A Romance of Health Recovery.

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 98, 27 April 1935, Page 14

A Romance of Health Recovery.

Mr. Overbeck's recovery of health and vigour is indeed an astonishing romance. A year or two before the discovery that made such an amazing change in his life he used to spend most of his days stretched out on a sofa. It was painful to see him climbing the staircase to his bedroom on the first floor —a step and a rest, a step and a rest, lest this slight exertion should bring on a heart attack. His piano, i upon which he had so often improvised with masterly execution for the entertainment of his friends, was all but silent now, for the effort of playing even the briefest and least exacting of pieces was too much for him. As for any really active pleasures, they had to be entirely ab-' andoned. A devoted horticulturist, he no longer dared to stoop over his beloved plants, and the glasshouses; where he had'raised some of the rarest plants to be found in Great Britain, knew his care no longer. On the rare occasions when he went for a walk in his home town of Grimsby his 'halting gait and haggard looks were marked by all his friends, who fully shared his doctor's opinion of the outcome of his illness. Mr. Overbeck was, in fact, a prematurely aged.man, with an old man's sallow skin and faded eyes, an old man's infirmities and maladies, the victim of chronic kidney trouble and rheumatism, his hair scanty, his sight blurred, his pulse feeble and erratic. But physically broken down as lie was, he still. retained the mental outlook, at least, of the trained man of science, and a brain that for years had spent its energies in tackling all kinds of difficult and exacting problems, now turned to the most vital problem of all: how the fires of life, which so obviously were dying down, could be stoked up again and stirred into a cheerful blaze.