DR. BAKEWELL-BODILY PAINS AND MENTAL ANGUISH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8529, 1 April 1891, Page 3

DR. BAKEWELL-BODILY PAINS AND MENTAL ANGUISH.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Oh, I am so sorry for Dr. Bakewell ! and, weeping, tender the anodyne of sympathy for his bleeding wounds. The gout is always an unwelcome visitor, imposing pains and penalties hard to bear. St. Paul recommended Timothy to Take a little wine for his stomach's sake, and often infirmities." To obtain this Apostolic creature comfort, the doctor would have to violate the laws of both conscience and reason, and might find herein the antidote worse than the bane. But alas ! alas! the trouble does not end here. While the medico is scientifically and philosophically undergoing his 30 minutes' matin of exhaustive labour in . husbandry, his ears are assailed (like that good old antediluvian) with the filthy conversation of the wicked. These lewd urchins of the baser sort not only indulge in nervous Saxon, but actually point the finger of scorn, thereafter adding injury to insult by going through the same process as did those Hebrew ragamuffins of old when they relentlessly stoned a man to death for the maintenance of his religious principles. I think this protomartyr was almost as good as Esculapius, or the late Mr. Greenway, whom, in spite of the truthful and trenchant remarks made by Mercutio, our hero regards as a fit subject for canonisation. The moral leper who compassionately said, " Oh, he's mad; he's a-digging 'is patients' graves!" ought I think, to be immediately segregated ; and if there is no social lazar house in the colony in the interest of manners and ethics, one ought to be reared for such pariahs. It has been said there is some art in making many things to be understood in few words, and some have the faculty of writing much and saying nothing. All will admit that in the doctor's short effusion he has eminently succeeded in the former achievement. Strange, to gild his theme, the doctor has fallen back on poetry, which in others he condemns. I must congratulate him on the sublimity of the quotation. Who is the author 1 I should like to place this gem in my olio of oddities.l am, &c., John Abbott. St. George's Bay Road, Parnell, 30tl. March, 1891.