FOODFORTHOUGHT

AND THEY CRUCIFIED HIM
By C. Truman Davis
April 13, 2011

A medical doctor provides a physical description:

The cross is placed on the ground and the exhausted man is quickly
thrown backwards with his shoulders against the wood. The legionnaire
feels for the depression at the front of the wrist. He drives a heavy,
square wrought-iron
nail through the wrist deep into the wood. Quickly he moves to the
other side and repeats the action, being careful not to pull the arms
too tightly, but to allow some flex and movement. The cross is then
lifted into place. The left foot is pressed backward against the right
foot, and with both feet extended, toes down, a nail is driven through
the arch of each, leaving the knees flexed. The victim is now
crucified.

As he slowly sags down with more weight on the nails in the wrists,
excruciating fiery pain shoots along the fingers and up the arms to
explode in the brain -- the nails in the wrists are putting pressure
on the median
nerves. As he pushes himself upward to avoid this stretching torment,
he places the full weight on the nail through his feet. Again he feels
the searing agony of the nail tearing through the nerves between the
bones of his feet.

As the arms fatigue, cramps sweep through his muscles, knotting them
deep relentless, and throbbing pain. With these cramps comes the
inability to push himself upward to breathe. Air can be drawn into the
lungs but not exhaled. He fights to raise himself in order to get even
one small breath.

Finally, carbon dioxide builds up in the lungs and in the blood
stream, and the cramps partially subsided. Spasmodically, he is able
to push himself upward to exhale and bring in life-giving oxygen.

Hours of limitless pain, cycles of twisting, joint-renting cramps,
intermittent partial asphyxiation, searing pain as tissue is torn from
his lacerated back as he moves up and down against rough timber. Then
another agony begins: a deep, crushing pain deep in the chest as the
pericardium slowly fills with serum and begins to compress the heart.

It is now almost over. The loss of tissue fluids has reached a
critical level. The compressed heart is struggling to pump heavy,
thick, sluggish blood into the tissues. The tortured lungs are making
frantic effort to gasp in small gulps of air. He can feel the chill of
death creeping through his tissues.

Finally, he allows his body to die.

All this the Bible records with the simple words, "and they crucified
Him" (Mark 15:24).

-- C. Truman Davis, M.D., M.S., Arizona Medicine, Vol. 22 No. 3 March
1965

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