Page 3 Advertisements Column 1

Dunstan Times, Issue 1168, 18 July 1884, Page 3

PAWNING A PAIR OF TROUSERS FOR MEDICINE. J ames Francis 1 homas lives in Ponlnew-. ynydd, near Pontypool, Aiommouthshire. He is now twenty-three yenra of age, living with his mother, a widow. Some eleven years ago, then a mere boy, he went to work in the coal pit as a miner, in order to assist his mother in rearing her family of litide children. Soon, however, the little fellow i>roke down in health ; but the necessities of the family seemed to require it, and he continued to toil in the mines, suffer* ing all the time from the effects of indigestion, an agonising symptom being nstbma, in such a troublesome form that the boy was unable to lie in bed. Working thro v.'h ths day, and resting as best ha com t ,n* a arm-chair during the night, naturally undermined his consiution. Year by year his health grew worse and worse, until at last rheumatism came wrjh all its dreadful agony. One joint after another became swollen and inflamed, so that he was obliged to stop work. In this sad plight the now young man was confined to the house for two long years, suffering aT that mortal could endure One physician after another was called upon to treat his complaint., but with no beneti t for the poor fellow continued to grow worse and worse. Hoping to find some means of relief, a consultation of doctors was held, when it was decide! that an organic disease of the heart existed in an incurable form, aud that medical aid could not afford relief. He was given up to die. These years of expensive medical treatment had exhausted the little savings of the mother, and they had no money to buy even the necessaries of life. But a fond mother never gives np in despair. There was on spark of hope left. Someone had told her of a remedy that cured so many cases—oven when as hopeless as this one seemed to be and the mother’s love went out for her dear b >v. But how to get tne medicine was the question. Their money was emirely gone The boy had a new p.iir of trousers tnat he had been to ill to wea r , and the mother reasoned within herself, ‘‘if the boy is to die he will not need th.m, so I may as well pledge them for medicine with an effort to save his life.” Strange as it may appear, the bottles of medicine procured at the chemist’s -hon in Poutypool with the money obtained from the pawnbroker effected a cure in tnis hopeless case, which bad been pronounced ns incnrable. i But it is only just to say that if the chemist i hail known of the wants of the family the 1 medicine could have been obtained without a visit to the pawnbroker. It is now nearly two years sine" this took place, and young James Francis Thomas has been working in