The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1885-02-24

has ended human life by putting up
wrong medicine awakens much indig-
nation. He says manv customers were
in the store; he was in hurry; he put
up morphine instead of some similar
drug. The inquiry arises whether a.
clerk is able to fill an order only when
he has no customers in the shop? How
empty must n shop be in order to Sc
cure safety? Must the street in front of
the drugstore also he empty? What if
fire-engine goes by? What if a dog
fight occurs while the druggist is reach
ing for quinine? Is he justified in taking
down strychnia? What if his mother-in-
law has come TO visit hime
Such questions come up and proper
"; but there is another side To the fact
of erring druggists, and that Is, that
most persons are crazy part of the
time The exceptions are rare. Each.
one is now and then fool of the most
complete order aud species. All the
laws and penalties in the world will not
avail to make a druggist or anybody
else have his full senses through all his
life. Crazy moments or seconds will
come. A wise man will step backwards
off a porch into a mud-puddle, a great
philosopher will hunt for the specks
that are on his hand or on his forehead,
q hunter will sometimes shoot himself
or his dog, barber will often forget
his job and slice off piece of a chin or
an ear or the nose. A girl al work at
Marshall Fields had been feeding
great cloth-knife for ten years. Last
week she watched the knife come down
SLOWLY on her hand. Too late she woke
out OF acr stupor with one hand gone.
For q lew seconds her mind had failed
and she sat by her machine a tenn
| porary lunatic and had watched the
/ knife approach her own hand.
[ The man recently murdered on North
| Clark street i'm Chicago, saw the enemy
| come up with murder on bis face, saw
him draw q revolver, and, instead of
making lightning spring at the man,
he stood bewildered and thus fell dead.
His reason left him In the second of his
greatest need.
One of the distinguished professors in
one of our colleges was teaching near 3
canal. Walking along one evening in
summer he walked IS deliberately into
the canal as he had been walking along
the path a second before. He was
brought to his senses by the water and
mud and he abSurdity of the situation.
He had on q new suit of clothes and
| new silk hat, but though the damage
was thus great he still laughs over the
adventure.
Our mail-collectors find in the iron
boxes along the streets all sorts of pa
| pers and articles which have been put
I in by some hand from whose motions
the mind has become detached for Sec
| ond. A glove, pair of spectacles, q
deed, a mortgage, theater-ticket goes
in and on goes the person holding on to
the regular letter which have been de-
posted. This is called minded
ness, but that is brief lunacy. A lu-
matte is a person whose mind is habitu-
ally out of balance.
Nothing is more common than for a
mind of the highest order TO become
| lost on the cars or on n steamer and TO
| feel for hours that for some reason the
| train or the boat Is going the wong
| way. Ii is one of the most unpleasant
| feelings that can befall a traveller. A
good night rest may, perhaps, restore
| the mental rectitude and compo>uTe.
When one IS lost in the woods all the
objects of nature seem false. The sun
is felt TO be wrong, the streams to be
unfamiliar. Instances arc on record OF
the inability of mind thus lost To rec
ogniZe its own home when il had come
to its very gates.
If thus it is the custom OF the human
mind to become deranged viii there not
always be instances in which a druggist
o. the widest knowledge and of the
most careful habits shall take down the
wrong bottle and deliberately mix
dose of death? The particulars of this
recent case are not yet known and there
NAV be a special criminality in the
case, but the fact remains that we are
all liable TO make a blunder that Will
deeply injure some one, or we are liable
TO be deeply injured by the wandering
mind of the nearest and host friend.
Mothers have given the wrong medi-
cine to their children and have caused
| death in their dreadful anxiety to save
life. A physician in this State recently
mixed vial OF powerful medicine. and
while talking to a friend his infant
child reached the medicine, drank it,
and died.
Thus wonderful as the human mind
| is il is not Infinite. Ii has trail mo-
ments- The wonder is that so many
minds of the millions perform so well
their duties. When train runs from
Chicago to New York the passengers
are dependent upon the mental balance
of quite multitude of men. FlagDsn,
switchmen, telegraphers, engineers,
trsckmen, bridgemen. strung along for
a thousand miles, must forget nothing.
The mind o. each and all must sit upon
its noble throne all the hours of the
twenty-four and all the days of the
year. When we remember that these
express-trsins will often run fer years
without meeting with ruin from some
bewildered mind we must cooctsde
that. although not infinite, the mind of
man is an amazing piece of workman
ship. Some will die by its blunders