TEN MONTHS’ SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2055, 5 June 1890, Page 3

TEN MONTHS’ SUFFERING IN A HOSPITAL.

There is an old laying that physioians are a ' clais of men who pour drugs, of which they know little, into bodies of whioh they know less. This it both true and untrue at the same time. There are good and poor lawyers, and good and poor dootors. The trouble; with these medical gentlemen as a profe;Mon is that they are clannish, and apt to be conceited, They don't like to be beaten at their own trade by outsiders who have never studied medicine. They therefore nay, by their frequent failures, the pepaity of refusing instruction unless the teaoher bears their own "Sail Mark." An eminent physician—Dr. Brown-Sequar d of Paris—states the fact aoourately when he says : »«The medioal profession are bo hound up in their self .confidence and conoeit that they allow tho diamond truths of soience to be pioked up by persons entirely outside their ranks.'.' We give a most interesting inoidont, whioh illustrates this important truth. sThe steamship«.« Ooneorida," of the DonaldSop Jgiae, sailed from Glasgow for Baltimore

in 1887, having on board as a fireman a man named 'Einhard Wade, of Glaigow. Ho had been a fireman for fourteen yean on various ships sailing to America, China, and India, He had borneithe hard and exhausting labour, and had been healthy and strong. On the ship we now name he began for the first time to feel weak and ill. His appetite failed, and ho suffered from drowsiness, heartburn, a bad teste in. the mouth, and oostiveness and irregularity.of the bowels. .Sometimes when at work he had attacks .of giddiness, but supposed it to be ciußed 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 aaay without him, The : house surgeon gave him some powders to stop 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 physician for the next five , months. He gave other medicines, but not much relief! Nearly 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 meal to 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 ho 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 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 him tremble like a leaf on a tree. At this stage Wade’s Scotch blood asserted itself. He refused to stand any more dosing, and told the doctors if he must die he could’ die as well without them as with them. By this time a cup of milk would 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 be alive. She told mo 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’ (xma 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 te 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 his original deposition. His address is No. ?44, Stobcross Street, Glasgow, where letters will reach him. Editor.