The San Francisco call., 1910-08-07
By Jessie Niles Burness

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N ye olden time the treatment Of
the various physical ails with which
mankind is beset was largely guess
work. and the result IN most cases.
as Mark Twain says in "A Majestic Lit
erary Fossil" was that "the man dy'd."
Then. too. many OF the remedies en-
-ployed were Of a sort to make the pa
tient perfectly resigned to his fate. We
DO better now. We know that the old
time poultice. employed in Ills Of every
nature by our grandmothers and held
IN high esteem by the mothers OF some
OF US yet very much alive. furnished in
fact ideal conditions for the culture and
spread Of the germs they were supposed
TO put TO rout From such beginnings
has developed in about three genera
tons modern surgery. with its safe,
sane, sure, clean procedure, so that IL
you pick UP almost any medical period
ical-and there are ecores-you will
find case after case reported wherein
the patient made an uneventful recov-
cry" from some condition considered
hopeless in our grandmothers' genera
ton.
The minds and souls Of us are subject
70 maladies, too. designated by society
as crime or sin, and an incident sug-
gested TO me that perhaps treatment
FOR these Ills had made move forward
corresponding to that made in medf-
cine. I investigated and I found that
right here at home in blessed old San
Francisco there has developed and ex-
lists and works and prospers a class Of
skilled and able soul surgeons, whose
work makes the Joy bells IN ones mind
ring q chime like Christmas morning.
II ie difficult TO get them to talk about
their work. II was a kind of gumshoe
proposition TO get at some of them in
their workshops, and IL they found
they had gone into a case fully-symp-
toms, treatment and cure-they fnva-
riably wound UP with But ] must ask
you to treat that as confidential It
would hamper me in my work II II be-
came known" That just about broke
my heart. because they are all stories
OF kind that make you feel glad to
be alive and working In the same good
old world where such things can hap
pen. II seems to me IL they would pub
lish a weekly giving the histories Of
these cases and recoveries 1T would
work wonders for the general mental
health Of US. In any case, this doing
good by stealth is joyous contrast to
the stealthy evil, a knowledge OF which
one can scarcely avoid these days.
I visited seven practitioners under
this new method at as many widely
different clinics. Always the operator
VIII talk freely and at as great length
as you wish about the principles in
volved and the remedies. and will freely
quote case after case-in detail If IT
be necessary to illustrate the point
and then almost invariably comes the
request for secrecy. Mr.. Hatch, in
charge at the Juvenile court. explained
when / pleaded for permission to use
some Of the stories, that the reasons
are these: The average youngster held
Tor delinquency is keen as steel and
would instantly recognize a story, with
one Of two results: He would be hurt
and their influence over him weakened,
or he would feel proud Of the notoriety
and grow headstrong and harder to
manage What we have to do is to
make the boy Cor the girl) feel that
we love him, no matter how much we
must and do, hate the thing he has
done. once we can accomplish that,
ana he realizes that everything we ask
Of him is only to help him, he turns. in
and tries to help us. 1t isn't always
easv to do that, and sometimes it takes
q long while. but that is the first step.
Here's a case, just to show you the
principle and how it works out, and
you NAV use this one If you want to.
"A boy was brought in here, only