JCAK KNOWLES’S FORTY FRIENDS.

Lake County Press, Issue 589, 25 January 1894, Page 4

JCAK KNOWLES’S FORTY FRIENDS.

A fri nd in need is a friend indeed, says (lie old s»w. Quite so. Fair weather friends are plentiful • enough, goodness knows ; 'the kind that drop in on you, talk to you, bother you, and borrow tilings from you ; the, kind that briny back that five shillings, but ask for five more “just to make it ten,” that breed of friends, I say, are as thick as flies oxer a sugar bowl. But the sort who stick by you when you are doxvu on your luck, who put their shoulders against your cart wheols at a nasty spot in the road—why, you want to hunt for them with spectacles and a lantern. Yet, after all, such friends do exist, and 40 of them turned up, without any hunting, when Mr Knowles needed them bably. How it happened, he tclis in the following statement.

i, Jonatnan Knowles, of Lotton Fen, near Ramsey, Hunts, do solemnly and sine* rdy declare as follows: -I was ahvays a strong healthy man up to Ajril, 1869, when I began to feel ill. At fi;st I bit dull, low-spirited, and had no energy, i had a pour appetite and for days and days could eat nothing. What 1 did e:*t laid like load on my chest. I had a gnawing sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach, and was constant ly sick, vomiting up ‘ a green fluid. At times she heaving end straining was so great that blood came Up. My hands ami feet were always cold, and clammy sxx'euts used to break out all ovi r me. I never felt warm ev»n when J sat before the fire. Next a backing dry cough, with severe pains at my chest and lungs, began to trouble me, ami my breathing became short and hurried. I soon got so weak that i had to give up my work, for I could only walk a few yards without stopping to take my breath. The cough and • sber ness oi breath got gradually worse and worse, and I began to lose flesh r«(.idly. A' first a doctor from Ramsey came to see me, he gave me medicines and cod lixer oil, but held out no hope of my gening better, and after attending me three months he recoin mended me to go to the hospital. 1 get hj recommendation fiom rny master, Mr David Corney, Willing ton House, St. M ury's, and went to the Peterborough Infirmary'. J hud te be taken in a trap to the railway station, such was my weak state. The doctors at the infirmary had me stripped and sounded my lungs, and said one of my lungs was almost gone, and that I was in a consumption. They gav’e me medicines, also cod liver oil, but noth* did u.e any good. After being under their care and treatment for three months I was discharged as incurable. ; My- wife and relations now lost all ; hope of my ever getting well again, 1 and exeryoue xvho saxv me looked upon ‘ me as being in a decline. My cheeks i bad sunk aud I had wasted axvay until 1 1 was only a shudoxv of my former self, j you could even see the sinews through i my flesh. 1 was m.thing but skin and I bone, having lost three stone in weight I got up every day, b u t had to sit in an m-ciiuir all clay long. I -;ouId only move a few yards and that xvith the aid c£ a suck. In this half-dead half.alive state I continued for nearly two years, and was looked upon as doomed. During the latter part my wife did not think 1 should live from one week to another, and friends who came to see nm used to say, “ Poor I •Jack xv i 11 nextr come out alixe ag..iu.” In Decern Ik- r, 1890, when I was at my wort, a tieigiibor of mine, Mrs King, I T *i)m Briton Inn, told nieof a medicine j called Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup j and gave me half a botile of ir, I had m. luitlr in anything doing me any good j Out I took it. Having been to long I out of work I couid n< t get money for j more of the Syrup. So strongly were : i. y friends convinced that the medicine wolf’d do me good that a subscription v.as started and ov<r 40 people subtciibcd to enable me to get a further supply.. Mrs King got the Syrup front Mr J. freeman, chemist, Ramsey, aud kept me supplied with it. After! had taken three bott.es oi tin- Sy up I felt benefit. I kept oi. with the medicine

and gradually got stronger aud stronger, »nd o: back to my work. Of m orse it took u long tune before I propel ly got up my strength. I can now do any kind of work, and Lei so strong that I often walk 14 mil's a d-y, fori which I thank God and Mother S dgol’s i Sv'un. Everyone in the district is astonished at mv recovery. I toil.them all that SeigHl’- Syrup has brought me back to Sire, I wish others to know of what has dune so much for me, and I give permission to the propi ieturs of the medicine, to make, what use they ' hitxk fit of this statement; and I make. »his solemn declaration conscientiously | believing the sanie to be true. By I vir i|]p nf St-itutorv Declaration Act, i i 1855 (Will. IV., c. G2). Subscribed and ] ■ ieclared at Pe- j terbotu’ in the j County of j N or t.hampton. •hs 29th day of January, 1892, hj” fore mo, (Signed) Jonathan Knowles, [j. J. Deacon, .1 com hum oner to administer 'taihs in t. t Sit p rente Court of JuditaUre in Ennhnd. You take notice of course that Mr Knowles makes a solemn legal declaration to the truth of his. remarkable ; story. It is so full of suggestive facts that I could write a book about it. But there is no time nor room now to do that. The points to remember are these:—lf the doctors thought “Poor Jack ” had consumption they were mistaken. The fact that he got well shows he had no consumption. A man who can now walk I t miles a day has two good lungs. Doctors have no . business to make such blunders and j scate patients out of all courage and hope. But thi re ! Ignorance is ignorance, no matter where you run across it. What ailed Mr Knowles was indigestion and dyspepsia nothing else. The couch and loss of fltsh were symptoms j of that , not of tl.a destruction of lung I substance. Next, keep bearing in ; mind that all our common maladies signify that our machinery for digest--1 ing food is out of order. It is so when it doesn’t look so, the same as when it does.

That is the secret of success of Mother Seigel’s Syrup. It chanses the cistern and the pipes, and then the water of life runs clear and sxveet. Those 40 sensible friends U lieaecl in that.

Mr J Knowies is a very respectable hard-working man. He is a farm laborer and has a small allotment of land which he cultivates. The persons xvho subscribed to get aim the Syrup are principally farm laborers and farmers residing in the dis'rict of Ramsey, The case is well known to-all the people round about where Knoxxles lives. Mrs Knowles, in speaking of her husband’s long illness, stated that she never for one moment expected his recovery! She could see him gradually dwindling away, and herself and children could not take their meals for tears when they saw the dreadful condition Mr Knowles xvas in, for they expected losing him every week.