Did Christ die of a broken heart?.

  • Simpson James Young, Sir, 1811-1870.
Date:
[1862]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Did Christ die of a broken heart?. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    gard as merely metaphorical, and not as literally true also, the declarations in the same Psalms, Reproach hath broken my heart, My heart is like wax, it is melted in the midst of my bowels. And VIII. Death by mere crucifixion was not a form of death in which there was much, if indeed any, shedding of blood. Punctured wounds do not generally bleed ; and the nails, besides being driven through parts that were not provided with large blood-vessels, necessarily remained plugging up the openings made by their pas- sage. The whole language and types of Scripture, how- ever, involve the idea that the atonement for our sins was obtained by the hlood of Christ shed for us during His death on the cross. But this was assuredly done in the fullest possible sense, under the view that the immediate cause of His dissolution was rupture of the heart, and the consequent fatal escape of His heart- and life-blood from the central cistern of the circulation. It has always appeared—to my medical mind at least—that this view of the mode by which death was produced in the human body of Christ, intensi- fies all our thoughts and ideas regarding the immensity of the astounding sacrifice which He made for our sinful race upon the cross. Nothing can possibly be more striking and startling than the appalling and terril)le
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