THINGS SLOWLY LEARNED.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 48, 1 April 1898, Page 31

THINGS SLOWLY LEARNED.

There is a man in Scotland who used to write many readable and instructive things. He signed himself " A Country Parson," and a bright parson he is. One of his essays is entitled, " Things Slowly learned," a good line of thought for anybody. Well, here is one of the things slowly learned — that disease doesn't jump on a man like a wild cat out of a tree, but developes from seeds and conditions, just as roses and weeds do. We who write and print the essays of which these lines are one, have Baid this a hundred times ; but all the people don't seem to have thoroughly grasped the idea yet. For if Mr. Theodore Treasure alone had done so, he wouldn't have suffered ten years from attacks of rheumatic fever. In November, 1891, he says he had a fearful time with it. He tells us in a letter that he had dreadful pains all over his bady. and was so sore he couldn't bear anything to touch him. Even the bedclothes hurt him, like a feather against a sore eye. " I got little or no sleep," he says, " tossing all the night long, and trying to get ease by a shift of position. •' I had a foul taste in the mouth, and spat up a great quantity of slimy phlegm. My appetite left me, and the little food I forced down gave me great pain at the chest and sides. For Jice months I was confined to my room, most of the time unable to leave my bed, and what I suffered during that time I have no words to describe." Any one who has ever been through that sort of thing can easily beleive what Mr. Treasure says : for when every muscle and joint in a man's body is throbbing with inflammation, it is'nt any common collection of words that can set forth his feelings. It is agony and torment in the supreme degree. Yet we ought to know better than to have it. But we don't — not yet. " I was perfectly helpless," continues our friend. " and could scarcely move. In fact, the people had to move me from one side of the bed to the other. Month after month I was laid up and suffering in this way. I had a doctor attending me, but he wasn't able to do much to releive me. •'Finally, to cut the story short, I came to hear of Mother Seigel's Curative Syrup. I read about it in a book that was left at my house. The book said this medicine was good for rheumatism, and so my wife got me a bottle from Mr. Ford, the grocer, at Oakhill. After taking it for a week I felt great relief. Then I kept on taking it and not long afterwards I found it had cured me : it had completely driven the rheumatism out of my system. lam willing you should publish these facts, and you can refer any inquiries to me (Signed) Theodore Treasure, Waggon and Horses Inn, Doulting, Shepton Mallett, November 3rd, 1893." Now let's hark back a moment. To the thoughtful reader Mr. Treasure's story may look a trifle confused and mixed. That is, he describes the symptoms of rheumatism proper in connection with a lot of other symptoms which wouldn't seem at the first blush to have anything to do with rheumatism. But there's where Mr. Treasure is right and the reader wrong. His account shows that he was a victim of chronic indigestion, dyspepsia, and torpid liver — and that covers the whole ground. Rheumatism (and this is the xhnclji h arm (1 lesson') is merely a nasty symptom of a dyspeptic condition of the digestive, organs. At the outset it means too much eating and drinking. This results in the formation of a poisonous acid which fills the body and produces the local outbreak called rheumatism. Hence we cure it from within not from without. And this trite idea is also a new idea — do you see ?

Try to get this lesson by heart. You can prevent rheumatism by Scigel's Syrup; you can cure it by Seigel's Syrup. But it is more comfortable to prevent it. — [A.]