians and sur geons. In the nature of the case
 the physician occupies a unique po- l sition and must avoid publicity. The jurist welcomes the crowd to his
 court; the educator is alawys among
 the people; but the work of the phy- | sician is done in the silence of the sick-room, where when a life is tot
 tering in the balance even the mem-
 bers of the family are excluded.
 For this reason the medical profes- sion should receive due recognition
 from the state for the work it does
 in conquering disease, alleviating
 pain, healing mans wounds. length
 ening his life and increasing his value as productive agent.
 The opaQueness of the body mak- es the physicians duty double diff ficult. The banker, the lawyer, the
 watch maker are always able to view their cases from observed in
 side information but the physician
 must deny himself usually such !n-
 formation and complete his diagnosis from symptoms.
 The human body is an assembly
 of machines. The eye is a tele-
 scope and microscope, the ear a
 telephone and an audiphone, the
 heart a pump, the leg lever, the
 brain a machine for thinking, that
 can run without flaw or fever for
 seventy summers. You can do but
 one thing with a drill, but the body is a machine that is doing a dozen
 things at once. Think of a machine
 so delicate that you can sit down
 and mediate in cool place. tatse the delicious flavor of the orange with the tongue, with the eye follow the trip of a traveller, be half con- scious of sweet music in the next room, hear the approach of friend at the door. It is quite the habit to poke fun at the old medicine, the old surgery, the old methods of nursing, and forget the old methods of farming, old manufacturing, old education. A hundred years ago there was not a sulphur match or stove that would burn coal. New York was three months from Chicago, and a letter cost 25 cents for postage. Churches were built by prize lotter- l ies Ministers were installed by the
 sacred laying of hands and the hi-
 larious laying in of rum. Every
 other person that was in Wall St. when Washington was inaugurated
 showed signs of smallpox. Cholera was a deadly scourge in the north.
 and yellow fever appeared every Aug ust in the States bordering on the southern Atlantic Every other babe
 born died within three months. Your grandmother went into the woods | in the fall and gathered scores of herbs and roots. She mixed the juices together and you had to drink l a gourd full three times year of this "tea". If one herb did not get | the disease another would, with the ! result, another mysterious prpvi-
 dence had afflicted the commun- l ity."
 Long is the role of illustrious phy- sicians who have achieved marvels l for the world Dr. William Harvey, l in the year Shapespease died. discov- cred the circulation of the blood and proved that the heart was pump driving bad blood to the lungs that waste might be dissipated in the air. For four hundred years mer- chants and manufacturers have both | looked longingly at the Isthmus of l Panama- France furnished the man who led the way. He built shops ! and homes and roads only to van | quished by the pesky mosquito. Then 1 an American physician took up the 1 task and proved that if the mos quito was destroyed the canal could be built Today we can sing the praises of this man for not only making 1t possible to build the can l al but also to convert its beauty of position into a health resort.
 Another achievement Of medical surgery is antiseptic surgery. The l goth century has its seven wonders = wireless teleghaphy, the long dis ltance telephone, the asropIane. ra- dium. the x-ray the coll theory of disease, the antiseptic surgery-but. in many respects the greatest of these is the achievement of Lister. He watched tho wound of . tree as 1t bled. He noticed that the tree only decayed where the wound was exposed to the air. He began with the experiments using carbolic acid and his listerins. He proved that the wounds on the hands and bodies of workmen could be protected and healed without sloaghing of of the flesh. or danger from blood poison Ing. 0ensrals. parsnts, life insur- ance cenpaaies enne to hin for this