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Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916) http://tinyurl.com/Sienkiewicz

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It Won't Hurt a Sick One

From "A Comedy of Errors," 1931. Read Online Download PDF

Reader: Wm Leslie Howard

In the early days of California—as elsewhere—medicine was sometimes practiced in a more informal manner than now. Surely we can be grateful for the change.

Polish writer Henryk Sienkiewicz spent a short time in California, which lent him material for a number of stories. "A Comedy of Errors" is set in a small town with big ambitions, "Struck Oil City," wherein resides a very busy French doctor.

Please note that there lived there a shoemaker, a tailor, a carpenter, a blacksmith, a butcher, and a French doctor who, in his time, had shaved chins in France, but anyhow was a "learned man" and harmless, which is a great deal to say of an American doctor.

The doctor, as most frequently happens in small towns, also kept the chemist's shop and the post office. So he had three professions. He was as harmless a pharmacist as he was a doctor, for in his pharmacy there were to be found but two medicines, namely, julep and laurel drops. This quiet, gentle old man was wont to say to his patients:

"Never be afraid of my medicines. My custom when I give a sick person medicine is to take the same dose myself, for I argue that if it doesn't hurt a healthy man it won't hurt a sick one either. Eh?"

"That's so," would reply the reassured citizens, to whom it never occurred that it's a doctor's duty not only not to harm a patient, but to cure him.

Originally published in a Polish serial in the 1890's, "A Comedy of Errors" was translated and included in Tales from Henryk Sienkiewicz in 1931.