Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1888 — DOCTOR INGERSOLL. [ARTICLE]

DOCTOR INGERSOLL.

The Amiable Skeptic Gives His Views ss Medical Treatment. Col. Robert G. Ingersoll lias his ideas on doctors, and physios, and medical treatment as well as on some other subjects. “There is altogether too much gloom about most sick chambers,” said he. “People tip-toe in and out, and wear long faces, and act generally in a way that would make even a well man sick, and is bound to make a sick man worse. I believe many a man has been hurried across the dark river by his horrible, soul-depressing treatment who might have beoome well, and strong, and useful, if he had more sunshine and fresh air in his room, or the odor of flowers to offset the smell of the drugs, and smiling, hopeful countenances about, instead of woe-begone visages, whose every "glance betoken the loss of hope and the belief in the speedy dissolution of the pain-racked patient. “I had a friend once named Haley, a royal good fellow, of whom I thought a great deal. On one occasion I received word that my old friend was dying and wanted to see me, so I went over to his house. I met his wife and she had a face as long as the moral law and ten times more uncomfortable. Well, I went to see Haley, and there he lay counting the moments in a bitter fear that each would be the last. I don’t know what particular disease he was troubled with, but either that or the medicine had turned him a vivid saffron color. ‘Haley,’said I, ‘l’ll be hanged if I’d want to die with such a complexion as that. You would lie in a pretty plight to go mooning about the other world looking like a Chinaman.’ I went on for a few minutes -when • the poor fellow began to enter into the, spirit of the subject himself, and I showed him his face in a looking-glass, and that brought a smile. Then I turned to his weeping wife and told her to cheer up, that Haley was not going to die; that he was good for twenty years to come. “ ‘The trouble with your husband is that he is scared to death,’ I said. ‘ You all come in looking so downcast and sorrowful that you give him the impression that he is done for and take away all his courage to fight against his sickness.’ “Well, the result of all this was that Haley commenced to mend, and time and again since then he has said that my visit saved his life. “On another occasion there was a Major in the army, whom I knew very well. He was taken ill and believed he was going to die. I believed he was merely homesick, or something of that sort. Well, I wrote his obituary and went to see him in his tent. “‘Major,’ I said, ‘you are so sure of dying that I have written your obituary and want tcJ read it to you.’ He protested, but I kept on with the reading and detailed every pleasant incident of his life. Before I finished a Bmile flitted across his face. After the obituary I read him a story of something that was supposed to have taken place a year after his funeral. It was a description of his widow’s second marriage. There were a good many more people at the wedding than at the funeral. Well, this treatment had the effect to change the current of the Major’s thoughts. It broke up hie hallucinations, and he recovered and did good service during the war, and lived a happy life for years after. “Then there was a man from our town named Marcy. He got it into his head that he was going to die. At that time no one was allowed to leave the army for a visit to the North, ex* cept on sick leave, or occasionally to accompany the remains of a dead comrade. I saw Marcy and said to him: ‘Now, Marcy, you say you are going to die. If that is so I don’t suppose that a few days one way or the other will make much difference to you. I want to go home for a day or two about the 15th, but cannot get leave of absence. Now, if you want to do me a very great favor and quit this life, say on the 12th, I can get my coveted leave of absence to take you home—see ?’ But I knew my man and he didn’t die. He got very angry instead, and recovered, but he declares to this day that it was my proposition that brought him back his old stubbornness and gave him grit to fight for his life. Ho always did object to being mode a mere convenience of.”