Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 May 1890 — SURGERY WITHOUT PAIN. [ARTICLE]

SURGERY WITHOUT PAIN.

&3Y T. DeWLtt Talmage’a Oomparativj Ssrmon. A Sublime and Merciful Art—Surgery Preceding Baptism— Messiahs for the Various Ills of Man— Christ the Grandest, the ' Mightiest of Them AIL

Sunday morning Dr. Tal mage preached at the Brooklyn Academy of Musis, taking for his text Matthew 11:5—“The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.” “Doctor,” I said to a distinguished surgeon, “do you not get worn out with constantly seeing so many wounds and broken hones and distortions of the human holy!’ “Oh no;” be answered, “all that is overcome by my joy in curing them.” A sublimer or more mereiful art never came down from heaven than the art of surgery. Catastrophe and disease entered the earth ao 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 before they cama The first surgeons who answered this call were ministers of religion, namely, the Egyptian priests. And what a grand thing if all clergymen were also doctors, all D. D.’s were M. D.’s, 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 surgeons of the world were also ministers of religion, may these two professions always be in full sympathy! But under what disadvantages the early Burgeons worked, from the fact that the dissection of the human body was forbidden, first by the pagans and then by the early Christians 1 Apes, being the brutes most like the hutnan. race, were dissected, but no human body might be unfolded 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 were persecuted and driven out of the city, as was Archagathus because of his bold but unsuccessful attempt to save a patient.

But the world from tho vory beginning kept calling for surgeons, and their first skill is spoken of in Genesis, where they employed their art for the incisions of a sacred rite, God making surgery the predecessor of baptism; and we see it again m II Kings, where Ahaziah, the monarch, stepped on some cracked lattice-work in tho paiace. and it broke, and he fell from the upper to the lower floor, and he was eo hurt that he sent to the village of Ekron for aid; and Esculapius, who wrought such wonders of surgery that he was deified, and temples were built for his worship at Fcrgamos; and Epidaurus and Podolirius 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 successful hand on fractures, and introduced amputation; and Pravagoras removed obstructions; and Herophilus began dissection; and Erasistratus removed tumors; and Celsus, the Roman surgeon, removed cataract from the eye, and used tho Spanish fly; and Heliodorus arrested disease of tho throat; and Alexander, of Tralles, treated the eye; and Rhazas cauterized for the prevention of hydrophobia; and Percival Pott came to combat diseases of the spine; and In our own century we have had a Roux and u Larray in Prance, an Astley Cooper and an Abernetby in Great Britain, and a Valentino Mots 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 baffling of disease since the crippled and si k of ancient cities were laid along the streets, that people who had ever been hurt or disordered in the same way might suggest wnat had better be done for the patients; and tho priests of olden time, who were constantly suffering from colds rets ived in walking barefoot over the tem pie pavements, had to prescribe tor themsel’ es, and fractures were considered so far beyond all human cure that inroad of calling in the surgeons the yeople oniy invoked the gods! But notwithstanding alt the surgical and medical skill or 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 Hezekiith; the palpitation of the heart spoken of in Deuteronomy; the sun-stroke of a child carried from tho fields or Shunem, crying, “My head! my head I” King Asa’s disease of the feet, which was nothing but gout; defection of teeth, that callod for dental surgery, the skill of which, quite equa; to anything modern, is still seen in the filled molars of the unrolled Egyptian mummies; tue ophthalmia caused by the juice of the newly ripe fig, leaving the people bliud at the roadside; epilepsy, as in the case of the young man often falling into the fire, and oft into tho water; hypochondria, as of Nebuchadnezzar, who imagined himself an ox, and going out to the fields to pasture; the withered hand, which in Bible times, as now, came from the destruction of the main artery, or from paralysis of the chief nerve; the wouuds of the man whom the thieves left for dead on the road to Jericho, and whom the good Samaritan nursed, pouring in oil and wine—wiuo to ole.tnse the wound, and oil to soothe it. Thank God for what surgery has done for the alleviation and cure of liumau suffering. Bat tho world wanted a surgery without pain. Doctors Parro and Hickman and Simpson and Warner and Jackson, with their umazlng genius, came on, and with their anscsttietios benumbed the patient with narcotics and ethers as the ancients did with hashoesb and mandrake, and quiotod him for a while, but at the return of consciousness distress returned. The world has never seen but one surgeon who coultl straighten the crooked limb, cure the blind eye, or reconstruct the drum of a soundless oar. or reduce a drops, - , without any pain at tno time, or any pain after, ar-» that surgeon was Jesus Christ, ihe ntv-htiest, grandest, gentlest, and most sympathetic surgeon the world ovor saw, or ever wiU seo; and He deserves the eoufiaeneo and lovo and worship and hosanna of all the earth, and, hallelujahs of ail heaven. “The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed, and .he deus hear." I notice .this Surgeon had a fondness for chrouio cases. Many a surgeon, when he has hud a patient brought to him, has said: “Why wrs not this attended to five years ago? You br.ng him to me after all power of recuperation is gone. You have waited .until there is a complete contraction of tho muscles, and false ligatured are formed, and ossification has to have been uttended to long ago.” But Christ tho Burgeon seemed to prefer inveterate cases. 0-.9 was a hemorrhage of twelve years, and Ko stopped Jt, Another was adtiivature of eighteen years, and He atalghtened It Another was cripple of thjrty-eight yoara and he walked out we!L The eighteen-year patient was -a woman bent almost double. If you could call a convention of all the surgeons of ail tho centuries, their combined skill' could ro„ cure that body so drawn out of afc-po. Perhaps they might stop

It from getting any worse, perhaps they might contrive braces by which she might be made more comfortable, "hut it is, divine Surgeon put both Hi 3 hands pn hers and from that doubled-up posture she began to rise, and the empurpled face began to take on a healthier hue, mid the muscles began to relax from their rigidity, and the spinal oolutnn began to adjust itself, and the of the neck began to be more supple, and the eyes, that could see only the ground bjfore, now looked into tho face of Christ with gratitude, and uu toward heaven in transport. Straight I After eighteen weary and exhaustive years, straight! The poise, the gracefulness, the beauty of healthy womanhood reinstated. The thirty-eight years’ case was a man who lay on a mattress near the-' mineral baths at Jerusalem. There were five apartments where lame people were brought, so that they could get the advantage of these mineral baths The stone basin of the bath is still visible although the waters have disappeared, probably through some convulsion of nature, the bath, one hundred and twenty feet long, forty feet wide, and eight fpet deep. Ah, poor man; if you have been lame an,d helpless thirty-eight years that mineral hath cannot restore you. Why, thirty-eight years is more than the average of human life! Nothing but the grave will cure you. But Christ the Surgeon walks along these baths, and I have no doubt passes by some patients who have been only six months disordered, Or a year, or five years and comes to the mattress of the man who had been nearly four decades helpless, and to this thirty - eight years’ invalid said: “Wilt thou be made whole I” The question asked, not because the Surgeon did not understand the protractedness the desperateness of the case, but to evoke the man’s pathetic narrative. “Wilt thou be made whole?” "Would yon like to _ get —-well?" “Oh yes” says the f man, “that is what 1 came to these mineral baths for; I have tried everything. All the surgeons have failed, and all the proscriptions have proved valueless and I have got worse and worse, and 1 can neither move hand or foot or head. Oh, if I could only be free from this pain of thirtyeight years 1" Christ, tho Surgeon, could hot stand that. Bonding over the man on the mattress, aud in a voice tender with all sympathy, but strong with all omnipotence, He says, “Rise 1” And the invalid instantly scrambles to his knees, and then puts out his right foot, then his left foot, and 'then stood upright as though he had never been prostrated While he stands looking at the Doctor with a joy too much to hold, the Doctor says: “Shoulder this mattress I for you are not only well enough to walk, but weil enough to work, and start out from these mineral baths. Take up thy bed and walk!” Oh what a Surgeon for chronic cases then, and for chronic cases now!

This is not applicable so muoh to those who are only a little hurt or sin, and only for a short time, but to those prostrated of sin twelve years, eighteen years, thirtyeight years. Here is a surgeon able to give immortal health. “Oh,” you say, “I am so completely overthrown and trampled down of sin that I cannot rise.” Are you flatter down than this patient at the mineral baths ? No. Then rise. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Surgeon who offers you His right hand of help, I bid thee rise. Not cases of acute sin, but of chronio sin—those who have not prayed for thirty-eight years, those who have not been to church for thirty-eight years, those who have been gamblers, or libertines, or thieves, or outlaws, or blasphemers, or Infidels, or atheists, or all these together, for thirty-eight years. A Christ for exigencies! A Christ for a dead-liftl A Burgeon who never loses a case?

In speaking of Christ as a surgeon, I must consider Him an oculist, or eye doot/ir, and aa aurist, or ear doctor. Was there ever such another oculist! That He was particularly sorry for tlv blind folks, I take from tba fact that the most of Hi 3 works was with the diseased optlo nervas. I have not time to count up the number of blind people mentioned who got His cure. Two blind men In one house, also one was bora blind; so that rt was not removal of a visual obstruction, but the creation of the cornea, and ciliary musota, and crystalline lens, and retina, and optic nerve, and tear gland; also the blind man of Bethsaida, cured by the saliva which the Surgeon took from the tip of His own tongue and put upon the eyelids; also two blind men who sat by the wayside. In our civilized lands we have blindness enough, the ratio fearfully increasin' - , according to the state, ment of Boston and New Yark and Phliadelphia oculists, because of the reading of morning and evening newspapers on the jolting cars by the multitudes who live out of the city and come iu to business. But in the lands where this Divine Surgeon operated, the cases of blindness were multiplied beyond everything b.v the particles of sand floating in the air, and tho night dews falling on the eyelids of those who slept' on the top of their houses; and in some of these lands it is estimated that twenty out of a hundred people are totally blinds Amid all that crowd of visionless people, what work for an oculist! And Ido not believe that more than one out of a hundred of that surgeon’s cures were reported. He went up aud down among those people who were feeling slowly their way by staff, or led by the hand of man or rope of dog, and introducing them to the faces of their own household, to the sunrise and the sunset, and tho evening star. Ho just ran his hand over the expressionless face, and the shutters of both windows wero swung open, and the restored went home crying, “1 see! I seo! Thank God, I seo!” That is the oculist wo all need. Till He touches our eyes we are blind. Yea, we were born blind. By nature we see things wrong if we see them at all. Our best eternal Interests are put before us and we cannot see them. Tho glories of a loving and pardoning Christ are projected, and we do not bohold taem. Or we have a defective sight which makes the things of this world larger than the things of the future, time bigger than eternity. Or we are color-blind and cannot see the difference between the blackness of darkness forever nnd the roseate morning of an everlasting tin y. But Christ the Surgeon comes in, and though wo shrink book afraid to huve him touch us, yet He puts His fingers on the closed eyelids of the soul, and midnight becomes mid-noon; and we understand something of the joy of the young man .of the Bible, who, though he had never before boon able to see his hand before his face, now, by the touch of Christ, had two headlights kindled under his brow, cried out in language that confounded the jeesing crowd who wore deriding the Christ that bad effected the cure, and wanted to make Him out a bad mao, “ w hether He bo a sinner or no, I know not, one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I ono II

But this surgeon was just as wonderful as an aurist. Very few people have two good oars. Niue out of ten peopla are particular to go; on this or that side of you when they sit or walk or ride with yon, because they have one disabled ear. Many have both ears damaged, and what with the constant racket of our great cities, and the catarrhal troubles that sweep through the land, it is remarkable that there are any rood ears at aIL Most woedorfnl tostrument to the human ear. It to harp and

drum and telegraph and telephone and whispering-gallery all in one. So delicate and wondrous is its construction that the most difficult of all things to reconstruct is, the auditory apparatus. The mightiest of scientists have put their skill to its retuning, and sometimes they stop the progress of its decadence, or remove temporary obstructions, but not more than one really deaf ear out of a hundred thousand is ever cured. It took a God to make the ear, aud it takes a God to mend it. That makes me curious to see how Christ the surgeon succeeds as an aurist Wd are told of only two cases He operated on as an ear surgeon. His friend Peter, naturally high-tempered, saw Christ insulted by a man by the name of Malchus, and Peter let his sword fly, aiming at the man’s head, but the sword slipped and hewed off the outside ear, and our Surgeon touched the laceration and another ear bloomed in the place of the one lha had been slashed away. But it is not the ontsido ear that hears. That is only a funnel for gathering sound aud pouring it into the hidden and more elaborate ear. On the beach of Lake Galilee our Surgeon found a man deaf and dumb. The patient dwelt in perpetual silence, and was speechless. He could not hear a note of music or a clap of thunder. He could not call father or mother or wife or children by name. What power can waken that dull tympanum or reach that chain of small bones or revive that auditory nerve or open the gate between the brain and the outside world? The Surgeon put His fingers in the deaf ears and agitated them, aud kept on agitating them until the vibration cave vital energy to all the dead parts, and they responded, and when our Surgeon withdrew His fingers' from tho ears, the two tunnels of sound were clear for all sweet voices of music and friendship. For the first time in his life he heard the dash of the waves of Galilee. Through the desert of painful silence had been .built a king’B highway of resonance and acclamation. But yet he was dumb. No word had ever loaped over his lip. Speech was chained under his tongue. Vocalization and accentuation were to him an impossibility. He could express neither love nor indignation hot worship. Our Surgeon, having unbarred his ear,’ will now melt the shackle of his tongue. The Surgeon will use the same liuament or salve that He used ou two occasions for tho cure of blind" people, namely, the moisture of His own mouth. The application is mad 3. And 10, the rigidity of the dumb tongue i 3 relaxed, and betweea the tongue and teeth were born a whole vocabulary, and words flew into expression. He not only heard but he talked. One gate of his body swung in to let sound enter, and the other gate swung out to let sound depart. Why is it that while other surgeons used knives and forceps and probes and spectroscopes, this Surgeon used only the ointment of His own lips? To show that all the curative power we ever feel comes straight from Christ. And if He touches as not, we shall be deaf as a ro.k and dumb as a tomb. Oh thou greatest of all aurists, compel us to hear and help us to speak! But what were the Surgeon’s fees for all these cures of eyes and ears and tongues and withered hands and crooked backs? The skill and the painlessness of the operations were worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. Do not think that the cases He took were all moneyless. Did he not treat the nobleman’s son? Did he not doctor the ruler’s daughter? Did he not effect a cure in the house of a centurion of great wealth, who had out of his own pocket built a synagogue? They would have paid Him large fees if He had demanded them, and there were hundreds of wealthy people in Jerusalem, and among the merchant castles along Lake Tiberias, who would have given this Surgeon houses aud lands and all they had lor such cures as He could effect. For critical cases in our time great surgeons have received a thousand dollars, five thousand dollars, and in one oase I know of, fifty thousand dollars, but the surgeon of whom I speak received not a shekel, not a penny, not a farthing. In His whole earthly life, we know of His having had but sixty-two and a half cents. When His taxes were due, by His omniscience He knew of a fish in the sea which had swallowed a piece of silver money, as fish are apt to swallow anything bright, and He sent Peter with a hook which brought up that fish, and from its mouth waß extracted a Roman stater, or sixty-two and a half cents, the only money He ever had; and that He paid out for taxes. This greatest Surgeon of ail the centuries gave all His services then, and offers all His services now, free of all charge. “Without money, and without price” you may spiritually have your blind eyes opened, and your deaf ears unbarred, and your dumb tongues loosened, and your wounds healed, and your soul saved. If Christian people get hurt of body, mind, or soul, let them remember that surgery is apt to hurt, but it cures, and you can afford present pain for future glory. Beside that, there are powerful as aesthetics in the divine promises that soothe and alleviate. No ether or chloroform or cocaine ever made one so superior to distress as a few drops as that magnificent anodyne: “All things work together for good to those who love God;" “Weeping may endure for a night, bnt joy cometh in the morning.”

What a grand thing for our poor human race when this Surgeon shall have completed the treatment of all the world’s wounds! The day will come when there will be no more hospitals, for there will be no more sick, and no more eye and ear infirmaries, for there will be no more blind or deaf, and no more deserts, for the round earth shall be brought under arboriculture, and no more blizzards or sunstrokes, for the atmosphere will be expurgated of scorch and chill, and no more war for the swords shall come out of the foundry bent into pruning- hooks. While in the heavenly country we shall mo those who were the victims of accident or malformation, or hereditary ills on earth, become the athletes in Ely si an fields. V> ho is that man with such brilliant eyes close before the throne? Why, that is the man wno, near Jericho, was Mind, and oar Surgeon cured his ophthalmia! v\ ho is that erect and graceful aud queenly woman before tho throne! That was the one whom our surgeon found bent almost doable, and could in no wiae lift up herself, and He made her straight Who Is that listening with such rapture to the musio of heaven, solo melting*lnto chorus, qymbal responding to trumpet, aud then himself joining in the anthem! Why, that is the man whom our Burgeon found deaf and dumb on the beach of Galilee, and hr two touches opened eir-gats and mouth-gate. Who is that around whom the crowds are gathering with admiring look and thanksgiving, and cries of “Oh, what He did for me! Ob, what he did for my family 1 Oh, wbat He did for the world!” That ia the Sargoon of all the centuries, the Oculist, the Aurist, the Emancipator, the Saviour No pay He took on earth- Come, now, and let all heaven pay Him with worship that shall never end, and a love that shall never die. On His head be all tho crowns! In His hands be all the sceptres I and at His feet be all the worlds!

Henry Irving and Ellen Terry Intend to make a reading tour this summer through England.