Page 1 Advertisements Column 5

Temuka Leader, Issue 1450, 5 January 1886, Page 1

A PECULIAR ATTACHMENT FOR SPIDERS. Dr F. H. Dacumer, one of the old«8t physicans in Patarson, N. J., died in St. Joseph's Hospital, in that city. His father was a prominent government officer in Bohemia, where the doctor was born nearly seventy-seven years ago. He was liberally educated in Saxony, studying mediciue at 'he universities of Bohn and Magdeburg. The doctor was licensed fa 1840, and served for Bix. years in tha Prussian army as surgeon of the Eighth Brigade and Seventeenth Regiment of Lancers. In 1848 he took part in the revolution, was arrested for high treason and sent to prison, where he ?pent four years in the dungeons of Rattadt, Ehrenbreitstein, and Julich. While in those prisons, often doomed to solitary confinement, his only companions were the spiders that festooned the walla of the dungeon. He conceived a Btrange attachment for these creatures, which he never forgot. On oue occasion, when the pria iners were allowed to take exercise in the yard, thei doctor and a companion crossed the " death line." The doctor was severely wounded in the thigh with a bayonet, while hi« comrade was shot dead by the sentinels. The survivor was taken to the Hospital, whence he subsequ ntly escaped and made his way to England. There he married an English girl, but the union proved an unhappy one, and he came to America in 1857, and has lived in Paterson ever since, enjoying a moderate practice and the general esteem of German-Americans, with whom ha almost exclusively associated. He owned a house in Ellison Street, renting part of it, and occupying two or three rooms himself, and living entirely alone. From his love for spiders he would allow no repairs to be made to the rooms, while honee-cleaning was out of the question. The dust of many years was allowed to accumulate undisturbed, and hie beloved spiders multiplied apace. If a parcel of drugs or an instrument left over night had a spider's web on it in the morning, the doctor would patiently sally out and buy articles to replace them, rather than disturb the spiders. His rooms are full of thousands of pre«cription« of all kiudi. —Washington Star.