Our Lord's miracles of healing : considered in relation to some modern objections and to medical science / by T.W. Belcher.

  • Thomas Waugh Belcher
Date:
[between 1800 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Our Lord's miracles of healing : considered in relation to some modern objections and to medical science / by T.W. Belcher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    105/316 page 73
    Such a case was that of theCenturion’s ser- vant, recorded by St. Matthew (viii. 6, etc.) : ^ My servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented ; ’ and St. Luke (vii. 2), describinof the serious nature of the same case, says he ‘ was sick and ready to die.’ Many diseases were included under the general term ‘ Palsy,’ in the New Testament. One writer^ has enumerated five : Apoplexy, wasted to mere membranes ; others, again, continue paralysed, but the muscles gradually assume a condition—the third to which I wish to call your attention—of contraction and rigidity, the flexor muscles always exhibiting this state to a greater degree than the extensors. The muscles are still wasted, but they are stretched like tense cords between their origins and insertions. This condition is due to a chronic shortening of the muscles themselves : they are tense, but not firm or plump ; it is undoubtedly a form of muscular atrophy, of which a con- tracted and rigid state is a prominent feature. A fourth condition is illustrated by our present case [on which Dr Todd was then lecturing clinically]. The muscles suffer very little, or not at all, in their nutrition ; they are either constantly firm and rigid, or become so on the slightest movement of the limb ; the paralysis is seldom complete. In these cases there is more or less of an exaltation of nutrition ;—the circulation in the limb is vigorous, and its heat is not below the standard of the other limb ; and it is frequently more excitable by galvanism than the corresponding muscles on the other side.’ ’ Richter, ‘Dissertatio Medic.-Theol.,’ Goetting, 1775. See also Jahn’s ‘ Archasologia Biblica,’ pp. 218, 219, Oxford edition, 1836, where we read :—‘Many infirmities . . . were comprehended under the word which is rendered /fatsy in the New Testament. I. The Apoplexy, a paralytic shock which affected the whole body.
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