TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 6, 6 June 1890, Page 31

TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

Thebe 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. This is both true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers, and good and poor doctors. The trouble with these medical gentlemen as a profession is that they are clannish, and apt to be conceited. They don't like to be beatin at their own trade by outsiders who have never studied medicine. They therefore pay, by their frequent failures, tbe penalty of refusing instruction unless the teacher bears their own " Hall Mark."

An eminent physician — Dr. Brown- Sequard, of Paris — states the fact acurdtely when he says : " The medical profession are so bound up in their self-confidence 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, 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 the 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 taste in the mouth, and costiveness and irregularity 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 he grew worse, and when the ship reached Halifax he was placed in the Victoria General Hospital, and the ship sailed awa> without him. The house Burgeon gave him some powderß to stop the vomiting, and the next day the visiting physcians gave him a mixture to take every four hours. Withintwo days Wade was co much worse that the doctors stopped both the powder and the mixture. A month passed, the 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, throwiog up all he ate. There was terrible pain in the bowelß, burning heat in the throat, heartburn, and racking headache. The patient was vow taking a mixture every four hours, powders one after each mealto digpst 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 f ram his rigU side, and then told him he was sure to die. Five months more rolled by, and there was another change of visiting physicians. The new one gave Wade a mixture which he aid made hint 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 he must die he 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 Wa "rill 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 prove i to be an angel of mercy, for 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 consulting the doctors, and in only a few days' time, I ?vas out of led 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 and impartially stated, and thfl 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. Stobcross Street, Glasgow, where letters will Editob.

reach him

The actual losses by the Louisville tornado are less than at first estimated, being seventy-five liv^a and about 2,000,000 dols. worth of property The celebrated missionary, Rev. Father Legoff, 0.M.1,, haa returned to Manitoba from Montreal, where he spent the past year in writing and publishing six large volumes in the various Indian dialects. It is simply a hercu.eaa wjrk. Archbishop Croke, dealing with the total abstinence question, v a y ß : «• i would never allow a child to know the taste of strong diiuk, and I recommend that all be pledged to total abstinence until tne age of twenty-one years."