The Daily News. THURSDAY, AUGUST 23.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81829, 23 August 1906, Page 2

The Daily News. THURSDAY, AUGUST 23.

DOCTORS v. " POISONERS." The " duly qualified medical practitioness" of the colony represent the most select corporation of intellect in the country. The corporation have an excellent habit of sticking closer than brothers. Only in very rare cases have medical witnesses in any case before the courts of New Zealand courts varied to any appreciable extent in their ovidence. Each uses a good deal of involved jargon. The jargon of the profession is specifically intended, like the jargon of law, to impress the ignorant or those persons who have not spent five years in the hospitals or six months with a book of precedents in a law office. On the other hand, it is the " duly qualified practitioner" who, having learnt by heart the compotent parts of patent medicines, warns the ig norant of the great and grave risks they run in having anything whatever to do with Jany remedy, real or alleged, that is advertised. # # * #

Dit Mason, the Chief iiealth Officer of the colony, is an able journalist. He writes well. He is -a very good lecturer indeed. Ho knows the psychological moment for exhibiting the picture of one of the many grave dangers to life. He is artistic in his methods and had he in his youth essayed the path of literature instead of medicine he might have made a hit. Both Dr Mason and Dr Valentine were, so to speak, only heard of when the country called for health officers under the legislation that did so much to keep a smallpox patient interned on an island. Both of these medical mon have travelled about New Zealand a good deal, Both know, or ought' to know, the exact location of every rash of the skin of tho country. Both have a grave official demeanor that impresses the people with the depth of knowle !ge stored behind that demeanor.

])r Mason has recently told some biting truths about the patent medicine business. Ha has told nothing ! new. Any doctor will be able, should you apply to him, to give you i i a fair black typo the constituents of almost any patent medicine on the n.irket. It is assumed that Dr Mason does not dabble with drugs, that lie is not in the habit of treating patients daily. But when he did ■ practice, did lie stipulate in his prescription to the chemist that the contents of the bottle should be clearly set out on the kl el? Did he write the prescription in plain English or chg-htiMn ' i)id he set out the quantities in plain terms, or did he employ the mysterious.measure- signs of the craft that look so much like agitated microbes to the unpractised eye of the doctor's customer ? Iu short, is :i doctor who prescribes poison and charges a guinea for the prescription a less reprehensible person than the patent medicine man who sells a persan poison and charges eighteenpence for it ? * * * *

Everyone who possesses a faint glimmer of reason knows woll enough that many patent medicines arc wholly useless; often harmful and worthy of instant death and burial, but while medical men, and particularly medi-al men who are the servants of the pecjjli'. insist on patent ; meiiicine imv> reforming themselves, the public should insi'.t on a reformation of me Ileal me.:. .\J,di\il nun don't w-.r.t, t!>" pn'. !v to knnv !: u ivthing iib'ait tin- s.'.-sris of th.-i: piotcssr.u. They dusiie, however, that the publio shall know the swavts of the ot her fulluw's business, possibly because tho other fellow is making money that the doctor ought to have The doctor is frequently not a philatifropist, The end and aim of most of his operations is of cash. If the ipttont medicine man by retailing ic'ieap poisons makes an enormous amount of cash, if aaturally follows that the practitioner has fewer chances of selling his medicine which may be poison also.

Apart altogether ii-otn the question of drugs, there are medical mon who are less a blessing thai a sudden earthquake or a cyclone. A northern paper contains a letter from tho bereaved parents of a child, on whom two doctors operated with entire success. Tho child died and there was an inquest. It does not mention whether the it-quest was necessary to discover whether the child died from an operation successfully performed, or that an inquest was mvessnry in order to punish the parent for his nefarious conduct in being a father. The operation having, of course, been .successful, the doctors sent in thoir- bills. One bill was for £lO 10s, the other for £l4. Once upon a time, not many months ago, a passenger on a steamer was drowned before he his fare. Did the owner and the captain claim the amount, of the drowned poison's fire from his surviving relatives? Not that we are awaie of.

There were twelve cases in New Zealand last year of patients dying under anaesthetics. There were no doctors stiuck of! the rolls. All were " deaths by misadventure." Nobody to blame but the absurd patients. It would be interesting to learn how much the doctors charged the executors of the deceased persons for fie chloroform. If the doctors can pit their fingers on any specific case in which a patient has been poisoned by taking patent medicine, why do they not state such a case, and bring a charge of manslaughter? If the doctors hate secrecy, and poisons that are not specified, why use secrecy and unspecified poison themselves. Some of the noblest of men are in the medical ranks—men who are selfabnegalious, wedded to their profession, and a real help to their fellows. Men, toi, who continually have to work for nothing ; and, knowing that they can never be paid, give the best in them and go out of their way in order to help a fellow. We have met, doctors who, having worked ten yeirs of their time amidst hardships of the greatest kind, have been poorer in purse at the end of the time, and have gone away themselves physically shattered, ileal hemes, they are. There are others, however, of the exacting, mercenary kind, who are as great'a blight, as some of the quacks that prey on the innocent, all believing public. We believe, with the Chief Health Officer, that a great, many patent [medicines ought to be prohibited, but we also believe, net with him, that as a " poisoner " and other awful things, the ollicer accuses the patent medicine man of being, t hat there are qualified medical practitioners who give the patent qiMck a street start and beat him on one leg.j