Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1859 — Singular Condition of an Unfortunate Invalid. [ARTICLE]

Singular Condition of an Unfortunate Invalid.

One-half Ihs Body in a Torrid and the Other in a Frigid Zone. The forms of human suffering are as varied as tfiey are numerous, and though mankind has endured physical pain in every conceivable phase, we doubt if an exact parallel to the following can anywhere be found on record. In a neighboring village, but a few miles from this city, lives an old man of three score years, who for some time past has been blind. Very recently he was attacked by illness, which has since confined him to his bed. About a y'.'eek ago the lower part of his body began to grow (‘old, and though every means were employed to impart id his limbs an artificial heat, the chill gradually assended to the region of the stomach, where it stopped. Since that time, the upper portion of his body, including his arms, seems to be burning up with a raging fever, while the lower portion is as numb as cold can make it, and as chilling as an iceberg to the touch. All that one extremely has lost in warmth has been more than gained by the otherEvery effort to restore to the body an equilibrium ofheat has entirely failed, and though no change has taken place in the unfortunate man’s condition for some days past, all hope of his recovery has been abandoned. The most singular part of this story, which is well authenticated—is the fact that the sufferer, while he experiences no unnatural sensation from the abnormal condition oft he upper part of his body, believes the lower portion to be in a consuming fire! His constant cry to those around his bedside is, to do something to quench the flames that are crisping the flesh and seething the blood in his lower limbs. To a priest who was called in to shrive him he said there was no hope, that half his body was already in hell! And still he lives his heart and brain on fire, and his pulse beating high and warm, while through the lower part of his body, which is as cold ami dead as death can make it, he is suffering all the tortures of the damned.— Cinn. Enquirer. I can’t see how you can sit and eat, while your u ife is so sick:” ‘-Why, my dear tellw, it is not that 1 love my wile less, but that I love pancakes nyir»,"