Mind over Matter

"Say--what is dead cats good for, Huck?"

"Good for? Cure warts with."

"No! Is that so? I know something that's better . . . spunk-water. . . . You got to go all by yourself, to the middle of the woods, where you know there's a spunk-water stump, and just as it's midnight you . . . jam your hand in and say:

Barleycorn, barleycorn, injun-meal shorts,

Spunk-water, spunk-water, swaller these warts!

". . . If you speak the charm's busted."

Last week Tom Sawyer's amiable hocus-pocus got a nod of approval from a scientific quarter. Said Dr. Hermann Vollmer of New York in the current Psychosomatic Medicine: suggestion is "at least as effective" a cure for warts as X ray or surgery. He documented his case with the findings of French, German and Swiss dermatologists, outlined his own experiments with over 100 children.

His usual method: trace an outline of the child's hand, draw in life-size warts with a red or blue pencil. The child is told to look for "a very faint tingling in [his] warts. . . . That is a sign that they will soon disappear." The child takes the chart home, daily compares the real warts with those on the sketch, notes their shrinkage. Treatment is not confined to the hands. For the nine-year-old daughter of a skeptical dermatologist, Dr. Vollmer was able to charm away a faceful of warts in six weeks.*

Explanation: a wart is a virus growth which has a tendency over a period of months to heal itself. By suggestion, it is possible to stimulate circulation of the blood; the increased blood flow in the warty area accelerates spontaneous healing.

* Something never done for Oliver Cromwell, who said to Painter Peter Lely in 1650: "I desire you will use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me ... warts and everything."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.