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Introductory Regime

2020-03-25Blog-00001

I am getting old!

He now has more time to think abstractly and write blogs.

I grew up in Oceana in a relatively poor family with no radio, bathroom and an outside toilet. A toilet, that when the bucket was full, was emptied into a hole dug specifically for that purpose. As soon as we were old enough, old enough to dig, this became one of my chores. We all lived in a small country cottage, a bed for the parents, a smaller bed for the kids; a large enough yard to play cricket and kick a football – all you could ever need as a small boy growing up in the country. Continue reading “Introductory Regime” →

What is Truth? What is THE Truth? Two different questions!

This boy, now a University Graduate, is very like a son to me. Is he in truth a whole person? I believe that I can answer both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and be correct with both answers. It depends upon what I mean by ‘whole person’. He had traumatically amputated both legs and his right arm, when he was run over by a train. He calls me ‘his Aussie dad’ and considering him as my son he is just as real a person as any of my other seven children, all of whom have 2 legs and 2 arms! But, if we wanted to be finnaky we could ask have any of them lost their appendix or maybe even ask if they were circumcised! The fact that they were circumcised caused many Jewish males to be considered non-persons and led to the gas chambers of WWII. So they and their relatives might not consider the word ‘finnaky’ as the appropriate one!

To talk about ‘Truth’ – I am bold enough to say that you are a fool if you don’t admit that Jesus has had an enormous effect on the history of many nations in the world. But you may argue as to whether his effect was good or bad but most would agree that Jesus had a very significant effect on many even if not most countries in the world. There is a well known exchange between Pilate and Jesus when Pilate was considering how to judge Jesus – guilty or not as being guilty justifying crucifixion. The short passage as recorded in the Bible reads ‘Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and saying to them, “I find no guilt in him!”, committed Him to be crucified!

Is the world in a mess? – If I may say ‘they’, whoever ‘they’ are, I think that our leaders in many fields have made a mess of the world! War, uneven distribution of wealth, lack of honesty and integrity, climate change distorsions, terrorism, denied basic anatomy, legalized murder and a list as long as your arm could be added without doubling up to the problems we face as humanity in a Universe that we cannot agree upon to whom it belongs! The simple truth is that we are in a ‘hell of a mess’! Many will not like my answer which I talk about. They will argue that it is just ‘my truth’ but I would argue the answer which I am suggesting is Eternal Truth. And the sections of the world which believed it and practiced it, even though imperfectly, were much better off than any group of people are these days! Before you write me off as a religious crank, of which there are plenty, I ask you to consider these facts as true – you might later decide that they are not true, but just for now accept them as true for discussions sake!

A list of things which we are accepting for the moment. 1. Not everybody has the same abilities to logically think things through, and we should be fair to one another. 2. The Bible should only be considered as a ‘for’ or ‘against’ argumentative tool if it has been read in its entirety and in a non-prejudgental way. 3. The Bible is God’s revelation of His plan, culminating in Jesus who is the Incarnate Son of God! 4. Scientific proof in not the only proof available and often is only accepted theory which the future may change. 5. God is the Creator, is a person and understands everything. Thus He as the Creator and being all knowledgeable is able to formulate and dictate what is true truth!

The Proposed Cure – a) God in Religious and Governmental things will be given the Pre-eminence due to Him. b) Where stated as a principle or can be honestly deduced from Biblical Principles these laws shall be considered as the basis for truth! c) all present laws which go against Biblical principles will be changed to fit God’s revealed plan. Major things where this would have an explosive effect are – education at all levels, sexual relations, marriage, roles of responsibility, political honesty, unemployment benefits, work ethics, inter-religion harmony, wealth including wages, privileges, taxes and responsibilities.

Somewhere this needs an honest discussion. You may say that this has already been rejected and it is not worth reconsidering. Do you remember when the appendix was considered a useless vestigial organ in the human, useful only in koalas? As science has found and reported in the following words in Wikipedia ‘Yes, the appendix is directly related to immunological development and function, serving as an important part of the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT). Long considered a useless vestigial organ, modern research indicates that the appendix plays a significant role in training the immune system, particularly during early life.” Maybe the baby has been thrown out with the bath water!

Would the plan work? My answer is a yes and a no answer. If with good will and enthusiastically it were applied – YES. Because of human nature and our commitment to seeking to get our own way and being committed to evil rather than good in the majority – NO. So why do I think it worth discussing? Because I think that any answer that rejects the basics of this hasn’t even a ‘snowflake’s chance in hell’! So why do I bother? Because God’s answer, His plan as disclosed in the Bible gives us the answer that He will at any rate. in His sovereignly, work it out! So let us all work ‘you in your small corner and I in mine’, and let us hope that some of the religious mislead, filthy rich and politically naively stupid will read this and learn something worth learning, and look up the Way that He talks about!

Barry Hicks.

An Interesting visit to Southern Ethiopia.

One is interested in tribal customs. Some seem excellent, some queer, but these days we are discouraged from questioning things as everybody is considered to their opinions being as legitimate as anyone else’s. Unlike these days, in my time there were very few doctors to cover the increasing population and many of the doctors tended to stay in the bigger cities with more facilities and more money! The population were mainly rural.

The mission with which I had a close association ran several nurse clinics which were very useful but obviously limited in their capabilities. One such clinic was near the Kenyan border where the tribe had a, to us, different custom. Before a young man was permitted to get married he had, as shown in the picture, to run back and forth, naked, over 20 cattle tied transversely. By their custom boys were not circumcised as babies (the Orthodox, Muslims and some other groups are circumcised near birth or as puberty approaches). As uncircumcised penises in adulthood, unless erect, are a bit dangly and lengthy, it was their custom to be circumcised around this time. The technique was to hold the foreskin slightly stretched out over a rock and cut it off with a swift sword swipe. Not every sword wielder was accurate with some disadvantageous results.

The tribal elders came to the lady nurse who was in charge of the clinic and asked if she could arrange for someone (eventually me) to train a young Ethiopian male dresser who worked with her to perform circumcisions. It was agreed that I would come down for a couple of days and perform 40 such procedures. Interestingly there was in the area an American Army squad vaccinating goats and their young doctor asked if he could join the process and be also taught. (The dresser was the more capable student!) Very little had been prepared and I guess it was my fault as I had expected an American nurse to realize what was necessary if I wasn’t to only use a sharpened sword! So the first evening was used making sheets to be sterilized, hunting up syringes and local anaesthetics, suture material and enough tools to do the job professionally. The next morning I met the line up, had them bathe themselves and set about with a couple of demonstrations, self performed on them, teaching them to use local anaesthetics, making sure how much you wanted to remove etc. I then guided the two trainees through the process. We did the forty finishing late in the afternoon. We stopped for a lunch of ‘Injerra b wot’. When the local anaesthetic wore off I bet there were some unhappy chappies but at least still with all the necessary bits there!

There is a very different side to that trip at that time which I might tell at some other time.

Dominic Cartier

What makes a majority ‘right’?

Not often but sometimes I enter into articles on Facebook. And (you may not agree with me) I am basically on the Israeli side of the Gaza-Israeli troubles. You will note that I do not say Palestinian-Israeli war because I can’t get a clear understanding as to where or what Palestine is. “The term Palestine is also used to refer to a geographical region in the West Asia, comprising of modern-day Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza” is a quote which I think is tied into the British Mandate Proclamation in July 1922. Although many attempts have been made to subdivide ‘Palestine’ into portions for the Arabs who previously lived in the area and for the Jews who also previously lived in the area none have been successful. It is common and I think undoubted knowledge that it was in a large way meant to be a home for the many displaced Jews and this became the home of many more Jews particularly after WWII. The Arabs who basically live in this area are of Egyptian origin and what is now called Israel is open to mainly religious Jews but also Arabs (mainly Muslims) and Christians from many countries. To again quote what I find on Wikipedia ‘While most Israelis are Jewish, a growing share (currently about one-in-five adults) belong to other groups. Most non-Jewish residents of Israel are ethnically Arab and identify, religiously, as Muslims, Christians or Druze.’ (8 Mar 2016). Of course Judaism stretches from atheist to ultra-orthodox Judaism and so is a racial rather than a religious title.

It is obvious, and I think an indisputable truth, that antisemitism is rife throughout the world. Many nations (including most of the variously quoted 49-57 Muslim nations) are anti Israel. Many nations which claim to be friends of Israel have large populations of Muslims and sympathizers with the Arab Gazan people. This has been obvious in the anti-Israel often called pro-Palestinian demonstrations in many countries. Our own Prime Minister in spite of being careful about what he says these days doesn’t come out clearly on the Israeli’s side and his government has financed the terrorist (thus labelled officially in Australia) Hamas controlled Arab side of the struggle.

Which leads me to my question at the beginning – ‘What makes a majority right?’ I can remember a man now dead but very wise who taught us in a lunchtime, Government approved, Christian group in our school that ‘One man and God makes up a majority – and it doesn’t need the man.’

I am not claiming that this applies to my stand for Israel but I certainly don’t accept that the majority are correct in expecting Israel to allow the terrorist Hamas/Iran group, with a entrenched policy to exterminate not Israelis alone but all Jews. One of many quotes which are easily found and checked reads ‘On August 20, 2012, in a sermon broadcast on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV, Hamas official Sheik Ahmad Bahr prayed, “Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, destroy the Americans and their supporters. Oh Allah, count them one by one, and kill them all, without leaving a single one.”’. In addition the founding documents of the group are clear in what they say!

I have been called many things for taking my pro Israeli stance – but the one which I hate the most is ‘you are a nazi’! And this is in spite of my saying that if I were younger and could get permission to work in a hospital through which terrorists couldn’t be involved, I would choose to be in Gaza helping to treat the suffering, which I believe is largely caused by the terrorists who want the Israelis to get a bad name!

A 5 minute experience stretched over 3 weeks!

For the sake of a brother-in-law and anyone else who doesn’t like medical pictures I promise than there are none. And neither will there be any detailed descriptions of the pathology! I have just come across a picture in association with an album of hymns to which I was listening’, and here it is.

The picture reminded me of two things. Firstly of all the anti-Trump news about his attitude to abortion. He may have been lying (an art perfected by politicians) but I heard him say (unless it was doctored by media experts) that he was against the generalization of Roe v Wade but that he felt that the people in each state should be able to vote on it. He claimed that he personally believed that there were 3 legitimate reasons for abortion – rape, incest and if the mother’s physical life was in danger. A very different view from what his opposition presents him as holding!

But what has that to do with the title of my article? Nothing! But the picture reminded me of the hundreds of cases of ruptured uteri that I have operated upon in countryside Ethiopia where in the late 1960s our small hospital was the only hospital for millions of people and we were so busy that we could not operate things like antenatal clinics – to which people wouldn’t have come because of custom, distance, lack of roads and means of travel. We served with 1-2 doctors, 5 trained nurses and a good group of Ethiopian helpers (a few of them trained elsewhere as dressers) as the only hospital area for more than a million people!

So I have seen many babies who have died before they were born. The picture above is one suggestion as to where they end up. But this is not a theological discussion.

One day, when I was the only doctor in the hospital I was faced with three ladies with ruptured uteri arriving within 5 minutes of one another. Our ‘operating suite’ had 2 operating rooms, one of them large enough to have 2 operating tables. So I had 3 tables for the 3 women. I had a nurse who was capable of watching an anaesthetic (she was v good) after I had induced the patient. We called for help from the ward and so ended up with the sickest, having been resuscitated, asleep and me operating on her. Behind a sheet for visual protection a second lady was being resuscitated as was the third lady in the smaller OR.

It was a long morning but all were eventually taken into the ward on appropriate IV, pain and antibiotic therapy. All three babies were dead (and hence the picture above). Two ladies progressed very well and were able to go home in 7-10 days. No matter what we did the third lady did not do well. She ran a high fever and using all our available antibiotics, changing to new ones as appropriate and doing an X-ray to make sure that we hadn’t accidentally left a pack or an instrument inside we eventually had to conclude that we would probably see her depart in a box.

Sadly, I believe that much of what is called ‘faith’ healing is sham. But I do believe in God and I think that He can do wonderful things. While I was operating on that same evening on which we had come to the above conclusion, the nurses and a few of the families of workers on our mission station spent the night in prayer specifically for the healing of this lady. In spite of all our failed treatment, the lady’s temperature the next day was down considerably, she felt much better and was discharged ‘well’ about 5 days later!

Dominic Cartier

Around the table!

It seems like centuries ago but I can still remember the seven of us sitting around the table and chatting, discussing, arguing – whatever took our fancy. The boys were all into soccer, I played cricket and even one year I coached the U15 soccer team when our oldest boy was in the team. My son persuaded me to do so as they didn’t have a coach. They had lost the first two matches and as he said were ‘unorganized’. Several kids didn’t like my disciplined approach and left, but we didn’t lose a match and won the grand final 8-1. One of the boys ended up in the Australian team! But I’ve become sidetracked so back to the main story. At our table we talked about many medical things which might have made some visitors squirmish. I had returned from Ethiopia because of health, and could not return at that time because of the Communist take over. However, we had lived in the hospital grounds. There was a large leprosarium so the kids grew up seeing the deformities caused by that disease. Our first son was a bad sleeper so that with my wife’s third and fourth pregnancies he would come into the theatre, if I was operating in the evening (pretty often) so that mum and number two and eventually number three child could get a decent sleep. Aged four he learnt how to squeeze the anaesthetic bag if patients were paralysed. I had to give my own anaesthetics and a worker would manage the anaesthetic when the patient was asleep. They enjoyed teaching the little white kid how to do certain tasks. The kids used to do Sunday rounds with me in the hospital after church. So they knew the sights and screams and smells of medicine!

I remember one day, when my wife was away looking after a sick parent, the kids asking me at the breakfast table what I was operating on that day. They knew the ending ‘ectomy’ but when I said an ‘oesophagectomy’ one of the younger boys asked ‘what is an oesophagus?’ It’s what joins your mouth to your stomach’, I replied. ‘So how does the food get down then?’ was the next question. ‘I pull the stomach up and sew it to the end of the throat’ I replied. It is a bit more difficult than that and takes a few hours but I didn’t go into detail. Number four’s answer has always tickled my fancy. ‘Now there is a man who can truly say “I’m full up to here!”‘ indicating his Adam’s apple area (at 5 his Adam’s apple wasn’t developed – but you know what I mean.

Dominic Cartier