Blood Drinkers.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1842, 26 April 1884, Page 6 (Supplement)

Blood Drinkers.

Incidents of Invalid Visits to Butchertown — Timidity in Tailing the First Glass of Warm 8100d — Patients Assert that they Have Been Greatly Benefited. " Ugh I I can never drink it." The speaker was a pale-faced and delicate girl, evidently an invalid. She waa welldressed and evidently a child of plenty ; but j her eyes told of suffering ; the blue veins in one outstretched hand showed through the pale skin ; ft cough followed her exclamation of half disgust. She was about to become a blood- drinker. Her companion, to whom she j spoke, did not seem herself to look with much longing on the daik red fluid which filled a glass outstretched in the rough but kindly hand of a stalwart butcher. Still she en- j couraged the invalid girl to drink. Bracing herself, and with a look of determination, the girl drained the glass at a draught. Her face seemed paler than ever when the last of the liquid had passed her'jthin lips, but there was, nevertheless, a pleased and determined look in ' her eyes. She had taken the first step, and i had not found blood so bad a beverage as she ', had anticipated. She might recover her strength and health again, and for this she had visited the abattoirs of Batchertown. BLOOD DRINKING ON THE INCREASE. Although the blood drinking for health at Butchertown is so much on the increase that the subject takes on new interest, probably not less than two scores of persons are regular visitors to Butchertown. They are principally young persons, between twenty and thirty years of age, young men and women. Some go to Butchortown in their own carriages. More are poor people who walk slowly over the long bridge from where the car leaves them and enter the abattoirs alone. Some who are able to ride prefer to < walk, never having wholly conquered a certain sensitiveness on the subject of blood drinking. They are regaining their health. They are proud of that and of their own efforts to that end, but do not care to attract any unnecessary notice. Only in a very few instances has blood drinking failed to benefit the consumptive or debilitated, according to the testimony at the abattoirs. Following the good old rule, from death comes life. A reporter for the Bulletin, who had been a witness of the scene detailed at the begining of this article, visited the abattoirs to make enquiries on this subject. Entering one of a long row of black, unpainted wooden buildings, he came upon a scene of slaughter indeed. Scores of carcases hung from strong beams, and the odor of meat filled the building. At the further end of the building I several muscular and good-natured young men, dressed in overalls and red flannel shirts, stood waiting an expected event. Into a small enclosure presently were driven a number of handsome cattle. Thpy "reie tollowed by a young man who prodded and urged them with the blunt side of an axe. Hardly were +he cattle in the pen when the axe bpgaii to fall. In less time than it takes to tell it, ton stunned but not lifeless cattle were on the floor of the abattoir. Deftly they were rolled out and placed in a row, with the feet all one way. Now each of the redshirted young men put an edge on a keen knife with a long circular " steel " which dangled from his side. The keen knives severed the jugular veins of the recumbent cattle, and the floor was stained with blood. Under such circumstances, shrinking and timid young giils have come sensitively up to make their first experiment. Close at hand is a tumbler, and while the blood is warm it is caught in this and handed to the patient. It must be drunk warm. A giil who has taken this treatment has been known to gain twenty pounds in weight in a few months. George Lowenberg hands daily several cups or glasses of the liquid to the sick. He allows them the use of his office, and has won the gratitude of many by making ea^y the ordeal.

LIKE IRE.SH, WARM MILK. The butchers do not consider the draught anything of a haidship. Their version is that even the most timid soon become habituated. They say that the draught is no more unpleasant than fresh, warm milk, and that it tastes not unlike it. It is seldom that aught but the blood of beeves is drunk. Many of the butchers are familiar with the taste. The sight is to them no novelty, but they look with kind interest on each new patient, and evidently take some pride in convalescence, much as a physician might. The material difference is that they take no fee for attendance, while very often the physician is paid for sending the patient to them. The majority of the patients visit Bulchertown in the morning, when the most of the slaughtering is dpne. Their faces are all well known. Some visit every day. Others two or three times per week. The fact adduced as evidence of the benefit of the treatment is that there ire several well known young ladies and gentleman about town, now vigorous, who were_ apparently saved by it. The local physicians recommend some to try it. Others try it on the recommendation of friends. While most arc consumptive patients, there are others who conquer debility thereby. i few take the liquid away in bottles salted. It is life blood in two senses. Nearly all the abattoirs hffive glasses kept for the patients. Some patients bring glasses. In the back of an abattoir are several boxes. What are these for ? For rheumatic patients who secuie cures, or think they do, by a method even more distasteful than the draught. These patients bring blankets and wraps, and put their limbs in these boxes, and having conquered their instinctive prejudices, go away much benefited, as they say. A few years ago the idea of the abattoirs was much more distasteful than it has become to sensible and resolute persons who have hopes of betterment. In New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and other large cities, scores are "doctoring," as these plucky San Franciscans are, and many of them under less favourable circumstances, for none of these cities ha<3 the winter climate to second the efforts of patients. Now, even comparatively well persons, suffering from temporary debility, make occasional visits to Butcherlown, and in those unsightly structures many claim to find asylums. Tne people who lived a few hundred years ago must have had very powerful stomachs, I judging from some of the prescriptions that the great physicians of that day left behind them. There was Sir Theodore De Mayerne, who was the doctor of Charles I. and Charles 11. and James 1., and he left behind a lot of nostrums that, if given to-day, would indict a man for manslaughter. He prescribed pulverised human bones in great quantities. He had a gout powder which was famous. It was made of " the raspings of a human skull unburied." One of his sweetest medicines was " bat balsam," composed of adders, bats, sucking whelps, earth-worms, hog's grease, the marrow of a stag, and the thigh-bone of an ox. When Pope and Addison wrote, in Queen A'ine's day, they used to give weak children .such a drink as this : "An ounce of rhubarb, 300 wood-lice, into six quarts of small ale." This was a spring and fall drink used something as bitters are now. One prescription of the last century reads as follows :—" Take a peck of large shell snails, lay them, on aioi t;arth before the fire, let them ]ta till they ha\i3 done hissing and spitting, then wipe them from the froth and break them in a mortar ; have a quart of earth worms slit and scoured clean, and take every day just before eating." The right forefoot of a hare worn in the pocket was thought to be effective against the pangs of " rheumatic." Wearing about the person the patella of a sheep or lamb, called the " cramp bone," is a sovereign remedy against the cramp. Three white mice are given in some 1

parts of England to cure whooping cough, a remedy that one would dislike as much as the late Lord John Russell did a certain patent medicine Avhich its owner sent to Sir John, with the request that he recommend it for the gout. "D n your stuff I" he said: " I'd rather have- the gout than swallow it." In some parts of South America the tongue of the iguana, if plucked out wh'le the animal is alive, is thought by the natives to be a cure for consumption. The fat of a lizard, called the Kabra, when externally applied, is a cure for skiu diseases, but when taken internally is rank poison. The Chinese attach wonderful curative powers to all parts of the tiger's body, and the Ghoorkas of the Himalaya district believe that tiger fat is a cure of rheumatism. Stag's horns, especially the right or off horn, are thought by hunters to possess great medicinal virtue?, and among the Turcomans the horns and hoofs of the goats are burned to ashes and applied to the galled or sore spots on their camels. The inhabitants of Switzerland believe that a few drops of the blood of the steinbok poured into a glass of wine and taken before going to bed produce a violent perspiration, and cure all sorts of diseases. Cod liver oil to this day has in the regular faculty medicinal properties, held to be efficacious in pulmonary complaints. The livers from the fish are taken perfectly fresh and white, and being washed, are thrown into a cauldron heated by steam, wheie they are dissolved into oil, which is dipped out when hot, and strained through conical felt bags and then through three of white moleskin, from which it runs pure. — Cincinnati Enquirer.