JACK KNOWLES' FORTY FRIENDS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 35, 29 December 1893, Page 31

JACK KNOWLES' FORTY FRIENDS.

A *riend in need is a friend indeed, says the old saw. Quita soFair weather friends are plentiful enough, goodness knows ; the kind that drop in on von, talk to you, bother you, and borrow things from you ; the kind that never bring back that five shillings, but ask for five more" just to make it ten," that breed of friends, I say, are as thick as flies over a sugar bowl. But the sort who stick by you when you are down on your luck, who put their shoulders against your cart wheels at a nasty spot in the road— why, you want to huot for them with spectacles and a lantern. Yef, after all, such friends do exist, and forty of them turned up, without any hunting, when mx Knowles needed them badly. How it happened he tells us in ths following statement. I, Jonathon Knowles, of Lotton Fen, near Ramsey Hunts, do ■olemnly and sincerely declare as follows :-I was always a strone healthy man up to April, 1889, when I began to feel ill. At first I felt dull, low-spirited and 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 bad a gnawing, sinking feeling at the pit of tbe stomach, and was constantly sick, vomiting up a green fluid. At times the heaving and straining was so great that blood came nr> My hands and fset were always cold, and clammy sweats used to break out all over me. I never fslt warm even when I sat before the are. Wext a hacking dry congh, with sevsre pains at my chest and lungs, began to trouble me and my breathing became short and hurried. I soon got so wenk that I bad 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 see me, be gave me medicines and cod liver oil, but held oat no hope of my getting better, and after attending me three months f^rS™?? iS? 6 t\° g°.tog °. to the h £ piUl - l * ot a raommendatioa from my master, Mr David corney, Wellington House, 8t Marys, and went to tbe Peterborough Infirmary. I bad to be taken in a trap to the railway ■station, such was my weak state. Tbe doctors at tbe Infirmary had me stripped and sounded my langs, and said one of my lungs was almost gone, and that I was in a consumption. They gays me medicine*, also cod liver oil, but nothing did me any Rood After being under their care and treatment for three months I was discharged as incurable. My wife and relations now lost 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 bad wasted away nntu 1 was only a shadow of my former self, you could even

see the sinews through my flesh. Iw M nothing but skin and boot having lost three stone in weight. I got op every day but had to tit in an arm-chair all day lon*. I could only move • few yards and that with the aid ol a stick. I o this half-dead, nalf-alive itate I continaed for nearly two years, and was looked upon as doomed. Daring the latter part my wife did not thiDk I should live from one week to another, and friends who came to see me osed to say, •• Poor Jack will never come out alms again." In December 1890, when I was at my worst a neighbour of mine, Mrs King, True Briton Inn, told me of a medicine called Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup and gave me half a bottle of it. I had no faith in anything doing me any goo l but I took it. Having; been >o long out of work I could not get money for more of the Syrup. So strongly were my friends convinced that the medicine would do me good that a subscription was then started and over 40 people subscribed to enable me to get a further supply. Mrs King got the Byrup from Mr J. Freeman, Chemist, Bamsey, and kept me supplied with it. After I bad taken three bottles of tbe Byrop I felt benefit. I kept on with the medicine aud gradually got stronger and stronger, and got back to my work. Of course it took m long time before I properly got op my strength. I can now do any kind of work, and feel so strong J? i. « . WRik l 4 mile " * dtT » fOl which l thlknk God • Bd Mother Beigel s Syrup. Everyone in the district is astonished at my recovery. I tell ihem all that Seigel's Syrup has brought me back to Me. 1 wish others to know of what has done bo much for me, and I give permission to tbe Proprietors of the medicine to make what use they think fit of this statement ; and I make this solemn f I" *i on 00M cientiously believing the same to be true. Bj virtue of the Statutory Declaration Act, 1835 (Will. IV., c. 62). Subscribed and declared at Peterboro', in ") the County of Northampton, this 29th day of January, 1892, before me, , a . JN (Signed) L. J. Deacon, ■ T ( B »8ned) A Commissioner to administer Oaths in JOHATHAW KIIOWXM the Supreme Court of Judicature in England. i .V. V , 0U , take . notice of courße thtt Mr Snowies 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 ther „ is no time nor room now to do that. Tbs points to remember are these :-If the doctors thought " Poor Jack 11 had consumption they were mistaken. The feet that he got well shows he had no consumption. A man who can now walk 14 miles » day has got two good lungs. Doctors have do busioess to make such blunders and scare patients out of all courage and hope. But thwe ! Igno ranos is ignorance, no matter where you run across it. What ailed Mr Koowleswas indigestion and dyspepsia— nothing else. The cough and loss of flesh were symtoms of that, not of the destruction of lung substance. Next, keep bearing io mind that all our common maladies signify that our machinery for digesting food is out of m. r. 18 *° when il dosen't i oo k the iame M wnen it dOfl1 bat is the secret of tbe succtss of Mother Seigel's Syrnp. It c eanses the cistern and the pipes, and then the water of life runs clear and sweet. Those 40 sensible friends believed in that. Mr J. Knowles is a very respectable hard-working man. He is a farm labourer and has a email allotment of land which he cultivates. The persons who subscribed to get him ths Syrup are principally farm labourers and farmers residing in the district of Bamsey. The case is well known to all the people round about where Knowlea Jives. Mrs Kuowles, in speaking of her husband's long Ulnese, stated that she never for one moment expected his recovery, bhe could see him gradually dwindling away, and herself and children could not take their meals for tears when they saw the dreadful condition Mr Koowles was in, for they expected losing him every week.