A MIRACLE AT HERNE HILL.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XLVII, Issue XLVII, 11 April 1912, Page 7

A MIRACLE AT HERNE HILL.

BEDRIDDEN GIRL'S RECOVERY. What is described as a miracle is reported to have happened to a young woman, aged twenty-one, named Dorothy Kerin, who lives at Heine Hill. Though bedridden for five years, and latterly blind and deaf, she has suddenly recovered, and is now apparently well, having regained both sight and hearing. '.Miss Kerin has been gradually losing health for the last seven or eight years, and her case was regarded as incurable. On Saturday night her medical attendant is said to have given up hope, and it is thought the girl would not live more than a day or two at the most. For the previous two weeks she had been quite unconscious, but late on Saturday night, according to her own versiqn, which is corroborated by her mother and a neighbour, a remarkable thing happened. While her friends were gathered round the bedside expecting every minute death would take place, the girl suddenly got up from the bed and walked. Ever since she has been apparently well and has taken food. Mrs Newark, a neighbour, tells the following remarkable story : "Dorothy is twenty-two years of age, and many doctors have seen her. At 8 o'clock on Sunday night she was lying as if dead. Suddenly she extended her arms as if raising them to heaven, and then she lay back with a deep sigh. I went home and told my husband she was dying. I returned at 9.45. She was lying with her hands crossed on her breast, as if dead. She was not breathing. Her mother told me she had held a looking-glass before the girl's mouth, and found no signs of breathing. ' the girl put out her arms | again and turned as' if listening. She said, 'Yes, yes.' Then she fell back, turned her head, and closed her eyes. Next she opened her eyes, looked round, and knew us all. She said ,'I want to get up and walk.' We told her she could not. She said the angels had said to lier, 'Dorothy, your sufferings are over. Get up and walk.' The she added, 'I must get up.' •"1 then said, '.Let her get up; let her have her dressing-gown.' I said, 'Let her see what she can do,' and I quite thought she would fall down. Instead ; she threw oIT the bedclothes, got out of j bed, and walked across the room, hold-' ing her right hand in the air. 'I am following the light,' she said. "Walking into the kitchen she saw her father, and, with n cry of delight, rrahed forward and threw her arms round his neck." Mrs Newark added : "I have just left her (it was then 11.30 p.m.). We have had a mission in this pariah for ten days. It ended last Tuesday, and everyone has been hoping that God would show us that prayer was answered." Dr. Forbes Winslow, the well-known specialist on mental disorders, said the case, if genuine, gave no cause for wonderment to those medical men who had studied mental healing, for, in the view of psycho-therapeutists, there was nothing extraordinary in a woman walking flrhn had been paralysed for five or six years. His explanation was that Miss Kerin had an hallucination of hearing the words, "Thy sufferings are over. Rise up and walk," and t>f seeing the "great light." Such hallucinations acted as auto-suggestions. Regarded from this point of view, he said, the case was by no means unique. He knew of cures of blindness by this method. The opinion of several members of a whole band of medical men who called at her residence is that Miss Kerin has recovered—it may be only temporary — from .an abnormal attack of acute hysteria .by the unconscious assistance of mental determination and auto-hypno-tism.