MIRACULOUS CURE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22540, 3 October 1936, Page 2 (Supplement)

MIRACULOUS CURE

HOPELESS INVALID CRIPPLED GIRL NOW WELL GREAT WORK FOR SICK PETS A young woman recently turned the key in the lock of an Oxford shop and declared open the latest clinic administered by tho People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. A number of Oxfordshire people wero invited to the simple ceremony, but few of them realised that associated .with it is what amounts to a modern miracle. The girl who performed the ceremony is Rose Drake, the daughter of an Oxfordshire farm labourer. Six years ago she became paralysed, and for years she was regarded as an incurable invalid. Specialists and doctors gave her case up as hopeless. Then she road a magazine which described tho activities of an organisation of children devoted to collecting tinfoil to provide funds for the care of sick animals belonging to people too poor to pay for veterinary help. " Realising I was out of the world." Miss Drake told an interviewer, "I decided to do what little 1 could to help poor, stricken animals. I was helpless, and unable to move any part of my body except my hands. Day after day I lay staring at the ceiling and listening to friends' stories of the outside world. Children Help "At 21 I had resigned myself to a life of uselessness —until I read about the sufferings of tho pets of the poor." The rest of the story was told by an official of the P.D.S.A. " Miss Drake," he said, " wrote letter after letter asking Oxfordshire school teachers to help her to raise money for our cause. Tho teachers rallied round her and urged scholars to help. In the meantime, Miss Drake had been cared for in London hospitals, but the doctors could do nothing for her. " Now she had a new interest in life. For the first time she felt she was doing something useful in the world. Eighteen months ago she conceived the idea of raising £SOO to start a dispensary in Oxford. She wrote pathetic, begging letters to gentry of the district, and slowly her fund increased. " Buf^—this is where tho miracle 9ccurred —as her work went on she increased in strength, until, 18 months ago, to the amazement of doctors and specialists, she crawled from her sickbed with the aid of crutches and began to move about her bedroom. " Specialists were dumbfounded to see the girl who, it was thought, would never walk again actually walking. One attributed her gradual recovery to ' intense mental reaction on her physical condition.' Finding an interest in life, M iss Drake, it seemed, put forth a superhuman effort, which combated her nervous and physical illness. " With increasing strength, Miss Drake went on from success to success. At last she got her £SOO. A woman who declined to give hor name gave the last £IOO toward the £SOO required. " Then for weeks the plucky girl went from shop to shop begging'equipment for her dispensary. From chemists she obtained bandages, grocers provided dog food, and so on. No wonder that Miss Drake looked upon the opening ceremony as tho crowning stage of her achievement."