St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1883-03-02
VOLUME 46---NUMBER 2379.

| put up both with the doctors and the
druggists. Some think it is a ''put up
job" between the doctors and the drug
gists.
doctors relabel all the old complaints
and give them new names. Thirty
odd years ago pneumonia was "lung
fever" and "sciatica" plain "rheuma-
tiz." But complaints with these old
fashioned English names are bad for
doctors. People get too well acquaint-
ed with them, and then they learn to
cure themselves. When the doctors
find them out they rechristen the whole
lot. This is done by charging gun
full of Greek and Latin words and fir
ing into the old complaints. When Il
shot hits the name sticks. The sick
are frightened when they are told that
these words are the matter with them
and think something new and awful
has got them. When n doctor has
tried to cure sick man and can't he
tells him he's got "malaria." Nothing
readily cures malaria i'll New York but
dying.
Doctors usually disagree, and the
more there are of them the more do
they disagree. No dozen of doctors
ever yet agreed entirely upon a mans
Omplaints-unless he was drowned or
blew his brains out. Every few years
the doctors find out that something
they used to do is entirely wrong and
likely to kill more than cure. But they
stick up just the same for whatever
they are doing now.
Rich folks do not hire poor doctors
to cure them. A doctor to cure rich
folks must live in fashionable street,
an expensive house and must keep up
some style It's not the street, nor the
house, nor the style, though, that cures
the patient, and if the doctor happens
to lack brains it's sometimes supposed
that accident or nature cures them-if
they are cured.
Women are often fond of doctors,
because if a woman thinks anything is
the matter with her she wants her
medical adviser to think so, too, and
she wants to try and be cured in the
most fashionable and expensive fash
ion. a coarse, common, questionable
doctor might tell woman that her
cOrsets were cutting her in two that
her lungs and other articles therea-
bouts were being squeezed too much
together that her life indoors was
that of a human hOt-hOuse plant that
all the medicine yet to he mixed and
made could not cure her, and that in
fact, she was too far gone in this sort
of sin and wickedness ever to be Il well
woman. This might make her really
ill. Would Il "skilled physician" make
his patient ill Oh, no. He will hui
NOR them and humor their complaints,
and give them all the medicine they
want, and put in his regular bill and
pocket the cash and step out of the
house rejoicing, and wink at the rich
druggist on the corner as he goes by.
Some ill-natured and ignorant people
call all doctors "humbugs." This is
wrong. Doctors are not humbugs.
Doctors doctor folks the way folks
want to be dOctOred. Doctors know
well enough that if they tell man or
woman that to get well they must stop
eating too much or drinking too much
or doing too much of anything that
they would lose the patient. The sick
man doesn't want to do anything dis
agreeable to get well. He wants to
sit still and take pills. He wants these
pills to keep him well after he gets
well and while he is doing his best to
get sick again. The doctor knows this
and so gives him the pills and charges
him well for giving them, as he ought
to do. A good many people are max
ing themselves sick by working to
make a living or in trying to make
more money. Doctors know this. But
they can't help it. There's no pill yet
compounded that can stop IA man from
committing slow suicide in an office
full of dead air. Doctors can't turn
tenement-hOuses into Yellowstone
parks. Doctors can't stop sick bakers
from making bread out of poor flour
and blowing it apart with unhealthy
chemicals. Doctors can't stop the
making of sausages i'll nasty cellars out
of scraps and diseased meat. Doctors
can't keep the poorest butter or lard
out of pie-crust, or the mustiest eggs
out of cake, or put sunlight in dark
bedrooms. Pills don't stop these
things. Powders might temporarily if
applied in dynamite or nitro -glycerine
preparations under the rookeries
; where these Outrages are daily com
mitted. But then the relief would be
hardly temporary.
The time when doctor gets maddest
is when he gives up all hope for the
) patient and the patient gets well.