NOBODY WANTS THAT GOLD KING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8682, 26 September 1891, Page 6

NOBODY WANTS THAT GOLD KING.

For. nearly 100 years a certain family of working people living in Paris have ended their lives by suicide. From father to son, from mother to daughter, has descended a plain gold ring, and on the fintrer of every one of these suicides, as they lay in death, this ring, has been found. Only last year the body of a young man who had killed himself, was brought to the Morgue, and on his finger was the fatal golden omelet. He was the last of his race. The ring was buried with the corpse, from which no one acquainted with its history will have the courage to remove it. The mental taint in this family cams from some remote ancestor, and was intensified by their recognition of it until it became a controlling force; and the ring was accepted as imposing upon its possessor tho obligation to commit suicide; after the example of the person who last wore it. This form of mania usually originates in a disorder of the nervous system, which in its turn arises from aineinia, or poverty of the blood, one of tho results of imperfect nutrition. A recent letter from a gentleman living in Norfolk contains the following assertion : " I lon<jcd for death ; I was afraid of the niyhl; I was afraid to be alone, yet I hated noddy. ■ I uas afraid that in some otic of those, hoars of deep gloom and depression I should lift my hand against my own lift, for I knew that many Had done so from the same cause." The dark hours became a time of terror to him. so lie says. He tossed and tumbled on his bed, wondering if morning would ever dawn again. In this case it was not an accusi:v -conscience, as ho had committed no .■fctfenee; the cause was purely a physical one —yet, all too common in England—indigestion and dyspepsia, with the long chain of consequences dragging after it, nervous collapse among them. , He relates that his skin and eyes, had been more or less discoloured for years, often of a ghastly and repulsive yellow. This was due to the presence of bile in the blood and tissues, where it had no business to be. But as the weak and torpid liver could not remove it, no other result was possible than the one our friend experienced. His head frequently achcd as though fiends had turned i it into a workshop, and pains chased one ! another through his body as though he had 1 at least half the maladies catalogued in the popular books on disease. Yet one thing, and one only, was responsible for. all the mischief, namely, the poison introduced into the blood from the decaying food in the stomach and intestines. The cold feet, the loss of appetite and ambition, the mental despondency, tho sense of weariness and fatigue, the bad taste in the mouth, dry cough, giddiness, palpitation, chills, weakness, &c., are a brood of foul birds hatched in one nest, and the mother is always indigestion and dyspepsia. Time passed somehow, as it always does, whether we laugh or cry, and this man grew heartily tired of a life thus burdened and spoiled. He longed to see the end of it, and no wonder. But the last page of his letter is pitched in a higher key. He says : " When I think of what I was, and what I am now, I ca l hardly realise the change. For the past six months I have been using a preparation known as Mother Seigel's Curative Syrun, and it has actually revolutionised my whole system. One of my tenants recommended it to me, and I tried it just to please him. Now I praise it for myself, and thank the men who make and advertise it. My troubles are over, and I feel (at 57) as light, elastic, and gay as a boy on his summer vacation. I tell my doctors they are beaten at their own trade by an old German nurse, and so far as I am concerned they can't deny it. I have no more horrible thoughts of self-destruction, for I find too much enjoyment in living. My thanks are too deep for words." The author of this letter consents to the publication of so much of it as is here printed, but declines to allow the use of his name, at least for the present, for reasons we aro bound to respect. But the evident sincerity of his story will carry conviction to every candid mind.