PREJUDICE.
AS far as I can ascertain, the present season (1857-8,) has been a remarkable healthy one, in this portion of the west. But scientifically, every few days, some poor sufferer is consigned to the grave—but not until nature has disputed, most resolutely, every inch of ground, and at last has been compelled to yield to King Calomel! It is only a few days since, a child of ten or twelve years old was laid away, with a part of the lower portion of its face already fallen off, and appearances indicating that a large part of the rest would soon have followed, had not death terminated its sufferings in mercy, and spared its friends the anguish of beholding the farther devastations of this most potent “remedy.” In such instances, the outraged feelings of surviving friends, are usually quieted with the assurance that “it is the Lord’s will;” and so these works of iniquity are saddled upon the Supreme Arbiter of events, and He is made the scape-goat of one of the most wicked systems that ever cursed the world.
I am sometimes perfectly confounded by the blind bigotry which possesses the minds of those men, whose business it is to administer to the wants of suffering humanity. It does seem as though they thought more of conforming to the opinions of certain authors, and following the prescribed rules of a Medical Association, than they do of the lives of their patients. In their opposition, especially to reform in medical practice, some of them hesitate not to endanger the life of a fellow-being, if, by so doing, they can bring obloquy upon that system to which they are opposed.
These are hard sayings; but I am compelled to believe them, for it is but a short time since one of the poison-dealers tried to persuade a patient of mine to eat unripe peaches, only two days after he had reported him as in a very dangerous situation, with bilious fever. This same man, was prescribing for a slight ailment in a stout individual, who was still able to be about town and attend to his business. This person ate some of the same kind of fruit, and thought that it injured him. He told his physician what he had done, who broke out with an oath, and told him he wondered it had not killed him. This shows the estimation in which he held the fruit, which he had told my patient would do him good. Comments, upon such an act, are unnecessary, or upon a profession which feels itself obliged to treat with contempt, every thing not paying homage to its mandates—no matter how much it may promise to add to the welfare of mankind, if it cannot trace its origin within the walls of a legalized inclosure.
Of all men, the physician should be a liberal-minded man—ever anxious to learn all that will enable him to be of benefit to his suffering fellow-creatures. He should never conclude that he has nothing more to know, or that he can find all knowledge in any one system, or theory, of practice; he should ever be ready to learn, from every body. He who expects to find out all that can be known, in one train of reasoning, or round of study, is like a man traveling upon a circle, who thinks, because he can travel all his life-time upon that circle, he can consequently visit every place that the length of his life will permit him to visit. After a while, some one—who has learned that, in order to extend his knowledge, he must strike out a path diverging from that one, so long traveled—starts out accordingly in a new direction, and finds an extent of knowledge and research, of which he never before dreamed.
Our traveler, who thinks that the old path will lead him to all that he can ever know, comes around to the new road. He stops, and asks, “Who made this new track? Was it the man who marked out the one that I am in?”
“No!” says one; “the path which you are in, tells the same old story; this new path is a better way. Discoveries have been made in it, far more valuable than in the one in which you are, and they have been made by one who does not believe that your old way is perfect.”
Now see self-confidence, bigotry, and ignorance, encircling the lips of scorn. “Fools!” says he, and he goes, muttering vengeance on the “poor deluded fanatics!”