THE STICK AND THE CRUST

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXII, Issue XXII, 3 June 1899, Page 755

THE STICK AND THE CRUST

A stick and a crust of bread. Like the hands of a clock these two articles told the time o’ day for nearly a year in a certain man’s life. Yet, unlike the hands of a clock, they were not visible at once. When he needed the stick he had no use for the crust; and when the crust was welcome he had no further occasion for the stick.

Albeit he was a young fellow of twenty-six, you would be wrong in supposing this stick to have been in the nature of a weapon for attack or defence. In that case the crust and the stick would have harmonised. As it was, they did not. For the stick was a support, not a club.

Now, when a man feels the pressure of eighty or ninety years he is apt to want a travelling companion of that sort; but one in the very heydey of youth, not suffering from any injury and not constitutionally feeble, or malformed, should commonly be able to walk without a stick. And so this young man had always done up to the time when he fell out with the crust and with all that the crust stood for or represented. His own account of the circumstances runs thus: —‘Up to October, 1893, I had been a strong, healthy, and active man. Then I commenced to feel weak and out of sorts. I was heavy, tired, and had no ambition or energy. What had come over me I could not imagine. I had a foul, nasty taste in the mouth and was constantly spitting up a thick, dirty phlegm. My appetite left me, and what little I ate lay on my stomach like lead, causing me great pain about the chest. A short, distressing cough settled upon me and troubled me day and night. ‘At night my sleep was disturbed and broken with night sweats and frightful dreams. I had great pain at the left side around the heart, and my breathing was hurried and short. Next I began to spit blood and was greatly alarmed at it. I wasted away rapidly, losing over a stone weight in a month, and became so weak that I was unable to rise to my feet without assistance.

‘Although only a young man of twenty-six, I was obliged to hobble about with a stick, and could walk but a short distance even at that. Worried and anxious I attended the York County Hospital, where the doctors sounded me and said I was in a consumption.’ Here we have another of the serious and often fatal mistakes that are made in cases like this. Misled by symptoms which in some respects resemble those of consumption, medical men hastily decide that the lungs are affected, treat the patient perfunctorily for the hopeless disease he is not afflicted with, and leave the result to chance. Hence he often dies of dyspepsia and its complications—his true disease—which, unlike consumption, is easily curable by the remedy our friend finally employed. ‘They gave me cod-liver oil,’ he continued, ‘and medicines, but I got no better. Indeed, I was so low-spirited and miserable I didn’t eare what became of me. As time passed I grew weaker and weaker. ‘After I had endured ten months of this, Mr R. W. Dickenson, the chemist in Walmgate, advised me to try Mother Seigel’s Syrup. After taking it a few days I felt much better, my appetite reviving and my food giving me no pain. I continued to take this medicine only, and soon the cough and breathing trouble left me and I began to gain strength and flesh. When I had taken three bottles I was as strong as ever, and could eat and enjoy even a dry crust. I have since had good health. You are at liberty to publish this letter and refer all inquirers to me. (Signed) Isaiah Lewis, 124, Walmgate, York, April Bth, 1894.’

If the reader wonders how a man could suffer so much, become so emaciated and weak, and be pushed so near the grave’s edge through what is sometimes flippantly called ‘mere indigestion,’ he has yet to learn that the digestion is the arbiter of life and death. The ‘crust’ (food), enjoyed mid digested, means life and strength. Rejected it means the ‘|stiek,’ to supplement swift-coming weakness; and then the prone position, when help is vain. Mother Seigel's Syrup enabled Mr Lewis to substitute the crust for the stick. It cured his dyspepsia.