HEALING HIMSELF

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 451, 3 January 1934, Page 6

HEALING HIMSELF

A MODERN MIRACLE AUTHOR OVERCOMING DISABILITY A remarkable account of a modern miracle—a famous novelist's conquest over life-long paralysis through writing a story on healing—was given recently to the Sunday Chronicle. The writer, Mr. J. D. Beresford, has been lame all his life, but now, at 60, he claims that he has aclr-ved what specialists declare to be impossible. He is slowly healing himself in a manner similar to that of a character in his latest book, and is overcoming the disability that has crippled him from the age of three. This is how Mr. Beresford told the story of his victory: "When I was three years of age, I caught a chill at Brighton. It was just an ordinary chill for which the remedy was to be tucked up in bed. The next morning, however, w'ren I got out of bed, I fell to the floor. My nurse, who was watching me, thought I was shamming. But I found

that I could not stand. The best doctors in London were called in, but the case was pronounced to be hopeless. My left leg was stricken with infantile paralysis and I have been lame all my life. "For five years now I have believed that the influence of a man's mind over his body is far greater than we ever dream. And one day, just five months ago, I sat down to write a novel which carried out this idea as its central theme." The heroine of this story, Mr. Beresford explained, is Rosemary Henderson, but into her mouth and mind he has put his own thoughts and his own philosophy. Rosemary is paralysed in exactly the same way as her creator, and the story deals with how she regained the full use of her leg, which had been shrivelled by the dread disease since childhood. "Every ounce of my being went into the creation of Rosemary," said Mr. Beresford. "Day and night I thought about her. Her spirit was also mine while she was being healed. And then the miracle that came to her began to come to me. My leg, which has been useless, and without feeling for 57 years, began to acquire new life. "I wrote the book because I believe that the age of miracles is not over, and that if sufferers have faith, miracles are possible. I do not mind the fact that I shall not be completely healed. I have got so used to it now. I am too old to change*the habit of being lame."