RENEWAL
Dr. J. Elder Cumming contended that "in almost every case the beginning of new
blessing is a new revelation of the character of God--more beautiful, more wonderful, more
precious."
J.O. Sanders, Enjoying Intimacy with God, Moody, p. 14.
Compared with salamanders and starfish, mammals have a dismally limited ability to replace lost parts. But now reports
of children growing back finger tips and spleens are changing that.
In 1974, Cynthia Illingworth, an English physician specializing in emergency medicine, discovered that when children
accidentally sever the finger tip (down to the first joint), the best treatment is no treatment. Cleaned and covered with a
bandage, the finger tip, including the nail, grows back. In 11 or 12 weeks the new finger tip usually looks as if nothing had
happened to it.
There seem to be three requirements for regrowth: the patient must be under 12 years old, the cut must be above the
crease of the first joint, and surgeons must keep hands off the injury. Any operation performed on the finger destroys its
ability to grow back. The last condition is the hardest to accept, admits Dr. Michael
Bleicher, a pediatric surgeon at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City.
Reader's Digest, March, 1980.
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