by Robert G. Cochrane, M.D.
Up to 1924 the outlook with regard to treating leprosy was nearly hopeless. Our understanding was limited, and treatment seemed only temporarily to halt the progress of the disease and its relentless course toward mutilation, deformity, blindness, and death.
Up to 1924 the outlook with regard to treating leprosy was nearly hopeless. Our understanding was limited, and treatment seemed only temporarily to halt the progress of the disease and its relentless course toward mutilation, deformity, blindness, and death.
But just after World War 1, medical men who had been looking ahead to the time when we would save life and not destroy it, saw in leprosy a challenge that had hitherto been unmet and worked on producing an injectible form of an ancient remedy. Results began to startle the world. It was the dawn of new hope.
The years between 1924 and 1941 saw partial success, but it was soon realized that the remedies discovered were still not powerful enough to heal advanced cases of leprosy. In 1941 a drug that was to revolutionize the treatment of leprosy was discovered and used in the large leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana. However, it was too expensive for widespread use.
The basic constituent of this drug, diamenodiphenyl sulphone, had hitherto been considered too poisonous to use, but in the leprosy department of the Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, and in the Church of Scotland leprosarium forty miles from Madras, the doctors took their courage in their hands and gave the basic drug by injection. I believe, surely, that this was the leading of God, for had they given the remedy by mouth in the same dosage, they would have caused the death of all who received it. Subsequently, it was an ex-missionary in West Africa who first learned to give the remedy by mouth. This increased the possibilities of establishing indigenous churches in villages of India and Africa through the healed leprosy patient.
DISEASE OF NERVES
Leprosy is primarily a disease of nerves, particularly the peripheral nerves (nerves going to the skin). When these are affected, a person loses the sense of touch and pain. Imagine yourself one day finding you can put your hand in scalding water and not feel the heat! As a result, a person can be burned or injured, or a nail or a stone can be in his shoe all day long and a sore develop, without his ever feeling it. Thus ulcers commence, become septic, the bone is affected and then destroyed. It is the first ulcer that matters, for that goes on to the second and third, until severe ulceration occurs. Hence, prevent the first ulcer and the patient will not get the last.
In addition, certain nerves carry motor impulses (i.e., the power to operate the muscles), and when these are affected, paralysis ensues. If the paralyzed muscle can be replaced by unparalyzed (by what is called tendon-transplant), and unparalyzed muscle can be prevented from atrophy through disuse, then no deformity need result.
The wonderful story of reconstructive surgery in leprosy is the triumphal story of a missionary doctor who, seeing the plight of the deformed patient with leprosy, set about to study the cause of paralysis. This missionary, Dr. Paul Brand, has opened the door to a new world where paralysis can be prevented. In many instances paralyzed muscles can be restored to function by reconstructive surgery. Blindness has been prevented, facial deformities corrected and eyebrows restored. These are not just a future hope but all these are now a present reality.
Today we are beginning to realize that if we can establish diagnostic centers where the first sign of leprosy can be detected and the patient then come under proper medical care and surveillance, leprosy would become a mere incident in a man’s life, and not the progressive mutilating disease that it still frequently is. These vistas of possibilities and potentialities have largely been due to committed Christian doctors, taking up the medical and surgical challenge of leprosy and thus initiating a new approach to the disease.
As miraculous as these wonderful advances seem, there is a greater miracle taking place. The Lord, in His mercy and compassion for the sick and depressed, has usedthis new development of an old treatment for His glory and for the extension of His kingdom. To illustrate the potential for the church of Christ in relation to the indigenous church, the following is an example.
One winter’s day in South Korea a boy in a middle-class family was found to have leprosy. He was turned out of the house into the snow, not because his parents lacked compassion, but because they feared that the gods in their anger would strike other members of the family. The boy wandered through the snow until at last, exhausted and famished, he lay down to die. A friendly stranger directed him to one of the leprosy homes established by American Leprosy Missions and there he found shelter. Another boy from the same village was there, and not only did these two get medicine for their bodies but solace and comfort. They learned of the One who cared for the broken and diseased and who died that man might live eternally. In due course they were healed of their disease and went out, praising the Lord for their salvation through Christ. They went back to the village from which they had been cast out and stood in the market square, preaching the Gospel of Christ and telling the people of the Savior who had brought them both health of body and eternal life. Imagine the surprise of the father who out of curiosity had gone to listen to this strange new Gospel, when he saw, standing in the middle of the market square, the son whom he had rejected, now returned to his village to proclaim the saving grace of God.
MORE POWERFUL AMBASSADOR
Today in a world of turmoil prior to our Lord’s return, surely the saved, healed and committed Christian leprosy patient can be an ambassador for Christ far more powerful than the missionary.
There are some cautions, however, in using leprosy treatment as a means of evangelism. We too frequently have assumed that education, medical care, feeding the hungry, and social betterment would so soften the hostility of the people that they would be more receptive to the Gospel of Christ.
People, particularly those whose philosophy is Buddhist or Hindu in origin, see in every act of mercy, in every attempt to educate, an ulterior motive of self-benefit and not altruistic service in the name of the Lord. Take the troubled land of the Congo, for instance. The church has been looked upon as a subversive agent, undermining the life of the people and introducing concepts that would enslave a nation struggling for freedom.
If we had taken more seriously the principles laid down in the Acts of the Apostles on which to build the indigenous church, we would not today have a church linked so closely to the western system of church government, with its fixed mission-station complex, and its carefully built-in theory that education and medical care are the prerequisites for establishing a church.
What is the solution? Whenever medical work becomes an end in itself, as Christians we question its validity. When it becomes a means to an end, others question our motive. The answer to this dilemma lies in such work being carried out through the church, to the church, and with the church where we serve.
I am convinced that the dreadful conditions we have witnessed during the past two decades of poverty, famine, and disease, are the seeds of warfare, rebellion and the total tragedy of a world of sin. But their relief and cure must be through the spontaneous expression of an indigenous church, self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating from its beginning. If a church is founded on New Testament principles, the desire for health, social benefit and education will be a spontaneous response of a godly group within the country.
Let me illustrate these principles as the most powerful method of church growth and expansion through a story of the growth of the church through leprosy work in Thailand. In one of the leprosy villages where a church had been established, the pastor and a deacon, both leprosy patients, were walking down the road distributing the Gospel of John. A certain Mr. Noon who had been a headman in one of the more distant villages had moved nearer to the main road in the hope that by changing his surroundings he would get peace of mind. Mr. Noon received a copy of the Gospel of John and when he read it, said: "That is what I have been looking for. This is the answer for my search for peace." Thereafter Mr. Noon not only walked every Sunday over twenty miles to the nearest village church, but he became a committed Christian and he was not only responsible for founding a Christian church in his own village, but at least six other churches in villages farther away. These churches, completely independent of foreign influence, are strong points in enemy territory, proclaiming by life and lip the Gospel of Christ our Savior.
Oh, that we had not strayed in our missionary policies from St. Paul’s method of church planting. We would today have more such examples of indigenous movements. We would have seen more churches in Africa and the East, demonstrating the establishment of self-supporting, self-propagating, selfgoverning Christian churches, free from the taunt that Christians are the tools of the imperialistic West, particularly of Britain and the United States, and that churches are of foreign origin, subversive and tinged with ulterior motives of colonialism or self-interest. This is a day of widespread propaganda. We have the same powerful machinery for mass communication that the communists do. Let us flood those lands without Christ with the Gospel by every means available.
But we have today, in the healed leprosy patient who is brought to a saving knowledge of Christ, a testimony of two miracles, the body and the soul. Is not he one of the most potent propaganda agents of our day? And, when this work is done through the national church with our assistance, where necessary, it becomes one of the most adequate answers to the lie that acts of generosity on the part of the West are merely bribes to further enslave nations rising in their struggle for complete independence.
May God give us a compassion to use every modern medical advance to bring men to Christ, and a wisdom to follow His pattern to bring nearer the day when the kingdoms of this earth will become the kingdom of God and His Christ.
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