Article January 19, 1899 Issue

Dosed to Death

A Physician's Testimony.

Ward

In some heathen lands they kill the doctor if the patient dies, but it would hardly do to follow that custome here, else there would be as great a hegira out of the ranks of the profession as there is now into it. And still the question arises in the minds of those best capable of judging, whether drugs are not killing more people every day now than are being benefited by them. One cannot pick up a daily paper but a profusely illustrated, sickening advertisement of some villainous nostrum will bang him in the face; and the public pay for it. If they didn't they wouldn't be there. It has got to such a pass that every family has some one or more patent medicines in the house constantly to fall back on in case of emergency, or as a stand-by to keep them well.

But we will leave those all out of the question; people are daily dosed to death by doctors—so called—and I am satisfied that the somewhat recent innovation, called the hypodermic syringe, has slain its thousands. Further, it is a known fact that deaths from hydrophobia have increased vastly since hydrophobic innoculation was adopted by certain of the profession. Well-informed physicians are fast coming to the opinion that hydrophobia is a mental disease with a physical manifestation oftentimes, and that if the mind can be kept right there will be no convulsions. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

I well remember a good many years ago being called in a consultation over the case of a very prominent merchant in Ovid, who was dying apparently of typhoid fever. The local doctor, as well as one from St. Johns, were in daily attendance, and had declared his case hopeless. They were good physicians, too, but had lost their grip in this case.

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