ONE OF MANY | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 29, 1881

ONE OF MANY.

THE New York Graphic gives this pen picture of one of many: Well, the poor boy came into this world with a weakly body, for his mother was troubled with much household care and labor when she bore him, and his father, though a church member in good standing, was an inordinate tobacco chewer and kept his strength bolstered up through the stimulus of the weed. So long as the boy ran about loose with the other children and played in the sand with bare feet he was tolerably healthy. But when sent to school he pined. At the boarding-school he was counted a good scholar and made great progress in memorizing. At eighteen he was tall, “spindling,” and slightly stooping, always complaining, eating according to custom whatever was set before him, working and studying directly after eating, and complaining of a weak stomach. So he went on in life till the age of twenty-five. Then he married, was always in poor health and in frequent consultation with doctors. First, doctors at home; next, doctors abroad; then special doctors; now, regulation doctors, with reputations and diplomas, and then in despair applying to outside doctors; herb doctors; bush doctors; botanic doctors; and tramp doctors; doctors who said it was his liver; doctors who said it was his heart; doctors who said it was malaria; doctors who said he didn't make blood enough; doctors who starved him; doctors who stuffed him; doctors who chilled him in cold, wet blankets; doctors who parboiled him in medicated vapor baths; doctors who advised him to go North; doctors who advised him to go South; doctors who suggested springs; doctors who recommended mud baths; but never a doctor who told him that half the damage had been done before he came into the world and the other half through his own ignorance and that of the authors of his being afterwards. But he died all right, and the doctors then found out what ailed him, and they gave the complaint a Latin name, and it's now raging round seeking whom it may devour.