Morning journal and courier., 1883-03-02
A DtsqufsitfOn on Doctors.
 LFrom tha Nau York Granhin

| lrrom the NEW xofk drapn1c.I Doctors were invented to repair the dam ages which man brings or commits on him. I self. Sometimes the damages committed py
 the doctor are as great as those he tries to re. pair. But this makes little difference in the l amount of the doctors bill for damages. When doctor finds out any new thing
 which will cure folks, and uses it, all the oth
 CT doctors turn to and abuse him for it. Doctors go to school many years learning
 to prescribe for diseases Druggists put up
 the prescriptions. The public take the pre-
 sciptions and put up both with the doctors and the druggists. Some think it is "put up job" between the doctors and the drug gists.
 About once in 20 years the doctors relabel all the old complaints and give them new names. Thirty odd years ago pneumonia
 was Hung fever" and ''sciatica'' plain
 ''rheumatiz." But complaints with these
 old fashioned English names are bad for the doctors. People get too well acquainted with them, and then they learn to cure themselves.
 When the doctors find them out they rechrist- en the whole lot. This is done by charging g gun full of Greek and Latin words and fir ing into the old complaints When 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 a doctor has tried to cure sick man and can't he tells him he's got malaria" Nothing readily cures malaria in 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 mau's oomplaint-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 jnst 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 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 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 fashion. A coarse, common, unfashionable doctor might tell 8 woman that her corsets were cutting her in two; that her lungs and other articles thereabouts were being squeezed too much together; that her life in- doors was that of human hot house plant; that all the medicine yet to be mixed and made could not cure her, and that in fact, she was too far gone in this sort of sin and wick edness ever to be well woman. This might make her really ill. Would skilled physi- clan" make his patient ill2 Oh, no. He will humor 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 the 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 a. 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 disagreeable to get we'll 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 him the pills and charges him well for giving them, as he ought to do. A good many peo- pie are making themselves sick by working to make living or in trying to make more mon- ey Doctors know this But they can't help it. There's no pill yet compounded that can stop man from committing slow suicide in an office full of dead air. Doctors can't turn houses into Yellowstone parks. Doctors can't stop sick bakers from making bread of poor flour and blowing it apart with | unhealthy chemicals. Doctors, can't stop the | making of sausages in nasty cellars out of | scraps and diseased meat Doctors can'tkeep | 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 ifsppied | in dynamite or nitro giycerine preparations under the rookeries where these outrages are | iaily committed. But then the relief would | be hardly temporary.
 II,ak ruba d00f0r rnoddaak ic | when he gives up all hope for the patient and he patient gets well. .sis---,, ,f..esss
 It'sghastly conical to think how the old doctors of 50 or 60 years ago taught the young doctors to give big doses of mercury which the doctors of to day don't use near a much as formerly, and which some of them