Thought for the Day Healing - Five

Russian comfrey, 2023

This week, I have been thinking about words the French surgeon, Ambroise Paré, wrote in the sixteenth century, ‘I dressed the wounds, but God healed them’. Over the centuries, some surgeons of the same mind have been fervent in prayer.

Nowadays, we know a great deal about the science of wound healing. We know that the process begins in the blink of an eye after any kind of wound, long before we have an opportunity to care for the patient.

It is thought that platelets in the blood initiate the healing process. There are thousands of these platelets, minute particles, in every drop of blood – they are important in blood clotting. When they come into contact with tissue outside blood vessels they release chemicals – cytokines – that act like a spark, beginning a cascade reaction in which hundreds of other chemical substances are involved.

On Monday, I was remembering how the Good Samaritan used cleansing, bandages, food and rest to help the injured man. In the world today, doctors and nurses use these same measures, although we have better medicines and dressings now.

The resources that are available to us would astonish Ambroise Paré. But once the bandages had been removed to reveal the miracle of a healed wound, I would say that Paré would keep to his original opinion, that healing is God’s gift. And he would still be praising God.