VIII

THE DOCTOR

Just over the hill, at the other end of Nowhere, there lives a poor man whose mind is shadowed by a dark and terrible suspicion. He actually wonders whether the Church still retains her ancient gift of healing! To be sure she does! As though so precious and beautiful a heritage could ever be really lost! Let us see how it all happens!

The minister often enters the hushed house. He is admitted by a form on tiptoe, and shown into a front parlour. He sees the doctor’s hat and gloves upon the table. He waits for admission to the sick-chamber. He hears at length the bedroom door softly open, and as softly close. There is a whispered conversation in the passage. Then the doctor enters. A formal interchange of common-place greetings takes place between the two men.

Then the doctor seizes his hat and gloves, and hurries off. A moment later the rattle of his carriage wheels or the toot of his motor dies away in the distance. They have met and parted without recognizing that they are brothers! That is the pathos of it!

How often they meet, those two! And how little they know of each other! It is a thousand pities. The minister gets into the way of regarding his work as distinctly spiritual, and the doctor’s as distinctly physical. The doctor forms the same bad habit. And so the old, old blunders are perpetuated. They both become the victims of what Mr. Silvester Home, in his Life of David Livingstone, calls ‘the water-tight compartment theory of life.’ As though any man could define the frontier-line at which the physical ends and the spiritual begins! A minister is often called to confront a wan and haggard face, and to hear from quivering lips a story of strange inward darkness and mysterious dereliction. And the greatest and truest comfort that he can give in such a case, oftentimes, is to tell the good creature that her trouble is not spiritual but physical. It is not that the Father’s love has failed her, but that her own frame has broken down. The body is jaded. The tissues are exhausted. The nerve has collapsed. She needs a doctor.

And, in exactly the same way, a doctor is often called to deal with a man whose hurt no physician can heal. He suffers from a heart oppressed, a mind diseased, a soul that has got out of gear. Here, for instance, is an extract from the journal of John Wesley: ‘Reflecting to-day on the case of a poor woman, I could not but remark the inexcusable negligence of most physicians in cases of this nature. They prescribe drug after drug, without knowing a jot of the matter concerning the root of the disorder. And, without knowing this, they cannot cure. Whence came this woman’s pain? From fretting over the death of her son! And what availed medicines whilst that fretting continued? Why, then, do not all doctors consider how far bodily disorders are caused, or influenced, by the mind? And, in those cases which are utterly out of their sphere, call in the assistance of a minister, just as ministers, when they find the mind disordered by the body, call in the assistance of a physician? No man can be a thorough physician without being an experienced Christian.’ John Wesley, as his manner is, puts the case as well as it can be put. There are times when the dentist feels that the trouble is not in the teeth but in the nerves, and he sends his client to the doctor. In exactly the same way, a doctor must sometimes discover that his patient’s trouble is not within the scope of his treatment, and, if he be wise, he will invite the co-operation of a minister. These two — the doctor and the minister — cross each other’s tracks so frequently, just because the physical and spiritual realms with which they deal are so inseparable. I always like, in this connexion, to think of old Sir Thomas Browne and his wonderful Religio Medici. ‘I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular,’ he quaintly tells us, ‘without a catalogue of my friends. I never hear the toll’ of the passing bell, though in my mirth, without offering prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to cure the body of my patient but I forget my profession, and cry unto God for his soul.’ That is very fine. It shows how impossible it is for even a very clever doctor, with his eyes open, to discover the exact frontier which divides the purely physical from the purely spiritual. Humanity is a strange tangle ; and no man can say where the work of the doctor ends and the work of the minister begins. The water-tight compartment theory breaks down all along the line. These obvious facts should bind the doctor and the minister together in bonds of indissoluble brotherhood.

Pity the poor doctor who thinks that the work of the minister is purely spiritual! It is absurd. Why, an indiscreet minister can nullify the most skilful treatment of the wisest doctor, or powerfully fortify the modest efforts of the feeblest practitioner. Dr. R. S. Mullen, of Clarendon, Iowa, recognized this in an address which he delivered to ministers not so long ago. ‘Give us all the help you can,’ he pleaded. ‘Let the minister never shake the confidence of a patient. I have often lost a case simply because the sufferer became convinced, in spite of my assurances, that she would not get well. Never, for the patient’s sake, find fault with the doctor, nor with the school of medicine he practises. Don’t advise him to try another doctor. And never play at being doctor yourself. Avoid standing at the foot of the bed and staring the patient out of countenance. Sit by his side, take his hand, and greet him cheerfully. Let your stay be short, pleasant, and hopeful to the fullest degree. On no account speak of other deaths that have occurred from the same disease. Behave yourself so that, after you have gone, the patient will say to the nurse, ‘I am glad he came.’ All this is, of course, a frank recognition of the obvious circumstance that a minister’s work is much more than merely spiritual. And did not Wellington say that he could have saved hundreds of lives on the battlefields of the Peninsular if only he had had more chaplains?

No, no, no! The water-tight compartment theory of life will not work. They once brought a sick man to Jesus. And Jesus said, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee!’ The divine diagnosis revealed the spiritual malady behind the physical symptoms. Every discerning doctor knows that the influence of the minister on the physical condition of the patient is a very considerable factor in the history of the case.

And pity the poor minister who thinks that the work of the doctor is purely physical! Could anything be more preposterous? I was the other day turning over the pages of an English illustrated paper, and came upon the impressive pictures of the funeral of the late Lord Lister. Would any one be silly enough to say that Lord Lister’s work was purely physical? He saved scores of thousands of lives. And think what that must have meant to the world! Again, we have lately celebrated the centenary of the birth of Sir James Simpson. The introduction of chloroform has saved hundreds of thousands of people from mortal anguish, and a countless multitude from a gruesome death. And would any one pretend that Sir James Simpson’s work was purely physical? It was as spiritual as the tender and beautiful motives by which it was prompted. But if, in a moment of uttermost forgetfulness, some thoughtless mortal were to suppose that the doctor’s task is physical, and only physical, it would be easy to recall such an one to sanity. We have all lost ourselves in admiration of Sir Luke Fildes’ masterpiece, ‘The Doctor,’ and of Mr. John Collier’s ‘Sentenced to Death.’ No reasonable man could look for sixty seconds upon the tawdriest reproductions of those magnificent paintings without feeling instinctively that the work of a doctor is much more than merely physical. ‘To me,’ says the doctor in a very well-known book, ‘to me much has been given to see. My Father has graciously allowed me to help Him. I am first to welcome the soul that arrives from Him, and I am the last to say farewell to those whom He takes back. What wonder if, now and then, I presume to send Him a message of my faith and my belief?’

But if these arguments all fail to compel a more cordial and brotherly hand-clasp between the doctor and the minister, when they exchange subdued greetings on the threshold of the sick-room, I have another in reserve which cannot disappoint me. For, if ever I see a doctor looking askance at a minister, or a minister treating a doctor to scant courtesy, I shall remind that doctor that the very first Christian doctor was a minister, and I shall whisper to that minister that the very first Christian minister was a doctor. He was the first great preacher and the first great healer. ‘God had an only Son, and He was a Missionary and a Physician,’ wrote David Livingstone from Central Africa to his brother in Scotland. Yes, He was a Minister and a Doctor. And, in His turn, ‘He called His twelve disciples together, and sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And they departed, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.’ These two God hath joined together. The union is a very sacred and very beautiful one, as the heroic story of medical missions can amply testify. The minister and the doctor are comrades, brothers, partners in the holiest and loveliest service of humanity.

And, now that I come to think of it, I am not sure that the doctor is not even more distinctively representative of the faith than the minister. (I speak of the profession, of course, and not of the individual.) Robert Louis Stevenson used to say that ‘the doctor is the flower of our Christian civilization.’ For you will find priests and prophets everywhere in every age. But you will only find a doctor — as we use the term — where you find a people touched by the tenderness and pity of the Cross. I am not forgetful of the ministry of medicine under ancient civilizations, from Hippocrates downwards. But reflect for a moment. I have mentioned Lister and antiseptics, Simpson and chloroform. Let us think our way back across the years. Back beyond chloroform; back among Dickens’ sawbones doctors; back to the blood-letting practitioners of an earlier generation; back to the days of the king’s touch and similar silly superstitions. And, were we to go back further yet, we should come upon those quiet days when England was very young and very small, when the cowled and corded monk was the sole representative of medical science. And if my patient reader cares to pursue the investigation, he will find that the healing virtues of many of the drugs that our doctors now prescribe were first discovered by those secluded anchorites as they strolled the fields and forests round the early monasteries. But we are out of sight now of the doctor as we know him — the doctor of Fildes’ and Collier’s masterpieces, the doctor of the type of Simpson and Lister, Broadbent and Treves. The doctor, as we know him, is distinctly, and emphatically, the product and representative of a noble, a gentle, and a generous faith. ‘If it had not been for Jesus’ — to use Dr. Paton’s famous phrase — we should never have seen that strong and sympathetic face, should never have felt that soft and skilful hand. The doctor has evolved as the faith has slowly come into its own. The Church has retained her gift of healing by creating the medical profession as we now know it, and by sprinkling the world with hospitals and asylums. In Myrtle Reed’s Spinner in the Sun she gives us a conversation between young Dr. Ralph Dexter and his father, the old doctor: ‘Father,’ said Ralph, ‘it may be because I’m young, but I hold very strongly the ideals of our profession. It seems a very beautiful and wonderful life that is opening before me — always to help, to give, to heal. I feel as though I had been dedicated to some sacred calling, some lifelong service.’ ‘It’s youth,’ the old doctor replies, ‘and you’ll see the whole thing as a matter of business later on. In the last analysis, we’re working against Nature’s laws. We endeavour to prolong the lives of the unfit, when only the fittest should survive.’

Now, the old doctor’s laconic contention is the strongest evidence I could desire. It is the peculiar charm of Christianity that it shelters the diseased, the stricken, and the maimed. Under a pagan economy these must all go to the wall. The law of the survival of the fittest will work its inexorable will. But, under the shadow of the Cross, we nurse and tend them all. We let them marry and have children. We share their frailties by incorporating them into the common blood. The race becomes a joint-stock concern, and we take over the bad debts of the poorest partners. And, since it is largely by means of the doctor and his ever-increasing skill that we do it, he is obviously entitled to be regarded as the peculiar emblem and representative of our Christian faith. Apart altogether from the attitude or character of any individual practitioner, we may well ask: If his work is not, in its very nature, essentially Christian work, then whose is?

He sent forth those first disciples two by two. And He sent them forth, as we have seen, to do two things — to preach and to heal. And, for awhile, each of the twain preached and each of the twain healed. Then they agreed to specialize. ‘I will devote all my time and energy to the art of preaching!’ said the one. ‘And I will consecrate all my power and skill to the science of healing!’ replied the other. And in course of time the first of those two disciples came to be called ‘the Minister,’ And the second of those two disciples came to be called ‘the Doctor.’ But they still go, as in the early days, two and two. ‘In every place that I have been in yet,’ said Piper Tom to Evelina, in the Spinner in the Sun, ‘there has been a minister and a doctor.’ Exactly! They are inseparable. And that is why they are so often found in the hushed house together. And that is how it comes to pass that, in the tender mercy of her Lord, the Church retains intact her ancient gifts of preaching the kingdom and of healing the sick.

​F.W. Boreham, 1914.