The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1898-07-06
GOLD-FILLED SKIN.
st. Joe Man Absorbed It Standing in
Yukon River.

Yukon River.
st. Joseph. Mo. July -Superintend-
ent Woodson of state lunatic asylum
No. here, recently received into the
institution for treatment a patient
whose case is without precedent in
American annals.
Abe" Boyle, the patient, went to
Alaska in the summer of 1886 and sue
ceeded in reaching Circle City in Sep
TENDER of that year. When the news
OF the big strike at Dawson City
reached the camp he was one of the first
to set out for the Klondike diggings.
He spent the winter months in under
ground mining, the output of which
was to be washed when ice broke on the
Yukon in the spring.
He was moderately successful, but his
claim was one of the few from which
the nuggets and coarse gold had, to a
considerable extent, been carried lower
down the creek, while the washing from
above left the gravel heavily impreg-
mated with what is known as flour
gold" which will escape over the quick
silver plates of a stamp mill in spite Of
all efforts to capture it.
Boyle, during the summer of 1897,
when the first great bonanza strikes
were reported from the KlOndike pla-
GERS, was much of the time Immersed to
the waist in the waters of the Yukon.
The ice that comes down from above is
rich with gold absorbed from the sands
of the shallow streams. The cakes get
aground on a bar. and, as they melt,
deposit their treasure. 1t is in this way
that placerS are sometimes formed
The alert miner then washes the sand
from the bar and obtains his reward.
Boyle washed the gravel from his own
claim on one of these bars, hoping to
reap double harvest. Being in the
water constantly, his body seems to
have accomplished what no invention of
man has yet done, for through the pores
OF the skin there was absorbed an in
credible quantity of flour gold" He
was seized with what he thought was
rheumatism, and kept on with his work
until his limbs became unmana sea BILE.
1t was as if Justification, if not putre-
faction, had set in. His condition grad
ualy spread upward, and he lost his
tim of dementia
There being no physician in the camp
capable of handling the case, he was
sent to the states in charge of a friend
who kept him for several months at his
old home in Lander. Wyoming. His
condition did not improve, even under
a course of treatment at the Saratoga
(WyO.) hot springs, and he was finally
taken to Larinie, WyO.
There DR.. William H. Harris an old
army surgeon, made a careful examina-
ton OF Boyle, and thought he had To-
Gated the source of his trouble. He
resolved upon an experiment to test the
correctness of his theory Boyle was
given temporary lodgings in a Turkish
bathhOuSe, and was submitted to a
treatment in which the medicine adj
ministered consisted largely of mercury
which, as is well known, will carry from
the human body every alien and nois--I
onous matter.
When he had been Their about a week
being dosed constantly with mercury
Boyle was given a thorough Turkish |
bath, being kept in the sweating room
as long as it was considered safe for
him to remain there. His chair in the
sweating room was placed in a shallow
basin of zinc, so that the perspiration
that poured down from his body would |
all be retained He was afterward
rushed through the remaining feature !
of the bath and put to bed. When he !
awoke from a dreamless sleep he was /
found to have entirely recovered from /
the hitherto Unaccountable stiffness of !
his limbs, his flesh being soft and pill !
able as an infants. This was the great |
step toward the demonstration of DR. |
Harris theory, notwithstanding BoyIe's |
mind was still affected.
The next thing done was to examine |
the contents of the zinc basin in the |
sweating room. An assay of it's con- |
tents showed that the mercury admin |
iStered in the form of pills had passed |
off through the open pores of the skin, |
carrying with it the flour gold with /
which BOyd's body had been saturated |
An assay by Superintendent M. A |
Grant of the Keystone mine showed |
that the value of the flour colo drawn !
from BOyd's body by means of the mer- !
curry approximated 1910.
1t was evident that the treatment had |
been -eminently successful, so far as !
Boyle's malady was purely physical. |
Its effects upon the mind were some |
thing with which physicians did not |
choose to experiment, and so he was |
sent to asylum No. 2, in this city. He |
is now apparently in the best of health. |
physically. and superintendent Wood |
short time to restore his reason and !
make him a sound man.