Powers Of A Human Being

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 16, Issue 36, 22 December 1950, Page 5

Powers Of A Human Being

The recent quick cure for stammering reported from Britain to have been effective on a New Zealander could produce almost endless argument. Very little really is known about these more complicated powers of the human being. Medical experts have a fair knowledge of the various mechanisms involved, just as motor car experts have in regard to cars. Unlike motor cars, where one can see the driver, the human being has a driver, who is invisible and almost unknown. The result is that there is still a distressing lack of knowledge regarding such higher powers as speech, hearing, sight, and various mental processes suspected to be related to the proper functioning of the ductless glands. There is a tendency by some experts to dismiss the subject by calling mental anything that cannot be explained, including some forms of pain. Yet the chances are that all things have a physical cause, and the truth is that as yet we just do not know. At any rate there have been some remarkable cures as regards speech, sight, hearing and so on. Aeroplane trips have been known to restore hearing to people who have been deaf for years. A high-speed dive restored to Mrs Vera Hopkins, of St. Louis, U.S.A., her faculties of speech, hearing and sight. Miss Alice Murphy, 19 years of age, -of Brisbane, had her powers of speech miraculously restored thanks to the result of a car smash. Picking herself up from the wreckage, she astounded rescuers with her flow of language. Indeed, she was a little astounded herself. Nine-year-old George Paterson, of Glasgow, had lost the sight of one eye in an accident when he w;as two years old. His mother smacked him sharply when he was misbehaving and his sight was restored. Doctors had previously said that the bad eye could not be cured, but they pronounced the smack cure permanent.