We use this next case history with Permission of Simon and Shuster Adult Publishing Group from Dual Autobiograpy by Will and Auriel Durant. Copyright @ 1977 by by Will and Auriel Durant. Will and Auriel Durant were the husband and wife team who wrote The Series of books called: The Story of Civilization.

A Dual Autobiography:
Will and Ariel Durant

My personal problems compelled me to leave the country to the politicians. I was just getting back into stride with The Renaissance when I noticed an alarming discoloration in my urine. I took Ariel with me to a Miami Beach physician, who diagnosed my trouble as a prostate infection. When he asked for my clinical history, and I told him of the antibiotic mixture-penicillin, Aureomycin, Chloromycetin-that had been given me in Odessa, Texas, a year and a half before, and of my recent sciatica, he suggested that medication, in Texas and at Miami Battle Creek, had poisoned my system, had produced various abnormal reactions, and might produce more. He gave me a penicillin injection, and order weekly visits and injections. I departed downhearted. Would the penicillin cure me or make me worse? I submitted to these punctures weekly, but I put more trust in a cleansing diet patiently followed, and enemas two or three times a week; gradually, I believed, this regimen would clear my long-suffering innards from poisoning by prescription. A month later we heard Dr. Selman Waksman lecture on the dangers of prescribing a mixture of antibiotics. How many guinea pigs have been sacrificed to the progress of medicine! We left Miami Beach on May 1, 1952, and drove to New York, then to Lake Hill. There I submitted my prostate problem to Dr. Cohn, whom I had long admired as a physician, and as an amateur cellist who played in the Sunday concerts of the local quartet. He was also a man of humane feeling; through long hours every day he treated thirty or forty patients, including many poor people who never paid him. He attended Ariel's mother to the end, sitting by her, relieving her pain, and refusing to artificially prolong her life; "Lassen sie einschlafen," he told her children; "let her go to sleep." When I told him that I had high blood pressure he said, simply, "You must take a two-hour nap every afternoon, or you must take drugs." I objected; I could never keep my writing schedule if I spent two afternoon hours in bed; now I believe he was right. As my urine was still discolored, he ordered me to go on with the penicillin injections. I did, and about June 1 my urine cleared up; but I believe it was the diet that cured me, for if it had been the penicillin it would have acted sooner.

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