TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8764, 28 April 1890, Page 4

TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A 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. Tlii3 is both true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers, and good and pooi doctorß. The troubla with these medical gentlemen as a profession is that they are 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 frequent failures, the penalty of ref using instruction unless the teacher bears their own " Hall Mark." A.n eminent physician — Dr. BrownSequard, of Paris — states the fact accurately when he says : '"The medical profession are so bound up in their selfconfidence and conceit that they allow the diamond truths of science to be picked up by persona entirely outsido their ranks." We give a most interesting incident, which illustrates this important truth. The steamship "Concordia," of the Donaldson Line, sailed from Glasgow for Baltimore in 1887, having on board as a fireman a man named Richard Wade, of Glasgow. He had been fireman for fourteen years on various ships sailing to America, China, • and India. He had borne hard and exhausting^ labor, and had been healthy and strong. On the trip we now name he began for the first time to feel weak and ill. His appetite failed and be suffered from drowsiness, heartburn, a bad taste in the mouth, and oostiveneßß and irreguliarity of the bowels. Sometimes when at work he had attacks of giddiness, but supposed it to be caused by the heat of the fire-room. Quite often he was sick and felt like vomiting, and had some pain in the head. Later during the passagb he grew worse, and when the ship reaohed Halifax he was placed in the Victoria General Hospital, and the ship sailed away without him. The house surgeon gave him some powders to Btop the vomiting, and the next day the visit ing physician gave him a mixtme to take every four hour&. Within two days Wade was so much worse that the doctors stopped both the powders and the mixture. A month passed, and the poor fireman getting worse and worse* Then came another doctor, who was to be viaitiag physician for the next five months. He gave other medicines but not much relief. Nearly all that time Wade suffered great torture ; he digested nothing, throwing up all he ate. There was terrible pain in the bowels, burning heat in the throat, heartburn, and raking headache. The patient was now taking a mixture every four hours, powders one after each meal to digest the food, operating pills one every night, and temperature pills two eaoh night to stop the oold Bweats. If drugs could oure hi 5i at all, Richard bad an idea that be took enough to do it. But on the other band pleurißy set in and tlie doctors took ninety ouncea of matter out of his right side, and then told him ho was sure to die. Five months more rolled by, and there was another change of visiting physicians. The new ouo gave Wade a mixture whioh he said made him tremble like a leaf on a tree. At this criflis Wade's Scotch blood aeeerted itself. Ho refused to stand tiny more dosing, and told the doctors that if bo must die ho could die as well without them as with them- By this lithe a cup of oiilk would turn sour on bin stomach, and lie there for dayb. Our j friend from Glasgow wbb like a wreck ou ! a Hhoal, fust going to pieces. We will tell the rest of bis experience in the words in which he communicated it to Ihe press. He says : " When I was in this slate a lady whom I had never seen caico to the hospital and talked with me. She proved to bo an angel of mercy, fur without her I should not now be alive. Slie told me of a medicine called 'Mother Soi^el'a Curative Syrup,' and brought me a bottle next day. I etartod with it, without consulting the doctors, and in only a few days' time I was out of bed calling for ham and eggs for breakfast. From that time keeping on with Mother Seiqel's great remedy, I got well fast, and was Boon able to leave the hospital and come home to Glasgow. I now feel as if I was in another world, and have no illness of any kind."

The above fnots are calmly recorded and impartially stated, and the reader may draw his own conclusion. We deem it best to use no names, although Mr Wade pave them iujbie original disposition. Hie address is No, 244, Stobpraps Stroet, QlaegQW,3 ;w b prw luttero will naob Mm/. Sto»,