NOBODY WANTS THAT GOLD RING.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 50, 18 September 1891, Page 29

NOBODY WANTS THAT GOLD RING.

Fob nearly 100 years a certain family of working people living in Paris have ended their lives by suicide. From father to son, from mother to daughter, has descended a plain gold ring, and on the finger of every one of these suicides, as they lay in death, this ring has been found. Only last year the body of a young man who had killed him. elf was brought to the Morgue, and on his finger was the fatal golden circlet. He was the last of his race. Tbe ring was buried with the corpse, from which no one acquainted with its history will have the courage to remove it.

The mental ta'nt in this family came from soma remote ancestor, and was intensified by their recognition of it until it became a controllii.y; force ; and the ring was accepted as imposing upon its possessor tee obligation to commit suicide after the example of the person who last wore it. This form of mania usually originates in a disorder of the nervous system, which in its turn arises from anasmia,or poverty of the blood, one of the results of imperfect nutrition.

A recent letter from a gentleman living in Norfolk contains the following assertion : " I longed for death ; I was afraid of the night ; I was afraid to be alone, yet, 1 hated society. I was afraid that in some one of those hours of depression I should lift my hand against my own life, for I knew that many had done so from the same cause." Toe dark hours became a time of terror to him, so he says. He tossed and tumbled on hi* bed, wondering if morning would ever dawn again. In this case it was not an accusing conscience, as he had committed no offence ; the cause was purely a physical one — yet, all too common in England — indigeetion and dyspepsia, with the long chain of consequences dragging after it, nervous collapse among them.

He relates that bis skin and eyes had been more or less discoloured for years, often of a ghastly and repulsive yellow. This was due to the presence of bile ia the blood and tissues, where it had no business to be. But as the weak and torpid liver could not remove it, no other result was possible than the one our friend experienced. His head frequently ached as though fiends had turned it into a workshop, and pains chased one another through hiß body as though he had at least half the maladies catalogued in the popular books of diseiPf>.

Yet one thing, and one only, was responsible for all the mischief namely, the poison introduced into the blood from the decaying food in the stomach and intestines. The cold feet, the loss of appetite and ambition, the mental despondency, the sense of weariness and fatigue, the bad taste in the mouth, dry cough, giddiness, palpitation, chills, weakness, etc., are a brood of foul birds hatched in one nest, and the mother is alwajs indigestion and dyspepsia.

Time passed somehow, as it always does, whether we laugh or cry, and this man grew heartily tued of a life thuß burdened and spoiled. He longed to see the end of it, and no wonder. But the list page of his letter is pitched in a higher key. He says, " When I think of what I was, and what I am now, I can hardly realise the change. For the past six months I have been using a preparation known as Mother Seigel's Curative Hyrup, and it has actually revolutionised my whole system. One of my teuants recommendedit to me, and I tried it just to please him. Now I praise it for myself, and thank the men who make and advertise it. My troubles are over, and I frel (at 57) as light, elastic, and gay as a boy on his summer vacation. 1 tell my doctors they are beaten at their own trade by an old German nurse, and so far as I am concerned they can't deny it. I have no more horrible thoughts of self-destruction, for I find too much enjoyment ia living. My thanks are too deep for words." The author of this letter consents to the publication of so smch of it as is here printed, but declines to allow the use of his name, at least for the present, for reasons we are bound to respect. But the evident sincerity of his story will carry conviction to every candid mind.