Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1896 — A Rheumatic’s Museum. [ARTICLE]

A Rheumatic’s Museum.

A Fifteenth ward man who has been a life-long sufferer from rheumatism bus n queer collection of alleged “cures” arranged In a neat cabinet. One shelf is devoted to a series of small, wrinkled objects, which look and feel like large pebbles. They are not pebbles, however, but potatoes which have become almost petrified through being carried a long time in the pocket of the rheumatic gentleman. Knob potato is marked with a small label bearing some such inscription as this: “Carried from November 12, 1878, to May 18, 1880. Very efficacious.” The collector claims that the potato cutried in the trousers pocket has proved to be the best of the many remedies he has ever tried. He carries one potato until the return of ids rheumatic twinges seem to testify to the decline of the tuber’s curative properties. Then he takes a new potato, and locks tho old one up in his cabinet. On the other shelvra of the cabinet are several shriveled horse chestnuts, a string of amber beads, a dried-up rabbit's foot, th<> right foot of “an Eastern Sho’ Crow,.” a number of iron finger rings, a few horseshoe nails, and several other odds and ends. “All these things seem to have given ire more or less relief," says the collector.