'YOU WILL NEVER GET BETTER, CAROLINE.’

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1013, 31 July 1891, Page 35

'YOU WILL NEVER GET BETTER, CAROLINE.’

‘ When that wave strikes me I shall be washed away and drowned !' So cried a sailor, clinging to a half sunken wreck, as he saw a tremendous sea rolling towards him. Yet he lived to tell the tale safe on shore.

‘ Before this time next week I shall be dead.’

So said a woman in a time of great fear. Yet she also lived—and still lives—to explain her situation.

Here is her story, told in her own words and in her own way. She says :—“One day in September, ISS7, I stood at the top of a flight of eleven steps, about to go down. Suddenly I was taken with a giddy sensation. Everything seemed to swim around me and I fell. I rolled to the bottom of the steps and was picked up insensible, with a broken arm. The doctor recommended rest and quietness. In a few days I was better, but I still felt the shock to my nervous system.

‘ Then many bad symptons appeared. I had an uncomfortable feeling all over me which I cannot describe. I couldn’t eat ; my appetite was gone. There was a foul taste in my mouth ; pains in the sides, back, and chest ; coated tongue and a sense of weakness and distress in the stomach. I felt low and melancholy, and had anxieties and fears I could not trace to any particular cause. The doctor who attended me for some months said that it was nervous debility, brought about by the shock

‘ I got worse instead of better, and went to the London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, where I was an out patient for several months but I kept getting worse. They said I was suffering with shock, liver congestion, and debility. I was then sent to the Brighton Convalescent Home, where they treated me for fourteen days, and did little or no good. In a short time I began to despair, and my husband and others who came to see me thought I was doomed. Thus I went on from month to month, expecting each week would be my last. Again and again I whispered solemnly to myself, “ Before this time next week I shall be dead 1”

* I took no further interest in anything pertaining to this world ; but thank God ! I have a good husband and a good home. My husband carried me from my bed every day, and placed me in the chair sofa, and tried to cheer me up and persuade me I would get better. But since I have really got well, he tells me that he never in his heart believed his own words.

« My sister, too, came frequently to see me, and did all she could to ease my sufferings : but being unable to resist what her own eyes showed her, she often said, “ You will never get better, Caroline.” * Bnt who likes to read accounts of the troubles and sorrows of ethers? so much do each and all of us have of our own to bear. I crave your attention only for a few words more.

‘ I went on in this way—like one who stands on the crumbling edge of an open grave—until February, 1890, when a little book was left at my shop which told of the remarkable cures wrought by Mother Seigel’s Curative Syrup. The narrative of the Policeman of Holyhead greatly impressed me. I said to my husband, “ The complaint that policeman suffered from is my complaint, The remedy that cured him may cure me.” ‘ I sent at once over to Messrs Lacy and Co. the Chemists, Whitechapel Road, for a bottle. It did ine good, I could eat; but better still, the food digested. Before this when I swallowed a mouthful of solid food it seemed to turn to wind, or sour acid and gas, and gave me such pain I fancied I had heart disease.

‘I persevered ' with the medicine, and after taking six bottles I ne-er felt so well in my life. I can now eat as heartily as any one, and am never distressed after taking food.

‘ln fact, I can now eat a jolly good dinner, and I leave you to imagine what a treat that is after being bad so long.

‘My husband and relatives, as well as my neighbours, are all of my opinion—that Mother Seigel’s Syrup saved my life. •(Signed) Mr 3 Caroline Sage, wife of Mr. Henry Sage, Basket maker and Stationer. 200. Whitechapel Road, London, E.’ One point only in Mrs Sage’s statement needs a word of explanation. The fall downstairs, in which her illness apparently began was in fact the result of the malady, which had for some time been undermining her nervous system—namely, indigestion and dyspepsia, and the giddiness which occasioned the fall was merely one of its symptoms.