Paragould soliphone., 1921-07-01
WORK FAITH CURE ON SPEECHLESS SOLDIER
By FREDERIC J. HAsKIN

w NuSulu3 lOI- uttls tie yUuHS soldier, who recently regained his
 power of speech as the result Of q flight in an airplane, was cured solely by the conviction that he
 would be cured, is the assertion of surgeons of the Public Health Ser
 vice who are acquainted with the lease.
 This patient found himself wholly
 unable to speak after an automo- bile accident in which he was not otherwise injured The doctors pre- scribed as a cure a flight in an air plane to a great elevation, and the man Came down able to speak once more.
 But, contrary to the popular be- lief, this trip to the clouds, with it's accompanying thrills for one unaccustomed to sky travel, was not ill itself responsible for reliev- ing the unresponsiye throat of the young man.
 One immediately thinks that the
 rarified atmosphere to be found al higher attitudes accounts for the voice recovery; that the throat trou- ble, possibly originally due to brOn-
 chial congestion, ceased to prevent the processes of speech, once the clearer air was breathed. The thought is perhaps even more gen. eral that the flight, with it's ex- elements. it's dips and spins, in reality scared the man into speech Newspaper and magazine cartoons | following in the wake of the first announcement of voice recovery by flight. have been based largely on this belief that the voice suddenly came under control when it's owner sought desperately to artioulate the word ''Help!"
 The young man was not scared" into talking, according to the doc tors who suggested the flight as a remedy. The young mans inability to speak was not due to ordinary throat trouble, but was the result of a misbelief brought about by 2 weakened physical condition and the
 nervous strain of the automobile accident in which he figured. The doctors were asked to explain why an air trip had been prescribed They laughed and said, We could have told him to go down into a coal mine, with as much hope and prospects for recovery, but Boiling Field Air Station happened to be
 handler than a coal mine.
 "Convincing young Renz that the trip in the plane would bring back
 his voice did more than the flight.
 It was trick, of course, but il
 helped him, and therefore was justi-
 fiable."
 Renz had been treated by num-
 Der of doctors at considerable ex.
 pense, but without success. He was
 becoming melancholy with the thought that he might never again use his voice This negative thought
 firmly gripped him, and to break the spell into which he had been thrown, it was necessary the physicians ex- plain, to suggest treatment whose freakishness would appeal to him as having in it a possible recovery
 Renz had never been in a plane. The doctors were careful to keep constantly before him the thought that when he came down he wOuld be talking again. If they had chos- en some other new experience for him, making certain that he was similarly thoroughly convinced of it's curing power, the doctors believe he would have attained equal success.
 RenZ made the trip, and while att a reasonably high altitude regained his faculty of speech. The doctors were as happy as Renz. but perhaps not quite so surprised.
 A few weeks later Renz appeared before them again, his voice once more missing. A second trip was proposed and Renz was told that this was the first time such re- currence of voice impairment had i occurred following an air trip. l Again he was convinced that the l flight must be successful, and again | he recovered his voice.
 The doctors explained that Renz