Editorial July 20, 1899 Issue

Poisoned in Hospitals

Editor

THE following are two cases of death in hospitals, resulting from the blunders of attendants in administering powerful poisons instead of the drugs that were prescribed. The details given in the newspaper accounts of both cases, show how easy it is for such mistakes to occur. The blame should not rest so heavily upon the persons who administered the poison by mistake as upon the system of drugging with all sorts of poisons, which prevails.

When such mistakes can so easily occur under the system of drug treatment, and when they so frequently occur, it is surprising that doctors should have the boldness to condemn Christian Science treatment when it saves such a large percentage of patients who are out of the reach of material methods of treatment, and especially when it is impossible, under Christian Science treatment, for such sad mistakes to happen as in the two cases that follow.

Foxboro, July I.—Although the report of Dr. Charles E. Woodbury, superintendent of the Hospital for Dipsomaniacs at this place, to the State Board of Insanity, relative to the death of Benjamin Gifford, a patient at the institution, shows that Gifford died from apoplexy, still it is admitted by all the officials connected with the hospital that one of the attendants had administered strychnia by mistake.

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