Jack Knowles' Forty Friends.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4817, 4 December 1893, Page 1

Jack Knowles' Forty Friends.

■ *~ " — ■ — A friend-in need is a friend indeed, says the old saw. Quite so. Pair weather friends are plentifnl enough, goodness knows ; the kind that drop in on you, talk jto you, bother you, and borrow things j from you ; the kind thai never. bring back that five shillings, but ask for five more "just to make it ten," that breed of friends, I say, are a3 thick as flies over a sugar bowl. But the sorb who stick by you when you are down on yonr luck, who put their shoulders against your carb wheels at a nasty spot in the road— why, you want to hunt for tliem with spectacles and a lantern. Yet, aftgr all, such friends do exist, and forty of them turned up, without any hunting, when Mr Knowles needed them badly. How it happened he tells us iv the following statement .-■— j I, Jonathan Knowles, of Lotton Fen, j near Ramsey, Hunts, do solemnly and j Bincerely declare as follows :— I was always j ' a strong healthy man up to April, 1889, when I began to feel ill. At first I felt dull, low-spirited aud 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 hid 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 Bhort and hurried. I soon got bo 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 ccc 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 Btation, bucli 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 waß discharged as incurable. My wife and relations now lo3t all hope of my ever getting well again, and everyone who saw me looked upon me as being in a decline. My cheeks bad sunk and I had wasted

away until I was only a shadow of my former self, you could even see the sinews through my fle3b. I was nothing but skin and bone, having lost three stone in weight. I got up every day, but had to sit in an armchair all day long. I could only move a few yards and that with the aid of a Btick. In this half-dead, half-alive Btate I continued for nearly Wo years, and was looked upon a.% doomed. During the latter part my wife did not think I Bbould live from one week to another, and friends who came to see me used to say, "Poor Jack will never come out alive again." In December, 1890, when I was at my worot, a neighbour of mine, Mrs King, True Briton Inn, told* me of a medicine called Mother Reigel'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 to long out of work I could not get money for more of the syrup. So strongly were my friends convinced that tho medicine would dome good that a subscription was started", and over forty 'people subscribed to enable me to get a further Bupply. Mrs King got the Syrup from Mr J. Freeman, Chemist, Bamsey, and kept me supplied with it. After I had 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 took 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'e Syrup has brought me back to life. I wish others to know of what has done bo much for me, and I give permission to the Proprietors of the medicine to make what übo they think fit of this statement; and I make this solemn declaration conscientiously believing the same to be true. By virtue of the Statutory Declaration Act, 1835 (Will. IV., c. 62). Subscribed and de-~1 . clared at Peterboro', in the County of Northampton, this 29th day of January, 1892, before me, I (Signed) (Signed) [Jonathan Knowles. 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 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: — If th 9 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 14 miles a day has got two good lungs. Doctors have no business to make such blunders and scare patients out of all courage and hope. Sut there ! Ignorance is ignorance, no matter where you run across it. What ailed Mr Knowles was indigestion and dyspepsia— nothing else. The cough and loss 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 E«me 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 clear and sweet. Those forty sensible believed in that. Mr J. Knowles is a very respectable hard-working 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 tbe district of Bamsey. The case is well known to all the people round about where Knowles lives. Mrs Knowles, in speaking of her husband's long illness, staled 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.