Medicine: Kickapoo Cure

Charles Sachen of Mason City, Iowa worried long over his 12-year-old son, Mylon. Scrawny, freckled Mylon was undernourished, anemic, had "pains all over," and often fell into epileptic fits. Dr. Madelene Mott Donnelly had prescribed special diets and iron tonics for him. Last week Charles Sachen, who does excavating work, decided to take matters in his own hands. He remembered hearing that vermifuge cures dogs of the "fits" and he saw no reason why it should not work on humans. He went down to the drugstore and for 33¢ bought a box of "Kickapoo Worm Lozenges."

He fed two lozenges to Mylon. The boy struggled, gagged, then broke into spasms of coughing and retched up nine marbles. "I swallowed them five years ago," he gasped. Three days later he said he felt better and his father called in reporters and babbled about a new medical discovery.

Excavator Sachen also carried the big news to Mercy Hospital. But the doctors, not so receptive as the reporters, pooh-poohed the Kickapoo, sent Sachen home to his digging. Vermifuges are fine for dogs, they said, but the drugs they contain will not cure anemia and epilepsy. They doubted that Mylon had swallowed the marbles, or if he had, that they had remained in his stomach for five years. Small, hard objects are usually passed off within a day or two, explained patient Dr. Donnelly, as she ordered another bottle of slow, safe iron compound for still anemic Mylon.