TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 8784, 21 May 1890, Page 4

TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

There is an old savin; that physicians are a olass of men who poar drugs, of which they know little, into bodies of which they know \r bb. This is both true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers, and good and pool doctors. The trouble with these medical gentlemen as a profession is that they are clannish, and upl 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 refusing instruction unless the teacher bears their own " Hall Mark."

An eminent physician — Dr. BrownSequard, of Paris— states the fact accurately when he says : " The medical profession are so bound up in their selfoonfldence 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, whioh illustrates this important truth. The steamship "Concordis," 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 Bhips Bailing to America, China, and India. He bad borne hard and exhausting labor, and had been healthy and strong. On the trip wo now name he began for the first time to feel weak and ill. Hn appetite failed and he suffered froiL. drowsiness, heartburn, a bad taeto in the mouth, and costiveness and irregaliarity of tbe 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 passage ho 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 visit ing physician gave him a mixtuie 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, and the poor fireman getting worse and worse*

Then came another doctor, who was to be visitiag physician for the next five months. He gave other medicines but not much relief. Nearly all that time Wade Buffered great torture ; he digested nothing, throwing up all he ate. There was terrible pain in the bowols, burning heat in the throat, heartburn, and raking headache. The patient wbb now taking a mixture every four hours, powders one after each meal to digest tbe food, operating pills ono every night, and temperature pills two each night to stop the cold sweats. If drugs could cure him at all, Richard had an idea that he took enough to do it. But on the other band pleurisy set in and the doctors took ninety ounces of matter out of his right side, and then told him he was sure to die. Five months more rolled by, and there was "Knottier change of visiting physicians. The new oue 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 dosing, and told the doctors that if be must die he could die as well without them as with them- By this tine a cup of milk would turn sour on his stomach, and Ho there for dayb. Our friend from Glasgow was like a wreck on a shoal, fast going to pieces. We will tell the rest of his experience in the words in which he communicated it to the press.

He says : " When I was in this state a lady whom I had never seen cadae to the hospital and talked with rao. She proved to be an angel of mercy, fur without her I should not now be alive. She told me of a medicine called ' Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup,' and brought me a bottle next day. I started with it, without conßuftinj; the doctors, and in only a few days 1 tims I was out of bed calling for ham and eggs for breakfast. From that time keeping on with Mother Seigel's great remedy, I got well fast, and was soon 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 'facts 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 gave them in bis original disposition. His address is No. 244, Stobcross Street, Glasgow, where letters will reach him? Editor.