SUICIDE BY IMAGINATION.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1055, 30 March 1882, Page 4

SUICIDE BY IMAGINATION.

On the evening of the day after Christmas a handsome and well-dressed young lady, living with her father well np towards the summit of Nob Hill, hastily entered Joy’s drug store, on the corner of Mason and Post-streets, and asked for some arsenic. She asked for two bits’ worth, saying she wanted it to kill some troublesome cats with. Noticing her unusual agitation, Mr Joy gave the lady a teaspoonful of precipitated chalk, a harmless powder resembling arsenic. The young lady left the store, and carefully hiding her purchase, returned home. Going to her room unobserved by any of the household, she prepared for death, for the arsenic was intended as a means of suicide. Certain letters were hastily looked over and arranged, a whispered prayer for forgiveness followed, and with a desperate determination the whole of the druggist’s package was swallowed. Theunhappyyoung woman lay down upon her bed in a delirium of excitement. Her brain was in a whirl, and her blood rushed and throbbed through every vein. She felt that death was approaching, and confident that the work of the drug was too far advanced to be counteracted she left her room, and gliding into the parlor announced to her father and a young gentleman there what she had done. The gentlemen were wild with consternation. While the father sup-’ ported the now sinking form of his daughter, the young gentleman raced iu desperate haste to Joy’s drug store. The druggist explained that no antidote was required; that the young lady had only taken a spoonful of chalk. “ But she is dying—unable to stand!” gasped the young man. “ That is the effect of imagination. Explain to her the true state of the case and she will recover.”' The young man hastened back with the joyful intelligence. The would-be suicide, resting iu the arms of her distracted father, was sinking rapidly. Her recovery, which was amazingly rapid, was hastened by her rage at the druggist. “ It is not the first time 1 have saved a life in that way,” Mr Joy said to a reporter. A woman came in here for morphine, and I gave her some sulphate ciiiebonia, which resembles it in appearance, but is a harmless stimulant. An hour afterwards the woman’s sister rushed in here, and accused me of aiding a suicide. “My sister has goue away in a rage to take the poison you gave her.” It afterwards appeared that the would-be-suicide went out on the hills, took the dose, and lay down to die. After waiting for some time, and recovering from the terrific excitement the act caused, she felt an unconquerable desire to leturn home and get a square meal, for the stuff 1 gave her is aratnous appetizer.” — iiAit p'ranciscc Call.