Brighouse & Rastrick Gazette. — 1891-04-11 (Brighouse, West Yorkshire, England)

NOBODY WANTS THA.T GOLD RING.  For nearly 160 years a certain family of \orkfn 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 himself was brought to the Morgue, and on his finger was the fatal golden circlet. He was the last of his race. The ring was buried with the corpse, from which no one acquainted with its history will have the courage to remove it. The mental taint in this family came from some remote ancestor, and was intensified by their recognition of it until it became a controlling foree : and the ring was accepted as imposing upon its possessor the 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 anannia, 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, I hated society. I was afraid that in some one of those hours of deep glooim and depression I should lift my hand against my own life, for I knew that ?nany had done so Train the same cause." The dark hours became a time of terror to him, so he says. He tossed and tumbled on his 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— indigestion and dyspepsia, with the lung chain of consequences dragging after it, nervous collapse atneng them. He relates that his 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 in the bloc 1 and tissues, waere 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 pain chased one another through his body as though he had at least half the maladies .catalogued in the popular books on disease. 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 ot foul birds hatched in one nest, and the mother is always in ligestion and dyspepsia, Time passe I soine'liy.v, as it always does, weather we laugh or cry, an i this man grew heartily tired of a life thus burdened and spoiled. He longed to see the end of it, and no wonder. But the last 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 Saigel's Curative Syrup, and it has actually revolutionised my whole system. One of my tenants recommended it to me, and I tried it just to please him. Now I praise it for myself, an I tuank the men who make ant advertise it. My troubles are over, an I I feel (at 57) as light, elastic, and gay as a boy on his summer vacation. I tell my doctors they are beaten at their own trade uy an old Clamant nurse, and HO far as lam concerned tney can't deny it. I have no more horrible thoughts of self-destruction, for I had too much enjoyment in living. My thanks are too deep for words." The autnor of this letter consents to the publication of so much 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 o every candid mind.