FATAL SECRET DRUG.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 7

FATAL SECRET DRUG.

DEATH OF A DOCTOR. ACCIDENTAL POISONING. A remarkable hospital tragedy in which a doctor in King’s College Hospital, who had undergone an operation, sent his son to a chemist for morphine which he had not been allowed to have and accidentally poisoned himself was disclosed at an inquest held in London last month on Dr Stephen Francis Smith. The coroner said that Dr Smith went into a hospital on May 2 for an operation, which apparently was successful. He collapsed on May 12, and died from poisoning by morphine, which had not been administered by the doctor. A 16-year-old son of Dr Smith said that when he visited his father in hospital on May 9 the latter made out a prescription. A chemist outside the hospital made up the prescription, and he then took it back to his father, who placed the tablets in his shoe in a locker. His father told him that when he was in pain the staff refused to give him morphine. Dr Wyse stated that ho was an old friend of Dr Smith, who was not a drug addict. It was only recently that Dr Smith had started to take morphine because of his illness. Mr F. Atkinson, a chemist, said that he had supplied morphine on four occasions on prescriptions. Dr David MacMyn, house surgeon at the hospital, stated that on the day after the operation Dr Smith said to him, “ I am in diabolical pain. Don’t y6u think I deserve some morphine?” The morphine was not given. Dr Smith demanded morphine repeatedly, but it was refused. The jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure, and said that it exonerated Dr Smith’s son from any blame. No blame was attached to the hospital, and the jury expressed the opinion that the doctor, in withholding morphine, acted with skill, care and judgment.