A LONG NERVOUS STORM.
If you ever watched a dentist draw a nerve out of a tooth, you will remember how much it looked like a little snip of wet, white cotton thread. How can so contemptible a thing inflict such a mountain of agony? And why does it do it? “j-isease,” you say. Ah, surely. A simple and obvious answer; yet in what way does the true nerve-fibre, wrapped up and coated as it is, like the wires in a sub-marine cable, get to be diseased? Yet, cjmehow, these soft strings do become fearfully out of order, or our friend Miss Hunt, alluding to the neuralgia from which she once suffered, would not say, “ Sometimes I was almost mad with the pain.” And that is but one of the many forms of torture imposed on us by the nerves; yet without these nerves we should be but lumps of clay—lacking feeling and power of motion. How can we cure these dreadful nerve-pains? The drug-shops abound in so-called remedies for them, vet they are only as breath to cool the air of a torrid summer day. The real cause and cure are among Nature’s deeper secrets. Can we find them? “ Nearly all my li.e,” says Miss Hunt, “ 1 have suffered from indigestion of an aggravated kind. I felt low, weary, and weak, having little or no energy. My appetite was variable. At one time I would eat voraciously, and at- other times I could not touch a morsel of food. “After eating I had great distress at the chest and around the sides. I suffered martyrdom from the horrid pain in my stomach and limbs. As the years passed by my nerves became totally unstrung, and 1 endured untold misery from neuralgia. My lips and half my face were almost dead from this distressing malady.” [The lady will pardon the writer. In the sense of being objects of use and pleasure, they were in truth
practically dead; but in another tense they were horribly alive, as the sky is when it is pierced and rent with the lances of the lightning.]
“ I consulted,” she adds, "doctor after doctor, but in spite of all their medicines and applications I found little or no relief. Sometimes I was almost mad with the pain.”
[Not a doubt of it. Under such circumstances the body is a poisonhouse of keen suffering, and people have net infrequently taken their own lives, to escape from it. Only acute rheumatism or gout can be compared with neuralgia, and (please observe) the whole three are forms of the same thing—results Of the same cause. Hence sutterers from the former two ailments will be wise also to read this essay to its end.] “In June, 1886,” continues the letter, “ a book was left at my house in which I read of many persons who hao been cured oy a medicine called Mother Seigcl's Syrup. I bought a supply from a chemist in New North Road, and soon my indigestion got better, the pain in my head and limbs was easier, and I felt stronger than I had done for years.
“I think it only right that others should know of what, has done so much for me. You have, therefore, my permission to make this statement public if you like. (Signed) (Miss) S. Hunt. 57. Dale Yiew Koad, Stamford Hill. London, June 30th, 1896.”
Our correspondent is a schoolmistress. and. as her letter shows, a woman of fine intelligence. At the outset she names the radical, and the only real disease she had—namely, indigestion. or as we indifferently call it, dyspepsia. Starved from want of nourishment, and poisonei by the products of food constantly decomposing in the stomach, her nervous system was hrown into wiki disorder, and protested and cried out with the i.trilling voice of pain. No application. no emollients are effective to remedy symptoms springing from a cause so profound and firmly seated. Would we stop the writhing of the trees during a gale? Ah, they cannot be bound or held. We must employ, if we possess it, a power which can say unto the wind, “ Peace, be still.” Something akin to this Mother Seigel’s Syrup did when it abolished the digestive trouble. It enabled the stomach to feed the feeble body, and with returning strength the nervous stor-" subsided into the calm and harmony of Health.
PARTLY
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZGRAP19000721.2.19
Bibliographic details
New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue III, 21 July 1900, Page 107
Word Count
731A LONG NERVOUS STORM. New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue III, 21 July 1900, Page 107
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Acknowledgements
This material was digitised in partnership with Auckland Libraries. You can find high resolution images on Kura Heritage Collections Online.