TEN MONTHS’ SUFFERING IN-A HOSPITAL.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 957, 4 July 1890, Page 26

TEN MONTHS’ SUFFERING INA HOSPITAL.

There is an old saying that physicians are a class of men who .pour drugs, of which they know little, into bodies of which they know less. This is bath true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers, and good and poor doctors. The trouble with these medical gentlemen as a profession is that they aro clannish, and apt to be conceited. They don’t like to be beaten at their own trade by outsiders who have never studied medicine, They therefore pay, by their fre quent failures, the penalty of refusing instruction unless the teacher bears their own 1 Hall Mark.’

An eminent physician—Dr Brown-Sequard, of Paris—states the fact accurately when he says : ‘ The medical profession arc so bound up in their self-confidence and conceit that they allow the diamond truths of science to be picked up by persons entirely outside their ranks.’ We give a most interesting incident, which illustrates this important truth. The steamship ‘ Concordia,’ of the Donaldson Line, sailed froui Glasgow for Baltimore in 18S7, having on board as a fireman a man named Bichard Wade, of Glasgow. He had been a fireman for fourteen years on various ships sailing to America, China, and India. He had borne the hard and exhausting labour, and had been healthy and strong. On the trip we now name he began for the first time to feel weak and ill. llis appetite failed, and be suffered from drowsiness, heartburn, a bad taste in the mouth, and costiveness and irregularity of the bowels. Sometimes when at work lie had attacks of giddiness, but supposed it to be caused by the heat of the .fireroom. Quite often he was sick and felt like vomiting, and had some pain in the held, Later during the passage he grew worse, and when the ship reached Halifax he was placed in the Victoria General Hospital, and the ship sailed away without him. The house surgeon gave him some powders to stop the vomiting, and the next day the visiting physician gave him a mixture to take every four hours. Within two days Wade was so much worse that the doctors stopped both the powders and the mixture. A month passed, the poor fireman getting worse and worse. Then came another doctor, who wse to be visiting physician for the next fire months. He gave other medicines, but not much relief. Nearly all that time Wade suffered great torture ; he digested nothin?, throwing up all hs ate. There was terrible pain in the bowels, burning heat in. the throat, heartburn, and racking patient was now taking a mixture eve r Tj Da! hours, powders one after each meal fccQigeej the food, operating pills one every nigSv* r( o temperature pills two each night to stop the cola sweats. If drugs could cure him at all, Richard had an idea that he took enough to do it. But on the other hand pleurisy set in and the doctors took ninety ounces of matter front, w right side, and then told him he was sure to die. Five months more rolled by, and th«< was another change of visiting physicians. 'Abe new one gave Wade a mixture which he said made him tremble like a leaf on a tree. At this crisis Wade’s Scotch blood asserted itself. He refused to stand any more dosingi and told the doctors that if he must di® could die es well without them as with them-

By this time a cup of milk would turn souroU his stomach, and lie there for days. 0® friend from Glasgow was like a wreck on * shoal fast going to pieces. We will let bi® tell the rest of his experience in the words to which he communicated it to the press. He says : ‘When I was in this state aMI whom I had never seen cane to the honp l ®' and talked with me. She proved to be® angel of mercy, for wi-hout her I should n® now be nlivn. s| . qq me 0 f a raedid |l | called “Moth r'S - Curative Syrup,”®! brought me a. bottle next day. I started to 1 '* it. without consul ing the doctors, and-itoM a. few days time J was out of my bed callin&J j ham and eggs for breakfast. From that keeping on with Mother Seigel’s great remeAj I gut well fast, and was soon able to leave ] hospital and come home to Glasgow, l n “J feel as if I was in another world, and havo j illness of any kind.’

The above facts are calmlv and impart stated, and the reader, may draw liis own elusion. Wo deem it best to uso no n* although Mr Wade gave them in orij deposition. Hia address is No. etreßtj Glasgow, where l’At&lj wm reaeir