WHEN DOCTORS DIFFER.

Otaki Mail, Volume XXVIII, 23 July 1920, Page 4

WHEN DOCTORS DIFFER.

FOOLISH MISTAKE CAUSES l ' TRAGEDY. , 1 Disi-lu:rged from the Army in ll'Hi w ith * * valvular disease of the heait. .' and told by a military doctor that he t bad only three or four years to live. ; David Carey. 28, of Battersea, drowned himself in the Thames. r Eustace Carey, father, was asked by ( 0 the Coroner: Did your son sometimes , ~-fer to the fact that lie was sentenced . to death, so to speak .'—Yes. he often ; said so, and worried about it. He had . been courting a girl for eight years. - and the. couple were on the best of terms. t . Hr. John Norton, police surgeon, of 1 Queen Anne’s Gate. SAY., who made '■ an autopsy, said the heart was one of , the healthiest he bad ever seen. There ( was no trace of valvular disease. j The Coroner: What do you think of . , a doctor who professes dogmatically 1 , that a man cannot live beyond a ccr- “ tain number of years and tells the man ( ~ so! —Very silly and vary unkind. And very wicked) —Yes. There are , verv few diseases in which you can ( diagnose that a man cannot live many , years, and I have seen people with ex- , tensive heart disea-c live to be very old. i In mi mining up the Coroner said ( e that for a doctor to tell any patient d that he had only a limited time to live h was generally very, foolish and wicked, d Medical .science was not an exact c science; and, as o rule, the more dog- -- matic a doctor mn in any prophecy hell made the more ignorant in- was. ,t Carey might have lived for many 1, years, but some ignorant fool of a v doctor, who did not know his work, p diagnosed heart disease and doomed f him to death. A verdict of suicide ■while of unf , tv-if(f wfis recorded.