Untitled - the Digital Library of Georgia

518 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS
sensitive to a fault and inclined to be somewhat rash and dictatorial,
especially when aroused by anger.
Doctor Baber survived his hostile encounter with Cplonel Mitchell
by twenty years, and was still in the prime of life when he came to his
death in a most tragic and sudden manner. As narrated by Judge
Richard H. Clark, the circumstances are these: Among the patients of
Doctor Baber was a man with consumption, named Jarrell, in East
Macon. On Saturday the doctor made for him a prescription which
contained cyanuret of potassium. This drug consists largely of the
elements of prussic acid, and if taken in too large a dose is a deadly
poison. The prescription was put up by George Payne, then and now
a prominent druggist of Macon and a most excellent man. Detecting
the mistake, Mr. Payne, nevertheless, filled the prescription, but tied it
to the valve and wrote the patient not to take it, that it was a killing
dose, and to show the prescription, with his note, to Doctor Baber, when
he arrived. The next morning early Doctor Baber made his accustomed
visit and was disappointed and irritated that his patient had not taken
the medicine the day before, as he directed. The dose was a teaspoonful.
"To satisfy you there is no danger in it," said the doctor to the
patient, on the impulse of the moment, '' I will take a double dose.''
Suiting the action to the word, he swallowed two teaspoonsful, stag
gered to a chair, and in seventeen minutes, drew his last breath. The
mistake was due to a misprint in the formulary used by Doctor Baber.
Afterwards, due to the notoriety which this affair attained, the entire
edition was called in and destroyed by the publisher, but no amends
could restore the life of one of the most useful public men of the state.
The excitement which prevailed throughout the City of Macon on the
fatal Sunday morning which witnessed this tragic occurrence was most
intense. It was Macon's dark Sabbath.
On January 25, 1828, at Fort Mitchell, in the Creek Nation, on what
is now the Alabama side of the Chattahoochee River, just below the
present City of Columbus, occurred the famous duel between George W.
Crawford and Thomas E. Burnside. Both principals were then tal
ented young lawyers, residing at Appling, in Columbia County, Geor
gia. The former was a kinsman of the renowned William H. Craw-
ford and was himself destined to become scarcely less distinguished
in the 'political history of Georgia. He served his state as governor and
held the portfolio of secretary of war in the cabinet of General Taylor,
after which.he presided over the historic secession convention, at Mil-
ledgeville, in 1861. ' As a lawyer, he encountered few equals at the bar;
and for his services in prosecuting the celebrated Galphin claim against
the United States Government, he received a fee of $80,000.
Burnside, who was fated to fall in this encounter on the threshold
of what promised to be a brilliant career in public life, was an uncle of
the noted Federal commander, Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside, afterwards
governor of Rhode Island and United States senator.
The duel between Crawford and Burnside grew out of a newspaper