Having children particularly bright, handicapped by something nobody seemed to understand was, to me, an appalling thing that we needed to look into. I was glad for this contact and opportunity to be told that there was such a thing as seeing backwards and not being able to differentiate.
It was really a new vista to me. I thought, when we are studying the patient as a whole, maybe that was a clue to some of the troubles we had not realized.
DR. BOGER-SHATTUCK: This mirror-writing is what Dr. Coffin has reference to. These children see as in a mirror. There is so much of that at the present time that a Rahway, New Jersey, they have opened a school for just such children in the vicinity of Trenton or New York. It was called to my attention by a patient I see in the summertime. There are only two children I have seen, who attend this school, who have a long history of fathers and grandfathers being mental giants and leaders in industry today in America.
It apparently has something to do with the point between genius and psychoneuroses, because these children are both very, very nervous. By teaching these children to live and trying to inculcate in them a greater faith in God, and trying to teach them a form of psychology which will cast out fear, we have done a great deal with these children. But they do have to be taught from scratch, because they do see backwards.
Dartmouth College, in their optical department, I believe, is doing a lot now in studying this type of work.
DR. COFFIN: Penn State is examining freshmen in college along that line. They find so much difficulty.
DR. SCHWARTZ: All that I want to say in regard to these cases and in regard to the paper is the fact that I think in the second paragraph of the Organon,Hahnemann said, “In order to cure, we must know what is curable.” In other words, we must familiarize ourselves with just such abnormalities as these. Left-handed children go to school and are forced to write with the right hand, and we find many symptoms. It is said that King George was left-handed and was forced to learn to write with the right hand, and his stammering resulted from that. So in our healing we need to have a philosophy and to realize what is curable and what is not. We should not think we have failed in our remedies if we do not get results in every case.
