The patients who come to our clinic do wonderful things, especially the school children. We can give each one of them, as a rule, only about five minutes of our time, and yet they are able to carry out their instructions at home, and to get results. This is a great tribute to their patience and intelligence. Molt of the children and adults arc helped by palming,

and remarkable cures have been obtained by this means alone. A little lad had been so injured In an automobile accident that he had only light perception in his left eye. It was some time before I could get him to palm regularly, but as soon as he became willing to do BO many times a day, his sight began to Improve rapidly, and he Is now completely cured.

There are some patients, however, who cannot or will not palm. One of these was a little colored girl, with corkscrew curls, looking for all the world like Topsy of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." She had been sent to the clinic because she could not see the writing on the blackboard, and the school nurse told me later that she was unruly, and a great trial to her teacher. She was something of a trial to me, too, at first, for I could not get her to palm for a moment, and did not know what to do with her. Then I discovered that she had an excellent memory when she chose to use it, and I resolved to treat her with its aid. I was able to improve her sight considerably.

Soon her teacher noticed such a notable change in her deportment, that on the next clinic day the school nurse came with her, to gee what had been done for the child. Then I asked the girl to remember, with closed eyes, a letter on the test card as gray instead of black. This effort produced such a strain that she could not stand still a minute, and when she opened her eyes there was no improvement in her vision. Then I asked her to remember the blue beads she had around her neck. She did so for a few minutes with eyes closed, standing perfectly still all the time, and when she opened her eyes she read another line of letters on the test card. Again she closed her eyes and remembered the blue beads perfectly. In a short time, by alternating the perfect memory of the blue beads, with her eyes closed and open, her vision soon improved to 10/10.

The nurse was impressed by this demonstration, which proved to her that perfect memory improves the sight and relieves nervousness. She returned another day and brought a child that she herself was unable to benefit. Sometime later she informed me that Topsy was cured, and busy every day at recess teaching the girls of her classroom how to rest their eyes, and testing their eyes with a test card I had given her. The janitor of the school hid it away every day for her, until she was ready to play the game of curing eyes. With Topsy's help the janitor now gets along well without his glasses. I wish we had more like Topsy.

George, Gladys and Charlie are three children who came for treatment at about the same time. They were of the same age, nine years, and all were suffering from headaches and had about the same degree of defective sight. They entered a very interesting three-cornered contest, in which each one tried to beat the others at getting cured. George and Gladys were colored and Charlie was a white boy of a most pronounced blonde type, with fair curls and blue eyes.

George was the first of the trio to visit US. He had been sent from his school to get glasses because of his headaches, and it was easy to see from his half-shut eyes and the expression of his face that he was in continual misery. My first impulse was to try to make him smile, but my efforts in that direction did not meet with much success.

"Won't you let me help you?" I asked.

"Maybe you can and maybe you can't," was his discouraging reply.

"But you are going to let me try, aren't you?" I persisted, stroking his wooly head.

He refused to unbend, but did consent to let me test his vision which I found to be 20/70 with both eyes, I showed him how to palm and rest his eyes. He continued to come to the clinic, but for three weeks I never saw him smile, and he complained constantly of the pain in his head.

Then there was Gladys, accompanied by her mother who gave me a history of her case very similar to that of George. Her vision was 20/200 and In a very short time I improved it to 20/40. At her next visit it became temporarily normal, and this fact made a great impression upon George. I saw him roll his black eyes and watch Gladys while I was treating her, and later, when he thought I was not looking, I saw him walk over to her and heard him say:

"You ain't going to get ahead of me. I came before you. I wanna get cured first. See?"

I separated the two children quickly, for I foresaw trouble; but all the time I was grateful to Gladys for having, however unintentionally, stirred George up.

Next week Charlie came. He looked very sad, and his mother who came with him was sad also. His headaches were worse than those of the other children and were actually preventing him from making progress in school. Promotion time was near, and both mother and child were anxious for fear the latter would be left behind. They hoped that by the aid of glasses this misfortune would be averted. Of course I explained to the mother that we never gave glasses at this clinic, but cured people so they did not need them. I tested Charlie's sight, and found it to be 20/100. I told him to close his eyes and remember a letter perfectly black, just as he saw it on the test card. He shook his head in dismay and said:

"I can't remember anything, the pain is so bad."

"Close your eyes for part of a minute," I said, "open them just a second and look at the letter I am pointing at, then quickly close them again. Do this for a few minutes, and see what happens."

What happened was that in a few minutes Charlie began to smile and said:

"The pain is gone." Alternately opening and closing the eyes helped him to relax and relieved the terrible eyestrain which caused his trouble.

I showed him how to palm, and left him for a while. When I came back his sight had improved to 20/70. I waa very happy about this, and so was Charlie's mother, who was pleased to learn that he did not have to wear glasses. Charlie continued to come regularly and became an unusual patient. One day he told me that he had been out sleigh-riding with the boys, and that the sun had been shining so brightly upon the snow that he couldn't open his eyes, and his head ached so that he had to go home and go to bed.

"Why didn't you palm for a while and remember one of those letters on the card?" I asked.

"That's right," he said, "I wonder why I didn't think of it."

The next time he came there had been another snowstorm, and he could hardly wait to tell me what had happened.

"I went sleigh-riding some more with the boys," he said, as soon as he could get my ear, "and the pain came back while I was having fun. But this time I didn't go home and go to bed. I remembered what you said, covered my eyes with the palms of my hands right in the street, and in a little while the pain all went away. I could look right at the snow with the sun shining on it, and I didn't mind it a bit."

From the start, the two colored children were greatly interested in Charlie, and thinking that a little more of the competition that had proved so effective in George's case would do no harm, I said, "See who beats." But they needed no urging on my part. Every clinic day, an hour before the appointed time, the black and white trio was at the hospital door. If a crowd was present the children forced their way through without much ceremony, and then started on a dead run for the eye room. There they practiced diligently until Dr. Bates and I arrived, and I fear they also squabbled considerably. There was no lack of smiles now, and as for George, he wore a grin on his face all the time.

Charlie was the first to be cured. In just a month from the time of his first visit his vision had improved to 20/10. Usually patients do not come back after they are cured, but this boy kept on with the practice at home and returned to show me, and incidentally his two rivals, what progress he had made. We had a visiting physician at the clinic that day, and I rather suspected Charlie of trying to show off, when he walked to the very end of the room, a distance of thirty feet from the card. To my astonishment and the great annoyance of George and Gladys, he read all the letters on the bottom line correctly. The colored children made haste to suggest that he had probably memorized the letters; so I hung up a card with pot hooks on it, such as we use for the illiterate patients, and asked him to tell me the direction in which those of the bottom line were turned. He did not make & single mistake. There seemed no room for doubt that his vision had actually improved to 30/10, three times the accepted standard of normal vision. Not more than one other patient at the clinic has ever been able to read the card at this distance. Charlie returned several times after this, not from the best of motives, I fear, and I took great pleasure in exhibiting his powers to the nurses and to visitors.

George and Gladys were cured very soon after Charlie, both of them becoming able to read 20/10. I was sorry that they could not have done as well as Charlie, but since their vision is now twice what is ordinarily considered normal, I think they ought to be satisfied. It is about two years since George, my pickaninny boy, was pronounced cured, but he comes to see me now and then, just the same. About six months after he obtained normal sight, I noticed him standing In a far corner of the room apparently trying to hide. When I approached him finally and asked him if he were suffering again with his eyes, he answered:

"No ma'am, my eyes are all right, but I want to come and see you."

I said, "Oh, you just want me to love you a little bit, don't you?"

George looked very shy and rolled his big eyes as only a darky can, edging up to me until his kinky head rested on my arm, -- just a little pickaninny boy hungry for love.