A Terrible Birth Mark.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1917, 18 October 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Terrible Birth Mark.

A $ost terrible case o£ human suffering and one which has steadily baffled medical science, is reported in Springfield, Erie County, Pa. William Furgeson, when seven years of age, was seized with severe pains in his right hand, and though he is now 46 years of age, he has been annually attacked, singularly enough at each time suffering more than at the proceeding. Convulsions and paroxysms now visit him at exactly the same period of the year, and always at the same hour in the evening. He is now sufferiag the most acute agony, and is visited by scores of physicians, who in every case have been completely baffled. By this peouliar freak of nature hia body becomes terribly contorted. Kespiration almost ceases and he becomes for the time being unconscious, and on awakening shows every evidence of having passed through a most terrible ordeal. On being restored he becomes perfectly well and is only troubled at intervals of a year, but with positive regularity", The case can only be accounted for by the fact that Furgeson's mother, shortly before his birth, saw the contortions and evidences of agony in a snake which had been thrown into the fire, and that he has beoome thus birth marked.