FAITH CURES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 3000, 19 December 1935, Page 21

FAITH CURES.

FOOTBALL PLAYERS.

"LEGITIMATE HOCUS-POCUS." BOTTLE DUMPS AT MATCHES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, November 20. Miraculous cures by which healers, saints and shrines build up reputations are paralleled by six almost instantaneous cures of hysterical paralysis reported by Dr. Abraham Myerson, of Boston State Hospital, in the "Journal" of the American Medical Association.

In curing these helpless persons, Dr. Myerson used either an . electric current to "recall" the helpless part into consciousness, or anaesthesia. W-.th both treatments went encouragement, instruction and what the doctor himself calls "legitimate hocus-pocus."

Two of the six patients were football players who had been injured on the field. One had received an injury to his spinal cord, which set up a numbness in the legs and weakness. The numbness later disappeared, but a state of fear set in, and the young man could not walk.

Having satisfied himself after numerous examinations that this was the case, the .physician explained the situation to the young man, and told hiin he would be able to walk out of the office that same day. A powerful electric current was given to the muscles of the front of the leg, and they, contracted violently.

The football pfayer was then told to try to help the electric current and contract the mijscles "with each stimulation. In a short time the doctor shut off the current. The patient, not knowing this, kept on moving his leg. Convinced that all was weU.,. he walked out without difficulty. Liquet and Football.

Graduate managers of the University of California, Stanford University and the University of Southern California received suggestions frdm the State Board of Equalisation .that they hold bottle-breaking contests after each football game.

Ehvood Squires, assistant-secretary of the Liquor Regulation Board, announced that information had reached his Department that more than 1000 discarded bottles were to be found in the Berkeley Stadium of the University of California after each' important football game. "The bottle records of the other two institutions equalled that of the California," Mr. Squires said.

"The point that interests the State is that the 1000 empty bottles, all with the State liquor excise stamps affixed, are taken from the California Stadium, and, according to our information, left at the Berkeley city dumps. Bootleggers are a golden opportunity to collect these unbroken bottles and reuse them, stamps and all, with a very considerable loss to the State," Mr. Squires declared.

So Mr. Squires wrote the graduate managers and asked them to send squads of college boys under the grandstands after each important football game to break up all the empty gin and whisky bottles! .

, , Miss Robinson Crusoe. It takes more than wild berries, California sunshine, goats' milk and fish to carve a successful Robinson Crusoe career—even on salubrious Santa Catalina Island, off the California Coast. Twenty-year-old Alice St. Helens, of Indianapolis, was quite ready to admit that in Los Angeles, for with her puppy Kurz and a half-tamed mountain goat the girl was found asleep in the hills near Avalon on the island by Constable Tinch Morocich. Refreshed by a good supper and the prospect of a night's sleep on a real bed, after three days on Santa Catalina's rocky shore, Miss St. Helens related this tale: She left her home in Indiana to seek a. film career. Like many others, the attractive brunette found that screen honours were not easy to obtain. Then she hit upon her Crusoe scheme. Fashioning a pair of trousers from her coat and rigging up an impromptu oven of sheet-tin and stones. Miss St. Helens settled down for five idyllic years. Three days after she settled, however, life proved not so idyllic. Her box of matches and solitary cake of soap were sorry substitutes for home life.