TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2012, 25 February 1890, Page 1

TEN MONTHS' SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

There is an old saying that physicians are a claia of men who pour drugg, of whioh they know little, into bodi<?B of whioh they know leep. This is both true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers! and good and poor doctor*. The trouble with these medical gentlemen as a profegeion 1 is that they are clannish, and apt to be con! ceited. They don't like to be beaten at their own trade <by ! outsiders who have never studied medicine. They therefore pay, by their frequent failure?, the penalty of refus"ing instruction unless th« teacher'bears their own "Hall Mark."

An eminent physicnn—Dr. Brown-Sequard of Paris—stateß the fact accurately when ho says : " The medical profession are bo bound up in their »plf-confidenoe and conoeit that fchey allow the diamond truths of soience to be pioked up by persons entirely outside their ranks." We'give a moat interesting whioh illustrates this important truth. The steamship " Ooncorida," of the Donaldson Line, sailed from Q-lasgow for Baltimore in 1887, having on board as a fireman a man named Bichard Wade, of Glasgow. He had been a fireman for fourteen years on variouß ships sailing to America, China, and India: He had borne the hard and exhausting 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 oostiveness and irregularity of the bowels. , Sometimes when I at' work he had attacks of giddiness, but' supposed itjo be ciused by the heat of the fire-room. Quite often be 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 shin sailed away without him. The house surgeon gave him some powders to atop the vomiting, and the next day the visiting physician gave him a mixture 'to take every four hours. Within two days Wade was so much worse that the doctors stopped both the powders and mixture. A month passed the poor fireman getting worse and worse. Then came another doctor, who was to be visiting chysioian for the next five months. He gave other medicines, but not muoh relief. Nearly all that time Wade Buffered great torture,; he, digested nothing, throwing up all he ate. "There was terrible pain io the bowels, burning heat in the throat, heartburn, and racking headaohe.' The patient was now' taking a mixture every four hours, powders one after each meal to digest the fosd, operating pills one every and temperature pills two eaoh night to stop the cold sweats. If drugs could oure him at all, Biohard had an idea thaS he took enough to do it. But on the other hand pleurisy set in and the dootors took ninety ounces of, matter from his right side; and then told him he was sure to die.' Five months more rolled by, and there was another change of .visiting phyaioians. The new one gave Wade a mixture whioh he said made him tremble like a leaf on a tree. At this stage Wade's Sootch blood asserted itself. He'refused to stand any more dosing, and told the dootors if ho must die he could' die as well without them as with them. By this time a oup of milk would, turn sour on his stomaoh, and lie there for days. Our friend from Glasgow was like a wreck on a shoal, ffi«t going to pieces. We will let him tell the rest of his experience in the words in which he oommunicated it to the press. He says : " When I was in this state a lady whom I had never Been came to the hospital and talked with me. r She proved to be an angel of.meroy, 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 was out of bed 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 oalmly and impartially stated, and the reader may draw his own conelusion. We deem it best to use no names, although Mr Wade gave them in his original deposition. His addreia is No. ?44, Stoborois Glasgow, where letters will reach him. Editor.