JACK KNOWLE'S FORTY FRIENDS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9401, 6 January 1894, Page 3

JACK KNOWLE'S FORTY FRIENDS.

A friend in need is a friend indeed, says the old saw. Quite so. Pair weather friends are plentiful enough, goodness knows ; the kind that drop in on you, talk to you, bother you, and borrow things from you; the kind that never bring 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 over a sugar bowl. But the sort who stick by you when you are down on your luck, who put their shoulders against your cartwheels at a na,sty spot in the road—why you want to hunt for them with spectacles and a lantern. Yet, after all, such friends do exist, and forty of them turned up without any hunting when Mr. Knowles them badly. How it happened he tells us in the following statement :— I, Jonathan Knowles, of Lotton Fen, near Ramsey, Hunts, do solemnly and sincerely declare as follows :--I was always a strong healthy man up to April, 1889, when I began to feel ill. At first I felt dull, low-spirited, and had no energy. I had a poor appetite and for days and days could eat nothing. What I did eat laid like lead on my chest. I had a gnawing, sinking feeling at the pit of the stomach, and was constantly sick, vomiting up a green fluid. At times the heaving and straining was so great that blood came up. My hands and feet were always cold, and clammy sweats used to break out all over me. I never felt warm even when I sat before the fire. Next a hacking dry cough, with severe pains at my chest and lungs, began to trouble me, and 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 shortness of breath got gradually worse and worse, and I began to lose flesh rapidly. At first a doctor from Ramsey came to see me ; he gave me medicines and cod-liver oil, but 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 recommendation from my master, Mr. David Corney, Wellington House, St. Mary's, and went to the Peterborough Infirmary. ' I had to 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 gave me medicines, also cod-liver oil, but nothing did me 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, and everyone who saw me looked upon me as being in a decline. My cheeks had sunk and I had wasted away until I was only a shadow of my former self, you could even see the sinews through my flesh. I was nothing but skin and bone, having lost three stone in weight. I got up every day hat had to sit in an armchair all day long. I could only move a few yards and that with the aid of a stick. 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 I should livefrom one week to another, and friends who came to see rne used to say, " Poor Jack, he will never come out alive again." In December, 1890, when I was at my worst, a neighbour of mine, Mrs. King, True Briton Inn, told me of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup, and gave me half a bottle of it. I had no faith in anything doing me any good but I took it. Having been 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 Jfi people subscribed to enable me to get a further supply. Mrs. King got the Syrup from Mr. J. Freeman, chemist, Ramsey, and ke?>t 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 my work. Of course it was 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 them all that Seigel's Syrup has brought me back to life. I wish others to know of what has done so much for me, and I give permission to the proprietors of the medicine to make whut use they think fit of this statement; and I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true. By virtue of tne Statutory Declaration Act, 1835 (Will. IV., c. 62). Subscribed and de-"! clared at Peterboro', in the County of Northampton, this 29th day of January, 1592, before me, (Si-.••'•>!) (Signed) . [-Jonathan Knowles. L. J. Deacon. A Commissioner to administer oaths in the Supreme Court of Judicature in England. ) You take notice of course that Mr. Knowles makes a solemn legal declaration to the truth of his remarkable story, litis 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 If the doctors thought " Poor Jack" had consumption thoy were mistaken. The fact that he got welt, shows he had no consumption. A man who can now walk 14 miles a day has got two good lungs. Doctors have no businees to make such blunders and scare patients out of all courage and hope. But there, ignorance is ignorance, no matter where you run across it. What ailed Mr. Knowles was indigestion and dyspepsianothing else. The cough and loan of flesh were symptoms of that, not of the destruction of lung substance. Next, keep bearing in mind that all our common maladies signify that our machinery for digesting 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 the suacess of Mother Seigel's Syrup. It cleanses the cistern and the pipes, and then the water of life runs clear and sweet. Those 40 sensible friends believed in that. • - Mr. J. Knowles is a very respectable hardworking man. He is a farm labourer and has a small allotment of land which he cultivates. The persons who subscribed to get him the Syrup are principally farm labourers and farmers residing in the district of Ramsey. The case is well known to all _ the people round about where Knowles lives. 1 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 was in, for they expected losing him every week.