Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1910 — MEDICINE AND THE PRESS. [ARTICLE]

MEDICINE AND THE PRESS.

Pee* Deal • t DzjutUitkte Talk Akoat Mtmsapcr BleaSsn. One of the medical journals devotee a long and scornful article in Its current issue to the anatomical and pathological blunders of newspapers. Some of those blunders. It must be admitted, have no little richness of humor. A small western paper, for example, recently accused a man of dying of "pleurisy of the brain.” Another announced that a sick man, locality prominent, was recovering from a bad attack of staphlocous (staphylococcus?) A third paper, this time in the south, recorded a case of "petrification of the heart.” News of other hairraising marvels, of Incredible maladies and impossible crops up every day on all sides. It is to be lamented, of course, says the Baltimore Sun, that newspapers are not more accurate in their medical and chirurgical reports, but the fault, we believe, is not always theirs. Too often the doctors who laugh so loudly are to blame. Many of them still cling to the ancient hocus-pocus of the mediaeval leeches. Medicine, as It is practiced, is still marked by meaningless Incantations, absurd circumlocutions, unintelligible dog Latin. The young doctors like to roll sounding words upon their tongues that they may cause the vulgar to marvel, and too often they are never cured of the vice. Just observe the bull sties issued by the learned consultants while a great man lies dying. Vary often they are entirely incomprehensible, despite the fact that the information they ordinarily convey might be expressed very well in language easily understood by any layman. No; the newspapers are not always to blame for their medical errors and when they are their blunders do a great deal less harm than those of the doctors themselves. A newspaper never gouges out the wrong eye or cuts off the wrong leg. Its mistakes in diagnosis fill no graveyards. It may be Cqmic. but it is never homicidal.