Abilene weekly reflector. [volume] (Abilene, Kan.) 1888-1935, 1889-01-31
ABILENE REFLECTOR
OR. WISE'S GREAT THEORY.

AND ms theories queer,
Half fact half surmise
winch excited such vast scientific surprise.
rms old Dr.. Wise was wonderful man,
w no mostly TO projects and theories ran;
ne could tell how fever germ acted and grew
anu always could show you dozen or two.
Tho the poor devil lying
Fever stricken and diving
ne seldom or never contrived TO pull through.
With the greatest presumption
He discoursed OF consumption,
And laid all the blame on some parasite sly;
As for cancers and tumors,
They came OF bad humors,
And absorption would cause them to shrink ur
End die.
But this wonderful man not alone
AS common practitioner shone;
For who has not heard how the whole world
stirred
When he published his book, 1.-THE Domestic
Outlook:
Or, how TO Exterminate Rats
Without Ferrets or Poison or Catsy"
why, the plan was so pretty, so simple and
witty, it seemed great pity
That rats by million and billion and triIlion
Should haunt human dwellings in country and
city.
Just secure a mad cat;
Let the cat bite rat
And there'd be mad rat;
There ends your labor;
He'd bite his neighbor,
And then this other
Would poison his brother.
All see your face dimple with joy at the
scheme;
IT'S easy and simple as mince-pie and a
dream;
The madness would spread
Till the last rat was dead.
But twas most as a critic that DR.. Wise came
To make for himself professional name.
For whenever patient OF wealth or of birth
Would escape his physicians by fleeing from
earth
DR.. Wise never failed to indte review
Which showed that the death to malpractice
was due.
IL is small wonder, SURELY
That a man OF such skill,
Declared death to be purely
An avoidable i'll, which ought never to kill
In fact, he announced il 10 be his conviction
That death in all cases resulted from friction;
For the body was nsught but machinery cum
ming,
While life was the power that kept il running.
Then why should not science
Some cordial distill
That might bid defiance
To deaths power to kill.
some unctuous elixir, 10 friction superior,
That should lubricate mans complicated in
terror
Whenever he felt himself grow slightly wearier!
This argument met on all sides with great favor
For OF reason it really did seem TO SAVIOR
Besides. it is true in religion and physic,
When the spirit or body is feeble or is sick
Man retains best the nostrums OF pleasantest
favor,
Or, to hold this thought up to more evident
view,
Man accepts as the truth what he'd like to have
true.
How many preacher is salaried well
For weekly discourse on the absence OF hell
Though his psrrot-like lips nothing further can
Now, in all human breasts is implanted strong
Illogical longing to live. and live long,
Antedating DE Icons historical scramble
Through dangerous wilderness, thicket and
bramble,
Over desert and plain and impossible noun
tain,
To regain his lost years in a mythical fountain.
The world then, received
Dr. Wise very kindly;
And ere long it believed
His great theory blindly
The excitement produced in a storm culmi-
mated,
Into which the famed savant at last Illuminated
That he, the invincible investigator
Had found a receipt for the great lubricator.
Well, to shorten a story already too long,
A hall vas secured and a numberless throng
The young and the gray,
the religious, the CAV
Sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers
Assembled from everywhere, distant and near.
A lecture on How to Live Always" to hear;
Nc scoffers were there, their belief was COM
plete,
And each brought note book to take the re-
ceipt.
Eight o'clock was the hour which the Doctor
had set
Eight o'clock, and he came not; half-past, and
not yet
Do his faithful disciples grow weary or fret
Nine o'clock, and then ten, when at some ones
suggestion
A carriage was sent for the great man in oues-
tion.
1t went 1t returned, and the news quickly
spread
That the lecture was OF, for the doctor was
dead
George Horton. in Chicago Herald.