TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 47, 14 March 1890, Page 31

TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

There is an old Baying that physicians are a class of men who pour drugs, of which they know little, into bodies of which they know less. This is both true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers, and good and poor doctors. The trouble wi'h these medical gentlemen as a profession is that they are clannish, and apt to be conceited. The y don't like to be beat«n at their own trade by outsiders who have never studied medicine. They therefore pay, by their frequent failures, tbe penalty of refusiog instruction unless the teacher bears iheir own " Hall Mark."

An eminent physician — Dr. Brown-Seqnard, of Paris— states the fact acurately when he says : " Ihe medical profession are so bound up in their self-confidence aod conceit that they a low the diamond truths of science to be picked up by persons entirely outeide their ranks." We give a most interesting incident, which illustrates this impojtant truth. The steamship " Concordia," of the Donaldson Line, sailed from Glascow for Baltimore in 1887, having on board as a fireman a man named Rcbard Wade, of Glasgow. He had been a fireman for fourteen years on various Bhips sailing to America, China, and India. He had borne tbe 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. His appetite failed, and he suffered from drowsiness, heartburn, a bad taßte in the mouth, and costiveness and irregularity of the bowels. Sometimes when at work he had attacks of giddiness, but suppoEed it to be caused by the heat of tbe fire-room, quite often he was sick and felt like vomitirg, and had some pain in the head. Later during tbe paetage he grew worse, and when the ship reached Halifax he was placed in tbe Victoria General Hospital, and the ship sailed awaj without him. The house surgeon gave him some powders to stop tbe vomiting, and the next day the visiting physcians gave him a mixture to take every four hours. Withintwo days Wade was so much worse that the doctors stopped both the powder and the mixture. A month passed, tbe peor fireman getting worse and worse.

Then came another doctor, who was to be visiting physician for the next five months. He gave other medicines, but not much relief. During 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 racking headache. The patient was now taking a mixture every four hours, powders one after each mealto digest the food, operating pills one 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 hand, pleurisy set in, and the doctors took ninety ounces of matter from his right side, and then told him he was tare to die. Five months more rolled by, and there was another chat ga of visiting physicians. The new one gave Wade a mixture which he said made him tremble like a leaf on a tree. At this cmis Wade's Scotch blood asserted itself. He refused to stand any more dosing, and told the doctors that if he must die be could die as well without them as with them. By this time a cup of milk wou.d turn sour on his stomach, and lie there for days. Our friend from Glasgow was like a wreck on a shoal, fast going to pieces We will let him 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 came to the hospital and talked with me. She proved to be an angel of mercy, for without her I should not now beahve. She told me of a medicine called ' Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup,' and brought me a bottle next day. I started with it, without consulting the doctors, and in only a few days' time, I nas out of bed calling for ham and eggs for breaXfa&t. From that time, keeping on with Mother Seigei'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 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 deposition. His address is No. 244, Slobcross Street, Glasgow, where letters will reach him. Kditob.

His Holiness Pope Leo has named the See of Siunia in Armenia as that from which Most Rev. Archbishop Grace, of St. Paul, takes bis title. It \s a very ancient See, the province having been converted to Christianity by St. Bartholomew the Apostle. The history of the diocese of Siunia shows it to have been eminently remarkable for its saintly and scholarly bishops. Archbishop Grace succeeds Ludovico Piavi. who, a few months ago, was made the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

A London special to the N. Y. Herald says :— " It seems to be taken for granted in this country that the Portuguese difficulty is at end, but there are many reasons for regarding this view with doubt. Tue Portuguese are angry and they intend to press their demands for arbitration. The semi-official Journal de St. Petersbourg comes forward, opportunely for them, to enforce this demand. ' The tfogliah are bound,' says this authority, ' to submit the case to arbitration.' If this attitude be seriously persisted in by Russia, we are only at the beginning of complications arising out of the African dispute. — Arbitration means that England will be ruled to be in the wrong, and not only that, but she will probably come out of court with fewer rights in Africa than she had when she went into it. There is never any other result of arbitration where England is concerned. Russia well knows this, and may press arbitration upon her for that very reason. The issue of the affair all depends on one thing :— Are the great Powers, or some of them, looking around for an excuse to break the present truce in Europe? If they are, the quarrel between England and Portugal will afford them the desired opportunity, and nothing that England can now do will prevent it."