As I looked around the High Dependency Ward at the Western General in Edinburgh, feelings of gratitude welled up inside me for the dedicated staff, who day and night gave themselves to saving lives. I had been rushed into A&E with sepsis, following a prostate biopsy the day before. Unfortunately, I was among the one percenters who had picked up a particularly aggressive form of E-Coli infection. After the battle for my life gave way to victory, I had time to reflect on my experience. All around me in the ward was evidence for the legacy of Christian pioneers in Scotland who had changed the world, and whose work had saved the lives of millions.
A team of anaesthetists came into the ward to discuss pain control with one of the patients. As they did, I recalled Sir James Young Simpson, the Christian father of anaesthetics in hospitals. When asked by a journalist about his greatest discovery, he was keen to state: “I am a sinner, but I have a great Saviour, Jesus Christ.” The doctors had been fighting with me to overcome the virulent E-Coli. Having discovered that four standard antibiotics had not worked because of bacterial resistance, they proceeded to use Tazocin, a treasured weapon. It was another Scotsman, this time an Anglican churchgoer, who had discovered penicillin which became the foundation of antibiotics. For many it was a serious of flukes that brought this about, but for Sir Alexander Fleming it was the hand of God.
One of the nurses came back to me. She had been well trained at nursing college and was looking forward to becoming a full-blown practitioner the next week. As we discussed her nursing career, I remembered how a Christian called Florence Nightingale had pioneered professional nursing, and on the request of the Christian, Joseph Lister in Edinburgh, had sent the Quaker Christian, Elizabeth Barclay, up to the city to pioneer this standard in Scotland.
Lord Joseph Lister! Now that’s a special person in the advancement of medical science and surgery. This genius had communicated with the French Catholic, Louis Pasteur, about the new germ theory. By applying this to his work, Lister searched for a safe antiseptic called carbolic acid, and sterilized all of the medical instruments with it. Through this, and his rigorous hygiene standards, he became the father of antiseptics and sanitizing, made famous during the Covid pandemic. Even during that terrible period, the name Jenner Institute and the vaccination called AstraZeneca became well-known. The institute at Oxford University had been named after Edward Jenner. This extraordinary English Christian studied at Aberdeen University, and then went on to become the father of vaccination, whose work conquered smallpox, and led to worldwide vaccination against diseases.
As a patient in the High Dependency Ward, you soon become accustomed to the various machines bleeping away. Surrounded by impressive-looking equipment, led me to ponder about the dynamic foundational work in physics by the dedicated Christian, James Clerk Maxwell. His famous Maxwell’s Equations inspired our technological revolution, with Albert Einstein having this hero on a poster above his office desk. Out of Maxwell’s work came a crowd of inventions: among them X-ray machines; computers, televisions and radios.
During some chats with the staff at the hospital, I mentioned some of these pioneers from Scotland. The typical reaction was the standard “was like us” quote, a nurturing of Scottish pride, but the connection with the Christian faith has been lost over time. Even our hospitals themselves grew out of the work of the church from the medieval period. Today, I thank God for all the healthcare workers who do a great job, but I also thank God for the Christians he raised up to advance medical science and healthcare itself. May he continue to do so.
“He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick” (Luke 9:2, NKJV).
Image: Norbert Kaiser, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons