EXTRAORDINARY ACTION.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume X, Issue 1901, 11 April 1888, Page 2

EXTRAORDINARY ACTION.

The London correspondent of the Irish Times of January 31sfc saya :—": — " I had it yesterday from one of the counsel retained in the case that a very curious litigation is listed for hearing during the present term. Some two years ago a North London doctor, having a large family practice, had on bis list of patients a lady long suffering from an .affection of the face and jaw, which baffled the arts of the faculty. Sbe bad been for some time under his care when she changed her residence from London to Newcastle-on-Tyne, but kept herself in the bands of her London doctor by letter. Finding the ailment obstinate and the patient somewhat intractable and hypochrondriacal, the doctor wrote in the end saying be bad exhausted his resources, and adding bis opinion that the edax verum was the only remedy. The dead language in the wrong place. It proved a snare, for the lady hied herself off to a local chemist, and applied for the specific as set forth in the letter. Tbe attendant, it will be contended, through deliberate dishonesty, made up a bottle, for which he charged 7s 6d, and a^- the patient's request registered, or pretended to register, her name in tbe shop book as a customer to whom the remedy was to be regularly supplied. Sbe continued using and paying for tbe sham medicine for over a year and a half ; and a curious point in tbe case will be her admission that it .gave her more relief than any previous remedy employed. Coming to London for tbe royal jubilee, she chanced to meet her former doctor, who, it should be said, told her in his letter that, being unable to do more for her, he did not feel iustified in continuing the correspondence. He was astonished to find himself gratefully thanked for his final advice, and still more astonished when tbe lady related the facts. He wrote at once for an explanation, and advised the patient to demand the return of tbe large sum she had paid in fancy prices for the nostrum. The next stage of tbe business began with the disappearance of the assistant and the denial of any responsibility of the chemist. On these main tacts the case is based, but some remarkable revelations of the human capacity for consuming doctors'; Btttff may be expected. The plaintiff has, it seems, been an invalid from her twentieth year, and has for the quarter of a century intervening paid for medicine alone over ,£2000."