JACK KNOWLES' FORTY FRIENDS.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 9544, 2 December 1893, Page 5

JACK KNOWLES' FORTY FRIENDS.

A friend in need in a friend indeed, Bays the old aaw. Quite so. Fair weather friends are plentiful enough, goodness knows ; the kind that drop in on you, talk to you, bother you, and borrow things from yon ; the kind that never bring hack that five shillings, but ask for five more " just to make it ten," that breed of friends, I say, are ac thick as flies over a sugar bowl. But the sort who stick by you when joa are down on your luck, who put their shoulders against yonr cart wheels at a nasty Bpot in the road— why, you want to hunt for them with spectacles and a lantern. Yet, after all, such friends do exist, and foity of them turned np, without aiiy hunting, when Mr Knowles needed them badly. How it happened he fells us in the following statement. I, Jonathan Knowles, of Lnlton Fen, near Ramsey, Hunts, do solemnly and sincerely deolare as follows:— I was always a stroDg, healthy man up to April, 1889, when I began to feel ill. — *At first, I felt dull, low-spirited, and had no energy. I bad a poor appetite and for dayß and days oould eat nothing. What I did eat laid like lead on my chest. I had a gnawing, sinking feeling at the pit of the stomaoh, aud was constantly sick, vomiting up a green fluid. At times the heaving and straining was so great that blood came up. My h»uds and feet were always oold, and olammy sweats used to break out ill over me. I never felt warm even when I sat before the flre. Next a hacking dry cough, with Bevere pains at my chest and luDgs, began to trouUa . me, and my breathing became short and homed. I soon got go weak that I bad to give np my work, for I could only walk a few yards without stopping to take my breatb. The cough and ebonness of breath got gradually wowe and worse, and I began to lose flesh rapidlj. At first a dcotor from Eamsey came to see me, be gave me medicines and ood liver oil, bnt held out no hope of my getting better, and after attending me three months he recommended me to go to the hospital. I got a reoommendationfrommy master, Mr David Oorney, Wellington House, Bt. Mary's, and went to the Peterborough Infirmary. I had » to be taken in a trap to tbe railway etatloD, suoh was my weak state. The doctors at tbe Infirmary had me stripped and sounded my lungß, and

said one of my lungs was almost gone, and that I was in a consumption. They gave me mediciuos, also cod liver oil, but nothing did mo any good. After being under Iholr caro and troatment for threo months I was discharged as incurable. My wife and relations now lost all hope of my ever getting well again, and uvetyono who saw me looked upon md as being in a deoline. My cheeko had sunk and I had wastudawoy umi! I >'. ■•;■ only a shadow of my former tielt, \i-u could even see the sinews through my llosh. I was nothing but skin and b<mc, having lost threo stone in weight. I got up every day but had to I sit in au arm-ohnir all day loug. I I could only nwve a few yards and that with tho aid of a stick. In this hulfdead, half-alive state I continued for nearly two year 9, and was looked upon as doomed. During the latter part my wife did not tliink I should live from one week to another, and friends who tame to soe me ÜBed to say, " Poor Jack will never come out alive again." In Dei cember, 1890, when I was at my worst, a neighbor of mine, Mrs Bog, True BHton lan, told me of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup and gave me half a bottle of it. I had no i faith in anything doing me any good but I took it. Having beeu so long out of work I could not get money for more of the Syrup. So strongly were _my friends convinced that the medicine would do me good that a subscription was started and over 40 people subscribed to enable me to get a further supply. Mrs King got the Syrup from Mr J. Freeman, Chemist, Ramsey, and kept me supplied with it. After I had taken three bottles of the Syrup I felt benefit. I kept on with the medicine and gradually got stronger and stronger, and got back to niy work. Of course it tock a long time before I properly got up my strength. I can now do any kind of work, and feel so strong that I often walk 14 miles a day, for which I thank God and Mother Seigel's Syrup. Everyone in the district is astonished at my recovery. I tell thorn all that Seigel'B Syrup has brought me buck to life. I wi3h others to know of what has done bo much for me, and I give permission to the Proprietors of the medicine to make what use they may think fit of this statement ; and I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true. By virue of the Statutory Declaration Act, 1835 (Will. IV., c. 62). Subscribed aodde 1 eland at Peterborougn, in the County of Northanipton, this 29th day of January, 1892, before mt>, I L. J. Deacon, A Commissioner to administer Oaths in the Supreme Court of Judicature in | England. J You take notice of course that Mr Knowles makes a solemn legul deolaration to the truth of his remarkable etory. It is bo full of suggestive faots that I could write a book about it. But there is no time or room now to do that. The points to remember are these :— lf the dootors thought " Poor Jack " had consumption (hey were mistaken. The fact that he got well shows he had no consumption. A man who oati vow walk 17 miles a day has got two good lungs. Doctors have no businesa to make such blunders and scare patients out of all courage and hope, But there ! Ignorance is igooranc^, no matter where you run aotoss It. What ailed Mr Knowles was indigestion aud dyspepsia —nothing elbe. The oouab aud loss of flesh were symptouis of thai, not of the destruction of lung substance. Next, keep beating In mind that all our common maladies signify tbat our machinery for digesting food is out of order. It ia so when it dunsn't look bo, the same as when it does. That is the secret of the success of Mother Seigel's Syrup. It cleanses the cistern and the pipes, and then the water of life runs olear and swept. Those 40 sensible friends believed in tbat.

Mr J. Knowks U a very resp' otable hard- working man. He is a farm labourer and has a small allotment of land which he cultivates. The porßoos who subscribed to get him the Syrup are principally farm labourers and fnroiern residing in the district of Eamsey. Tbe ease is well known to nil tbe piople round about where Knowles lives. Mrs Knowles, in speaking of her bue band's long illness, ststrd that she never for one momeut expected his reoovery. She could see him gradually dwindling away, and herself and obildreu. could not take their meals for tear* when they saw the dreadful condition Mr Knowles was in, for they expected losing him every week.