Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Because I have felt so much the meaning of this book I may be excused for claiming the privilege, not often given to the publisher, of writing an introduction.
If only spastics, or only cripples, would find hope in these pages, one might regard the story as worth telling but still rather special. But it seems to me far more than that. It is a story for anyone who is under a handicap of any kind, those who are deaf or blind or ill, those who are tired and worn or “nervous,” and even those who feel themselves beaten by society, by economic conditions, or by what they think is some failure in themselves. To all such, and even to the physically strong and the mentally confident, Dr. Carlson has far more to say than he himself can possibly realize.
He was born in a poor home and was so injured at birth that it was years before he could control his legs or arms or even the organs of speech. Unlike most of us who learned these controls in infancy, he can still recall vividly his first success in reaching out his hand and taking what he wanted – it happened to be an apple he was stealing – and the greater excitement of his first unaided steps. Determined to get an education, he crept out into the world and somehow found work he was able to do. He found generous persons who helped him and became his friends, and though both his parents died while he was in college, he struggled on until, more than eleven years later, he took at Yale Medical School his degree as a physician. Today he is a famous specialist in the very field of his own injuries, and the parents of many thousands of spastic cripples turn to him for advice and treatment.
With calm candor he tells his own experience, hiding nothing and priding himself on nothing. He tells also of many other cases, more or less like his own, which have come under his eye. He tells what the parents’ approach and what society’s approach should be and how the handicapped individual, as he grows up, can and should face the world.
When one considers that this comes from a man who, long after he was full-grown, never knew when he picked up a cup of coffee whether it would reach his mouth or fly over his shoulder, one cannot but marvel at the triumph possible when human will power, intelligence, and courage combine. Gradually one comes to see that what this man had to deal with were, was one reader has said, simply the common usual human problems terrible intensified – fear of failure, fear of being pitied or laughed at, insecurity, and the constant hard task of mastering, training, and drilling the body, the mind and the spirit. And one gladly discovers that his own conclusion is that every human life, however handicapped, has its purpose and can be of use.
This book would never have been written if my entrance into the world had been as simple and dramatic as my mother’s.
Years ago, in Veberod in southern Sweden, a hearty countrywoman sat out in her farmyard doing the evening milking. Suddenly she stopped work and stared to her feet; and without further ado was delivered of her seventh daughter, who landed in the milk pail. My grandmother secured the child from this impromptu baptism, took it back to the house and cared for it, and then went on about her household duties.
With such sturdy ancestry and her own robust heath, my mother, Margaret Anderson, had little reason to anticipate any difficulty in childbearing. Nor was there a poor physical heritage on my father’s side of the family. The Carlsons were a robust tribe in Northern Sweden, and his strength and endurance were such that he was able to do the hardest sort on manual labor all his life. He came to America as a stowaway when he was sixteen years old, and some years later found his wife in one of the many Scandinavian colonies which sprang up in the Great Lakes region. Like many other immigrants, my parents found no pot of gold awaiting them in the promised land of America; and in 1897, the year of my birth, they were living in a tiny e poorer section of Minneapolis. My father worked as a factory stoker, with only a half-day’s holiday every other week. His wages, eked out by my mother’s earnings as a seamstress, gave them only a bare living.
On March 25, 1897, Minneapolis suffered the worst blizzard of that notably hard winter. Our little house, buddle between a livery stable and a church, was almost buried in the snow, which had drifted high above the window sills. All over the city, streets and sidewalks were blocked and transportation was at a standstill. At the height of the storm my mother’s labor began. The doctor was long delayed by the blizzard, and found her in critical condition when at last he arrived. He was obliged to use forceps in order to save her life, and I came into the world with a damaged left eye, which remained closed for weeks, and other head injuries. I still bear the scar of the forceps on my head. It was a closed call, for I was born blue and breathless, and my life was saved on by the doctor’s blowing his own breath into my lungs. I was unable to nurse for several days and had to be given mild through a medicine dropper. In later life, as I sometimes despaired in the struggle against my handicaps, I often wondered whether that doctor should have saved a child that he knew could not be normal. For these birth injuries made me a victim of spastic and athetoid paralysis. I did not have a loss of motion such as is encountered in infantile paralysis, but rather an exaggerated motion. My arm would wander aimlessly, and the hand in attempts to g rasp an object would remain fixed in that position and was relaxed with difficulty. When I was supported under the arm, the legs had a tendency to cross, and I could not bring the heels to the floor. Swallowing was difficult because I gagged easily. I spent a large amount of nervous energy in attempts to move a single muscle group, and often the mere thought of moving a finger was sufficient to throw the entire body musculature into a chaos of writhing movements. When I was not afraid, self-conscious, or aver anxious about what I was doing, I was able to make a movement successfully. But this happened only when I was so absorbed in what I was doing that I forgot about the things I did badly.
My parents were not without hope for me, despite the doctor’s blunt warning that the head injuries I had received would prevent me from ever developing into a normal child. My eye healed, and I seemed to grow like any other infant. I weighed twenty-five pounds when I was six months old; but, unlike the normal baby of this age, I could not sit up without help. In the family album there is a picture of me taken at this time, a chubby, wide-eyed infant, surrounded by the billowing skirts which helped to conceal my mother’s supporting hands. She had just noticed that I could not use the muscles of by back properly. Later, when I failed to learn to walk and talk at the usual ages, my mother realized that I was going to be seriously handicapped. But she continued to hope that my development was retarded, rather than seriously restricted, by the injuries I had suffered at birth.
This hope seemed to be partially realized when I began to crawl at the age of two. I soon became so energetic that I was constantly getting into trouble, and I acquired hard calluses on my hands and knees. For a time my mother pared these with a razor, just as you would cut down a horse’s hoofs; but then she hit upon the expedient of making little leather pads for me to get about on. For years I failed to progress from the crawling to the toddling stage, but nevertheless I managed to cover a surprising amount of ground. One of my earliest recollections is of how I distinguished myself by crawling into a neighbor’s garden-my family had moved from Minneapolis to the small town of Geneva, Illinois-and stealing some peas that had attracted my attention. My mother scolded me severely for this exploit, but she nevertheless regarded it as a major achievement since I had previously been unable to do anything at all for myself. I now know that it was the irresistible attraction that those peas held for me and the resulting complete preoccupation with my purpose that made this act possible for me.
In a year or two my family returned to Minneapolis to take advantage of a better job that came my father’s way. We had a two-room flat in a red tenement, which was on the same street as a big brewery. Mother tried to teach me to wald by supporting my shoulders from behind as I tottered up and down the street. Sometimes she sat down on a bench to rest and to have a chat with her friend, Mrs. Gibson, who was always loudly pitying me and telling my mother that she had the patience of Job. Mrs. Gibson had the notion that my physical handicaps were accompanied by mental ones-since she thought that I was mentally defective, she did not hesitate to talk freely in front of me. In fact, all the neighbors were anxious to know what was wrong with me, and held various theories involving “bad blood’ and prenatal influences which they often aired to Mother when I was about. Mother always tried to prevent me from hearing these conversations, but hear them I did; and her stock answer, that I was “just born that way,” stuck in my mind. I sometimes wondered why I was an object of pity; I had no idea that I was abnormal-it was all natural enough since I was “born that way.”
There was more wisdom in my mother’s answer to the neighbor’s questions than perhaps she realized. At birth every baby is without physical or mental control. His movements are uncoordinated and more or less at random. At birth the brain is unable to function properly, to select the revalant impulses from among the sensory impressions which bombard the nervous system, and to translate them into the purposeful action. Until this selective capacity develops with the growth of the cortex, the child grimaces and drools and wiggles quite unconsciously. He is unable to focus his attention upon any one object; he will pick up a toy only to reject me for another the following moment. His motions are without purpose. As intelligence develops and concentration on a purpose is achieved, these aimless movements and reactions cease. Certain structural and chemical elements in the brain grow as use is made of them. This is particularly true of the substance which insulates the nerve fibers. The insulating material is least in amount at birth, when muscular control is at its minimum. It increases noticeably at the end of the first year at the time when speech and walking occur. It shows marked additions in adolescence as more connections are made between nerve fibers to facilitate the youth’s ability to classify the knowledge to which he has been exposed in childhood. Before this insulation is built up, the nervous system of the brain is like a switchboard with crossed wires, and the impulses often bring the wrong muscles into action. Spastic children do not develop concentration and selective ability naturally; the wires remain crossed and involuntary movements continue. Training is therefore even more important for the spastic than for the normal child; by education it is possible to develop unaffected centers of the brain, and a corresponding improvement of the damaged controls can be effected. The importance of concentration is evident in my ability to get at our neighbor’s peas when my whole attention was set upon them, though otherwise it would have been impossible for me to reach them. I was born with certain motor activities impaired, but I could control these activities when my brain was dominated by an impulse which demanded their use.
I recall another incident in my childhood which shows how concentration makes the impossible possible. My uncle had a farm some sixty miles from Minneapolis, where my mother often took me for long visits during the summer. Father used to walk out from Minneapolis to see us, since he could not afford train fare. There were some cousins of mine from Chicago who also spent their summers at the farm. One day, when I was about four, they went off into the woods, searching for cleft branches out of which they could make slingshots. Not wanting to be left out of anything that was going on, I crawled after them on my hands and knees and returned home dragging a branch. I showed it to my mother and told her that we could make two canes out of it, so that I could walk like my cousins. My father carved the canes out of that branch, and I used them when I first began to walk. Long after they had been discarded as unnecessary aids, my mother kept them as evidence of my initiative in meeting the problem of my handicaps.
Another adventure at my uncle’s farm is still very vivid in my memory. I was crawling along in his orchard in search of apples and plums which had fallen to the ground, when, in trying to reach a piece of fruit, I leaned against a beehive. The bees swarmed all over me, and in my overpowering desire to get away from their stings I managed to take a few steps, though I had not yet learned to walk, before falling to the ground. My uncle heard my cries and rushed to the rescue, but he was not in time to same me from being terribly stung. It has recently been discovered that injections of bee and snake venom produce a temporary alleviation of spasticity. But I was too young at the time to recall now whether this accident brought about any improvement in my condition. My ability to take those few steps may have been the result of concentration on escaping or have been caused by the therapeutic effect of the stings.
I learned to take my first intentional steps at home in a curious fashion. My mother bought a sewing machine, which came in a large wooden crate, a mile long, as I remember it. My father knocked out both ends, so that its sides formed a pair of parallel bars on which I could support myself as I tottered up and down the length of the box. That was when I was five and a half years old; the normal child begins to walk soon after his first birthday. Some of the delay in my learning to walk by myself was my mother’s fault, I had become so used to her support from behind that, when I tried to walk alone, I was tormented by a fear of falling backwards. Many spastic children acquire this fear in the same way that I did; and in my practice today I overcome it by having them push a baby carriage as they learn to walk, which develops the sense of balance far better than support and guidance from the rear. Then when they try walking by themselves they will not stumble along blindly as I did; for, relying on my mother’s guidance, I had never formed the habit of looking where I was going.
Though my family’s poverty meant many deprivations, I have never regretted it, because it saved me from the sheltered life which would have made the conquest of my handicaps all the more difficult. If my family had been well-to-do, I would probably have been kept from contact with normal children, and the result would have been a withdrawal into a world of introspection and daydreams, and an increasing maladjustment to everyday life. Play-life is essential for sound emotional development, which is vitally important to the spastic. The children of the poor cannot be sheltered from life and from association with their fellows, and I shall always be grateful that I was not deprived of a few firm friendships which I formed early n life and which still endure.
When I was three my friendship with Harold began. He was a tall, handsome boy, but shy and introspective in nature, perhaps that is why he sought my company. Despite my inability to walk my aimlessly jerking arms, and my speech difficulties, I was something of a chatterbox and full of notions. As we grew older I devised stunts for his sound legs and arms to carry out. It was a partnership in which I was the brain and he was the body. And best of all, I somehow knew that Harold’s friendship for me was not motivated by pity or his mother’s urging, like that of some of the children, but by real pleasure that he found in playing with me.
I remember vividly one early exploit of our partnership. My father had brought home a varnish case from the paint factory where he then worked, and had contrived out of it a wagon big enough for me to ride in. This contraption, gaily painted yellow, appealed strongly to my friends, and I had no trouble getting one of them to pull it and another to push, as I rode in state around our block. One day Harold, another youngster, and I were making a tour of the neighborhood when we saw a pile of luscious-looking apples in front of a fruit stand. The next time we passed the stand I stared at the fruit in mouth-watering absorption. Before I knew what I was doing, I had stretched out my hand and grabbed an apple. This bit of petty thievery may seem a poor enough achievement, but it was the first time that my hand had ever done my bidding. My friends we delighted by my success, but they wanted apples too, so we repeated the performance twice. All went well the second time because the fruit stand was on a busy intersection, and the owner paid no attention to a cripple being hauled along in a homemade wagon by two youngsters. But the third time he caught us red-handed. He licked the others then and there; but, since I was a cripple, he took me home to my mother and told her what I had done. My mother said that I could not possibly have stolen the fruit, for I could not even feed myself, but that I certainly had enough of the devil in me to put the other boys up to it.
She spanked me on general principals, however, and later asked me whether I had really taken the fruit myself or just suggested the idea to the others. I answered her soberly, for the spanking had made me realize that something serious had happened.
“Mother,” I said, “I looked at those apples, and the more I looked the more I wanted one; and finally I wanted one so much that my hand just reached out and grabbed it.”
Apples seem to be the fruit of revelation as well as of temptation. A falling apple suggested the law of gravity to Isaac Newton; my stolen apples gave me the clue, not followed up for years, that the secret of control for the muscularly handicapped lies in concentration of a purpose. The more objective the interest in performing an act, the easier it is to do it.
There was another red-letter incident in my youth which bore out this truth, if I could but have seen it at that time. I was then just barely able to get around with the help of the canes my father had made for me; without them I was completely helpless. Raymond, another good friend of mine, was much taken by the odd figure I cut as I struggled along on my canes. He suggested that we ought to play horse, since I had four legs. This seemed like a good idea, and I submitted to being harnessed up and driven for a while. Then Raymond’s mother called him into the house, He had the canny notion that I might be tired of a game which he enjoyed, and he took my canes with him, so that I couldn’t run away, leaving me leaning helplessly against a house, Suddenly the noon whistle blew at the brewery across the street. Its shriek always frightened the magnificent horses which were the pride of Minneapolis as they drew the big brewery wagons about the city. This time a team ran away, and I was so excited that I ran away too-I ran a whole block without my canes before I realized what I was doing. I could walk! It seemed too good to be true, and I rushed home to tell my mother the great news. I half-ran, half lurched, into the room where she was having a coffee party with some neighbors, and they all cried out in amazement: “Your boy walks without his canes! A miracle has happened; your prayers have been answered!” My mother alone was calm. “No miracle,” She said calmly. “It’s the result of hard work.”
But my mother was mistaken. All the training she had given me had helped; but it was my complete preoccupation with the runaway horses and the overwhelming impulse to join them that had made the impossible happen and had enabled me to run unaided. It was another instance of the control of the emotions over ordinarily helpless limbs, just as when I stole the peas and the apples.
At that time, of course, I could not analyze the incident rationally, and for many years afterward I beloved that it was a miracle that had made walking possible for me. Even now, I am not at all sure that prayer did not have something to do wit hit. Through praying that I might walk, I achieved that concentration of purpose which is known to produce such seemingly miraculous results as occurred in my own case. I had inherited a pious bent from my mother, who was a religious woman. This piety of mine strengthened when I discovered that my aimless movements ceased when I was absorbed in prayer. In the prayer meetings that I attended as a child, the ceremony of laying hands on the afflicted was observed, and often the congregation would be overjoyed by the miraculous effect this had on me. But the cure was never permanent; what I might now, as a doctor, call the selective inhibition of irrelevant impulses lasted only as long as I was absorbed in the spirit of prayer. Later on in my life I took a passionate interest in Christian Science, hoping to be wholly cured of my infirmities through its technique of faith healing. But this, like many other hopes, was never realized.
My mother, for all her piety, was a very practical minded woman-as, indeed, she had to be in our circumstances. But she enjoyed dabbling in the supernatural. By age-old superstition, as the seventh daughter of a family of eleven, she was supposed to have certain psychic powers because of the occult significance of these numbers. She was in great demand as a reader of fortunes in coffee grounds or tea leaves, and could easily have made a good deal of money out of it. But my father, who was a socialist and something of an atheist, distrusted these dealings in black magic and forbade her to accept any pay for her performances as a fortuneteller, though he allowed her to amuse herself at it. Certainly she made some remarkable prophecies as she pretended to peer into the future, and her rosy predictions doubtless made the hard present somewhat easier for her friends. I know that she strengthened my confidence in despairing moments by telling me that things would go well in the future.
Whether it was through faith in her prayers or in her own predictions, my mother never gave up hope of my cure. She had no money for private physicians, but she took me from one clinic to another during my childhood. None of the doctors that she consulted ever held out any hope for my physical recover; invariably they assured her that medicine and surgery were helpless in cases such as mine. But at the clinic of the University of Minnesota Medical School, they did urge upon her the importance of stimulating my mind by regular education. It was made plain to her that my mind alone could provide an escape from my physical handicaps. Yet sometimes she rebelled against this verdict and tried all manner of quack medicines and healing cults, as well as chiropractors and osteopaths, who are unable, of course, to deal with such conditions as mine. Time after time my hopes were raised high and then brought crashing down, though not always as quickly as upon one occasion when we journey to Wisconsin to consult a famous healer, only to find that upon the day of our arrival he had received a prison sentence for practicing medicine illegally. The failure of these various expedients finally forced my mother to the conclusion that she had been soundly advised by the clinic doctors.
Most parents of crippled children are chiefly concerned with restoring physical health. They want above all to have their child able to run and walk and handle himself like other children. They-and the child-await the miracle of healing in aate of suspended animation, thus allowing the child to develop serious emotional maladjustments because he is not subjected to the same education and disciplinary influences as other children.
Fortunately my mother did not make this common mistake. She soon discovered that I was happiest and best able to control myself when I was busily occupied. Actually she had little choice in the matter, because her hours were so filled with housework and with the sewing which brought badly needed money into our home that she had no time to spoil me by constant attention. But I can remember how she told me that I must keep busy and work as hard as my father did. Like most spastics, I had a tendency to grin al the time, quite regardless of whether I felt happy or sad. This habit is simply a matter of lack of control. My father broke me of it by constant rebukes. When he came home after a long day’s work, and he and mother were constantly worried about how to keep a roof over our heads, it angered him to find me grinning away as if we did not have a worry in the world. Since I either go rid of the grin or got a licking, I soon acquired the self-discipline which was invaluable in overcoming other difficulties. I had to learn to do as much as I could for myself, and to depend upon my own resources for amusement.
Today in clinics I treat children whose mothers have no choice but to leave them alone at home while working. These children must manage to crawl to the table to get their food and to get to the bathroom without help. Invariably these underprivileged youngsters improve far more rapidly under treatment than children from wealthy homes, whose chances to develop are killed by kindness. The situation becomes more serious as the child grows older, for the more accustomed he is to getting his own way, the harder it is for him to adjust to the everyday world. The difficulty experienced by spastics in obtaining and holding positions is owing to this spoiled-child attitude rather than to their physical handicaps. I am eternally grateful to those doctors who urged my mother to concentrate on my mental development rather than on a physical cure which they deemed impossible. Through my experiences at school and college, I learned the great truth which governs all those afflicted as I was: control of motions is won by control of emotions.
But in my childhood I drew no moral from my experiences. I
accepted as a miracle the fact that I was now able to walk unassisted, and I
formed a passionate faith that a still greater miracle would be achieved when I
grew up: that halting feet, shaking head, writhing arms and legs, and troubled
speech would all be healed.
My mother had quite a struggle with the Board of Education to get me into public school when I was eight years old. In their opinion the proper place for me was an institution, not a school. Even after the Board’s consent was won through mother's persistence, the teachers were so alarmed by my constant twitching that they did their best to have me sent home. The nervousness caused by the strangeness of this new world into which I was thrust accentuated my handicaps, and I found it impossible to do many things at school that were easy for me at home. Mother persuaded the teachers to allow me to stay at school for two weeks on trial; and as soon as the new environment became familiar I calmed down considerably, and my instructors withdrew their objections. But at school I was always conscious of a nervous tension which did not bother me at home; and, though I soon got along there well enough, I hated to go.
So I worked on my mother’s sympathy by exaggerating my handicaps and by seeming to lose all the control that I had slowly built up. At breakfast I would send cups and plates flying, in the hope that Mother would decide that I was not well enough to go to school. But she saw through these maneuvers of mine. After giving me a good scolding and a lecture on how important education was for me, she would drive me off to school. The same trouble always arose again whenever I was promoted from one class to another. For years new faces and strange situations petrified me with fear. I can remember once playing hooky for a period of some days rather than face the unpleasantness of getting settled in a new class. Mother gave me a sound licking when she found out about this escapade, and again made it plain to me that I had no chance of getting along in the world unless I got a good education. She hoped that I had taken her words to heart, but she made sure that I did not fool her again by getting another boy to take me to and from school.
Even when I had overcome my nervousness, school life was not easy for me. I constantly had to be helped, for I could not take off my coat or get to my desk by myself. I was allowed to enter and leave the classrooms early, in order to avoid the crowds, for I was so unsteady on my legs that the gentlest push would send me sprawling. Mother arranged with the janitor to take me to the bathroom, and with one of the older boys to carry me out and in whenever the fire drills were held-one of the Board of Education’s chief objections had been that I would present a problem upon these occasions. Everybody went out of his way to be considerate once he understood my difficulties, but it seemed to me as if this understanding was hardly established before a change of teachers or classes made it necessary to start all over again.
As I approached adolescence, I became so self-conscious about my handicaps and so introspective that I must have impressed my teachers as being mentally retarded. For the first time the realization that I was different from other people sank home. When I saw that none of my schoolmates were afflicted as I was, I began to wonder if there were some hereditary curse upon me. I fell into the habit of brooding upon my handicaps, and these seemed to grow steadily worse. My parents were concerned about me, for now at periods I lacked any sort of control; and they took me around to the doctors again, who could do nothing more helpful than prescribe sedatives, which at least helped my confidence if nothing else. At school I was excused from writing since it was difficult for me to hold a pencil, and from singing since I had no control of my voice. This being set apart from the others only increased my sense of isolation from the rest of mankind. I never went out with the other children at recess, because if anyone so much as pointed a finger at me I fell down. I followed back alleys on y way to and from school to avoid being seen. It seemed to me that everyone I met was talking about and pointing out my handicaps, and the more self-conscious I became, the harder it was to maintain any sort of control. I could not understand why it was impossible for me to do certain things in public which I could manage satisfactorily at home. But the difficulty was real enough, and in some cases took years to overcome. I could not eat by myself in public until I was eighteen or nineteen. Now I know that the more conscious of his handicaps a spastic is, the more difficult it is for him to overcome them. Thinking of something associated with relaxation, rather than struggling to overcome the tension, is essential in avoiding difficulty; and I could not escape self-consciousness except when I was in my home or absorbed in work.
Since I was physically unable to take part in many of my schoolmates’ pastimes, and barred from others by the psychological barriers which I erected myself, I got into the habit of reading a good deal. It was possible to do this at home, without the ordeal of going to the public library, through the kindness of one of the boarders Mother had been obliged to take in when Father was unable to find work during a period of economic depression. Gustaf Erickson was a college graduate and had several hundred books which he allowed me to use. He lived with us for fifteen years and soon established himself as a member of the family. It was to him I turned when father went off job-hunting in places far from Minneapolis I can remember how Father heard of work as a harvest hand in the Dakota wheat fields, and how he rode the rods of a freight train to get there since he had no money for a ticket. Mother and I were worried about him when two weeks went by without word from him, but Gus assured us that he would come safely home; and so he did. Gus opened new worlds to me by talking with me and lending me his books, and I found as much delight in this way as I derived from the spending money which this kindly soul often gave me.
Unfortunately one of these books was a health treatise, which I came upon must as I began to worry about myself. It started me trying to breathe correctly, and I soon discovered that it was difficult for me to breathe at all. I developed a diaphragmatic tic, which bothered me whenever I was nervously excited. When I was called upon to recite in school, I would get tense at the idea of being the center of attention, my hands and legs would start shaking uncontrollably, by breath would fail me, and my actual speech difficulty would be outrageously accentuated. When I put on a show like this, there was nothing for the appalled teacher to do but get me a glass of water and send me home to calm down. This trouble afflicted me for months, and I wanted to give up school because of it. But Mother would not hear of my abandoning the course she had set for me, so back I went to struggle against this new complication, which I had brought on myself, an d for spastics are exceptionally prone to suggestion.
This troubled time in my life was brightened by the companionship of three faithful friends, Harold, Reynold, and Irving. Playing with them I forgot my self-consciousness and forgot to worry about myself. Together we involved ourselves in considerable mischief, and I always resented any implication, no matter how tacit, that there were things they could do that I could not. One day they decided to see the world, and rode the streetcar to the end of the line, which was some miles outside Minneapolis. They came back full of accounts of the wonders they had seen, and told me what a pity it was that I couldn’t have gone with them. This was a challenge to me; and, taking a long-treasured dime, I made a solitary investigation of the city’s transportation system. When I finally go home at two o’clock in the morning, my distracted parents had the police searching for me. The licking that I received was completely eclipsed by the glories in retrospect of that adventure and by the admiration I won from my friends for daring the unknown by myself.
It was at this time, too, that I made my first efforts to earn money. I sold newspapers on the streets for a few weeks until my father found out about it. He discovered, or thought he discovered, that people were buying their papers from me out of pity; and this he disliked intensely. He made me give up the job and told me that he could support me without my making capital of my handicaps. Thus brought up short in my attempt to improve the family fortunes, I proceeded to sell to our neighbors some of my mother’s imitation jewelry from the five-and-ten for considerably more than its value. Mother made me return the money I obtained in this way, although I could not see why it was not good business to sell a ten-cent pin for a dollar, if you could find a buyer, no matter what his motives were.
The transition from grade to high school when I was thirteen proved too much for me. South High had a great many more pupils than either of the two grammar schools I had attended, and the crowds of strangers swarming in and out of the classrooms terrified me. There was a bustling, impersonal air about the place, and no one seemed to have time to pay any attention to me and my difficulties. After struggling along as best I could by myself for three or four days, I decided that South High was not the place for me and stayed home. But I was still anxious to obtain more education, and after a few weeks of trying to keep up with my friends by going over their lessons with them and studying in the library at home, I found a better answer to the problem. During the previous year our eighth grade teacher had taken the whole class on the streetcar to St. Paul to see the legislature in action. About halfway between the twin cities we had passed the grounds of a private school called Bethel Academy. It had struck me as a wonderfully attractive place, and I asked our teacher about it. I was told that it was a small Baptist institution which enjoyed a very good academic standing. At that moment was born the dream that I might some day be a student there; but, like most of my dreams, I never expected it to be realized. Now, since public high school was out of the question for me, I thought it worth while to discover whether I could gain admission to this school which appealed so much to me. They were willing to take me after they had heard my story; and so, after spending six weeks at home, I went back to school again.
I felt a good deal more at home at Bethel than I had at high school. There were only from six to twelve children in each class, and I soon got to know my schoolmates and teachers. The worst part about the new arrangement was the long streetcar trip to school and back home again every day, which could not be avoided, though it was not easy for me. My chief trial at school was reading aloud in class. I used another book to hold open the one from which I was reading, since I used my left hand to turn the page and had to keep my right between my knees in order to control it. When I came to the bottom of the page, even though it was in the middle of a sentence, I had to come to a full stop while I attempted to turn the page. The book had a perverse habit of not staying open during this operation, which always flustered me, and once I flipped it clear across the classroom in my anxiety to turn the page. Then when I was trying to recite my hand would start twitching, and when I tried to control it I would lose the thread of what I was trying to say. But these difficulties lessened as I grew more accustomed to my new environment. It was not so long before I was trying to embarrass my schoolmates, rather than being embarrassed by them. At this time I wore leg braces which extended from my waist to my ankles. I let them go un-oiled, so that I could squeak them and make the girls in the class think that there was a mouse in the room.
At bethel I found a way of circumventing my difficulty in writing. One of my classmates possessed a typewriter, which he allowed me to use. I found that it was much easier for me to press the keys than to attempt to hold a pen or pencil. Typewriters were then very much more expensive than they are now, and a machine of my own was completely out of the question. But after my friend left Bethel, mother rented a machine for me, and eventually I got a light typewriter of my own. The development of electric typewriters which require only the slightest pressure on the key has provided a means of expression to many spastics who can neither write with a pencil nor speak. And these machines are a tremendous help to those who can write only slowly, poorly, or laboriously by hand.
In my studies, I had a good deal of difficulty with languages, and especially with spelling. But I became very much interested in science, particularly physics, and won high standing in this subject. During the summer I took a correspondence-school course in chemistry; and my friends, Harold, Reynolds, and Irving, helped me to do the experiments. Our operations must have been a source of constant alarm to my parents and our neighbors. On one occasion we decided to experiment with gunpowder. We mixed up several pounds of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur, and some phosphorus according to the formula, wrapped the mixture in newspapers, and put it on the sidewalk in back of the house. Then we dropped a flat iron on it from the second-story window. The iron almost took our roses off as we leaned out to watch the explosion, and it did splinter the eaves of the roof. The noise was terrific beyond our expectations and brought a policeman running to the scene. With the modesty befitting scientists, we spent the rest of the day hiding in the cellar. Whenever I return to Minneapolis I always make a point of seeing whether that house, with the scars of the explosion, is still standing.
Sometimes the explosions were unpremeditated. I recall concocting some mixture in a chocolate can and putting it on the stove to warm up. I left it there too long, and the top of the can blew off with such force that it stenciled the trademark in the ceiling. Then on another occasion my friends and I had watched with great interest the building of a new house across the street. The men from the gas company came one day to put in a connection to the main. They did not finish the job that day and left their tools behind. We opened the main and set fire to the escaping gas with a torch tied onto a fish pole. The flame shot up like a volcano in eruption. It was a thrilling sight, but we decided to leave it to the crowd which quickly gathered. Something told us that our experimental zeal had been carried a little too far.
The most serious of my scientific pursuits was electrical work. It started when Harold and I acquired a broken doorbell, complete with button, bell, wires, and battery. We fooled around with this device until we got it to work, and I learned the principle of the circuit in the process of repairing it. I soon became as much interested in electricity as in chemistry, and kept my friends busy stringing wires for me. When I was fifteen I could wire a building as well as a professional electrician, and thought of earning some money by my skill. But in Minneapolis there was a city regulation which provided that a wiring job had to be inspected when completed, and only a licensed electrician could ask for an inspector. I solved this difficulty by going to see a man connected with the General Electric Company who was very much interested in crippled children. He told me to go ahead and do the work, and he would take care of having the request for an inspection come from a licensed electrician. Under this arrangement I earned quite a bit of money. I also did quite well in the summers equipping my uncle’s farm neighbors with the latest thing in city doorbells. The confidence in myself that I derived from these activities were far more important than the money I earned by them, for it helped me to overcome my self-consciousness and to stop brooding over my handicaps.
But I still feared the world for what it might think of my handicaps. This fear had one good point: it kept me hard at work and I never wasted much time in recreation. I stayed home when the others were out playing, and my mother saw to it that I spent my spare time usefully. I got credit at Bethel for the correspondence courses that I took during the summers, and so I completed the high school course in two and a half years. My grades were good enough to entitle me to a part in the graduation exercises, but I was still so nervous about appearing in public that I could not even sit on the platform with the rest of the graduation class, much less make a speech.
My parents had never even considered the possibility of my going to college, but I had secretly dreamed of continuing my education and becoming an engineer or an inventor. For a year after I graduated from Bethel, college remained a dream which came to life in my mind whenever I passed the buildings of the University of Minnesota or saw one of my schoolmates who had been fortunate enough to go on to college. Meanwhile I continued my studies and scientific experiments as well as I could at home and in the public library. My heroes were Thomas Edison and Steinmetz, and I wrote them about my ambitions. Their kindly replies strengthened by resolve to realize my dream. If Steinmetz, a hunchback, could win recognition as an electrical wizard, I felt that there might be hope for me despite my handicap. I drew up a plan for a gas engine which was conceived on a new and original pattern. Since everyone likes to encourage a cripple, my invention was highly praised by all who inspected the drawing. As a confirmed reader of the popular science magazines, I knew how important it was to get your invention patented before it was stolen by some wily manufacturer, so I wrote to one of the patent lawyers listed in the advertising columns. My engine never took more substantial form than a drawing, but it involved considerable expense to my family. I paid a fee of $60 for a United States patent, an then the lawyer suggested that my invention ought to be protected in the other great countries of the world, and for this purpose went most of my mother’s hard-saved $500 band deposit. Nourished as I was on tales of millions acquired through simple inventions, I had no doubts about the advisability of spending the money thus until it was gone. When a stream of letters offering g to promote my invention-for a consideration-started to arrive, there was nothing left, or otherwise we would have wasted more money. Though this inventive interlude was a costly one, it did give me a sense of personal worth. I could always point to my invention as an achievement in spite of my handicap.
During this period of preoccupation with mechanical devices, I had an experience which furnishes another example of the importance of concentration to the spastic. A cousin of mine, who was then boarding with us, owned an old Model-T Ford which he parked in back of the house. I had gone on many drives with him, and thus learned how the car was operated. One day when no one was around I used a hairpin to unlock the car and drove off down the street. In my anxiety to control the car, all of the unsteadiness of my arms and legs vanished. I drove safely around the block and was passing the house again when Mother saw me, and my career as a driver was brought to an abrupt close. No one could understand how I had managed to perform this feat. But the explanation is that my attention was concentrated on guiding that car without wrecking it myself and I was so absorbed in what I was doing that my muscles obeyed my bidding. I now a man so severely handicapped by spasticity that he cannon feed or dress himself who handles a car admirably in New York City traffic and has driven across the country several times without the slightest mishap.
I was desperately anxious to obtain some sort of employment. At the Minnesota Sate Fair I met a Mr. Daggett, who was general manager of a company which manufactured gas engines and electric motors. I told him about my invention and my desire to go into research work. He took an interesting me and sent me to the company’s plant in Beloit, where he thought that I might find a job. This was my first trip alone, and it involved a good many problems for me, for I was still dependent upon my mother for many personal services I could not feed or dress myself without great difficulty, so my outfit for the trip included a pullover sweater and shoes that could be slipped on without buttons or laces. After our elaborate preparations for the expedition, it was disheartening to find that there was no job for me at Beloit. Mr. Daggett still felt that some job could be found for me, and he sent me to the company’s works in Indianapolis; but the man I saw there discouraged me as far as getting a factory position was concerned. He told me that I might have better luck in the East, where there were research institutes in which my physical handicaps would be disregarded if my brain was good enough. Eagerly I wrote to several of these institutes, only to be cast down when I learned that they employed only the most brilliant college graduates. After trying to obtain employment in many other places, I finally came to the conclusion that I must have more education-that a college degree, no matter how hard it might be to achieve, would open the door which seemed to stand tightly closed between me and a job.
A year after I graduated from Bethel Academy I learned of a chemistry course which was being given at the summer school of the University of Minnesota. It was just the sort of thing I wanted, but the tuition seemed beyond our means until one of my mother’s friends offered to pay it. Only a few students were taking the course, and I got along all right, since I never had any trouble performing experiments when I was not conscious of being observed. I lost some of my self-consciousness when I discovered that after the first few days my fellow students paid no attention to the twitching head of our professor, who suffered from a wry neck. It was curious how well I could manage retorts and beakers when my mind was absorbed in a chemical problem, though I was unable to feed myself when a stranger was watching me. I completed the course with a good grade, and my success in this convinced my parents that I could do college work, and in the fall I registered to a full course in chemical engineering.
My interest in science, which was first aroused by reading some books which belonged to my father and Gustaf Erickson, helped to carry me through a period of life which usually presents tremendous difficulties for the handicapped person. It is during the years of adolescence that a boy develops a desire to manage things and to acquire the ability to support a wife, while a girl begins to think about marriage. The handicapped are likely to despair of attaining their ambitions and thus a psychological difficulty is added to their physical liability. And frequently their ambitions are impossible of realization. Fortunately I was able through the help of my friends to translate into action some of the ideas which streamed through my head. There must be a balance between physical and mental activity at this age if a breakdown is to be avoided.
I did not get off to a good start in my college work that fall of 1916. Ambition had led me to undertake a program of studies beyond my powers. It did not take me long to discover that college chemistry courses were a good deal more difficult than those I had taken in high school. I found it impossible to perform the complicated experiments and to make the drawings which were called for, in the midst of a large crowd of strangers in a packed laboratory. I worked so slowly that I was always falling behind in my work and having to take a bag of chemicals home to the makeshift laboratory that I had set up for myself. The bustle and crowds at the university brought on again my fear of people, and I did my best to avoid them. One day I was picked up as a suspected saboteur as I walked along the railroad tracks with my bag of chemicals, and I had some difficulty in convincing my captors that I was not in the pay of Germany, that it was only a fear of crowds which had made me take that path homewards. The physical confusion which my embarrassment produced made my explanations all the more difficult and implausible.
At the midyear examinations I got low arks in all my courses, and the dean advised my parents that it was useless for me to continue in college. It was only then that I realized that it would have been far more sensible to have taken the regular academic course than to attempt studies which demanded skills which my handicap denied me. I was still interested in chemistry, however, and felt that I might do better in a smaller college. A schoolmate of mine at Bethel suggested that Macalester College in St. Paul might be the right place for me. When I learned that the classes there were small and that I would be allowed to go my own gait, I decided that my friend was right and went there for the next year and a half. As when I shifted from public high school to Bethel, the more favorable environment was reflected in good grades.
As I look back now on that unsuccessful start in college, I feel that one of the causes of my failure was the helpfulness of the fellow who sat next to me in all my courses. He took very full notes in shorthand and later wrote them out on the typewriter. Since I could not take adequate notes because of my difficulty in writing, I borrowed his in order to type out a copy for myself. We continued this arrangement for several months, and then he had the bright idea of making a carbon copy, thus sparing me the trouble of writing the notes for my self. When the examinations came along, however, I could only remember the facts to which I had given motor representation by putting them on paper; the other ideas had slipped out of my head as easily as they had entered it when I read over my friend’s carbon copy. Achieving motor representation of ideas is an important factor in the education of the handicapped. A young spastic who had done poorly in all subjects before receiving special training in writing was afterward able to attain the highest standing in his class.
My mother died in January, 1918, after and illness of only three days. She was a victim of the terrible influenza epidemic which swept the country at that time. Since my father was also ill at the time, I had to take charge of the funeral arrangements, though her death was a tremendous shock to me. Whenever I had faltered in the struggle against my handicaps, she had been at hand to help and encourage me. Our friends expected that this loss would make me go to pieces, and consoled me by saying that I would soon be with Mother. But I knew that nothing could bring her back, and was able to rationalize her death and keep control of myself even at the funeral. Yet only a few years before, when my mother had left me with my uncle for a month, I had been inconsolable. My behavior in this crisis was typical of the spastic confronted with catastrophe. Such crises are often beneficial in bringing about a growth in personality, and an increased burden of responsibility often hastens this development.
After my mother’s death our home was broken up. My father went to live in a hotel near his job, and I lived with the family of my old friend, Harold, who was then in the Army. After Harold got back from abroad, my father and I shared a furnished room, but I saw little of him since he worked nights and I was busy at college al day. My mother’s death made my lot harder until I got used to being on my own. I had depended on her far more than I ever realized until she was gone, both as a spiritual prop and for physical assistance in such matters as dressing and feeding myself. But losing her made me resolve to fight my own battles. Whenever I heard of a handicapped person who made something of his life, I wrote to him for advice. One of the people I communicated with was a Mr. Dowling, editor, banker, and speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. At the age of fourteen Mr. Dowling was lost in a blizzard and froze his legs and arms, which had to be amputated. He now devoted himself to encouraging men who had been crippled in the war. On one occasion someone in his audience of the ex-Service men, who was unaware of Mr. Dowling’s artificial legs and arms, had said it was all very well for a man who had all his limbs to talk about losing faith in life. Mr. Dowling promptly took off his coat and trousers to supply physical proof that he understood the problems of the crippled.
In answering my request for advice about employment, Mr. Dowling suggested that it might be a good idea for me to see a newspaper publisher, since I seemed to have some talent t for writing. My natural brass carried me past the secretarial barriers into the office of Herschel V. Jones, of the Minneapolis Journal, and enabled me to tell him my story. He was good enough to take an interest in me, and gave me some good advice. He also supplied me with an introduction to Dean Nicholson of the University of Minnesota, who he thought might be able to find a job for me. Dean Nicholson passed me on to Professor James T. Gerould, who was the University Librarian. The library had just acquired some early English manuscripts, and Professor Gerould offered me a trial at the job of cataloguing them during ht summer. He warned me that this employment would be only temporary, but this did not bother me in the least in my joy over finding work.
This cataloguing seemed made to order for me, since accuracy rather than speed was the important consideration. I was not a fast typist, and it seemed to me that I had little to show at the end of my first day’s work, even though I had been given a room to myself, which saved me from the confusion that always attended my first appearance among strangers in new surroundings. So I took the manuscripts home in my brief case and sat up half the night working over the catalogue cards. The following day I was able to present a very respectable sample of my work to Professor Gerould, and he was very pleased at my ability to do so much in so short a time. The job was mine, and I shall never forget the thrill that my first week’s pay gave me. I felt that I could rub shoulders with the world now, since I could earn my own way. My father was proud of me too, though all he said was, “I can die now that you can take care of yourself and make a living.”
When the task of cataloguing was completed in a few weeks, Professor Gerould told me that the geology librarianship was vacant and that the saw no reason why I should not have it. A conference with Professor Emmons, the head of the geology department, resulted in my getting the job, which covered my tuition and board. Therefore I transferred from Macalester to the University that fall. I retained this post as librarian during the next four years while I took my bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Minnesota.
Though my academic career prospered and I was set free from financial worries, I became very much concerned about my father. My mother’s death had depressed him, and it seemed to me that he spent most of his spare time drinking. At that time I had a pious hatred of alcohol, and no doubt I thought my father’s drinking was far more serious than it actually was. In it he doubtless found the outlet for his grief which another man might have found in religion. After the first anniversary of Mother’s death, he brooded more bitterly over his loss, and I was worried about him. When I discovered one day in February, 1919, that his revolver was missing from its usual place in the bureau drawer, I was very much upset. As I waited for Father to come home, my uneasiness about him became more and more acute. Finally there came a knock at the door, and one of the neighbors told me that my father had had an “accident.” As soon as she saw that I was half-prepared for the news, she told me that he had shot himself through the heart. He did not die until the next day was conscious until the end. Somehow, as in the case of my mother’s death, I kept control of myself, though the crisis was even more acute this time because I was left alone in the world.
Since there was now nothing in my life outside of my studies, I buried myself in work. I made myself into a competent librarian, and I did well in my geology major, despite my inability to go on field trips, by doing far more reading than most undergraduates. Through the force of circumstances I achieved in some measure the concentration which makes all things possible to those handicapped as I was. People with whom I came into contact at the University went out of their way to be helpful when the y learned that I had been left an orphan. Professor Emmons, who was a prolific writer of monographs on geological subjects, gave me enough extra work to keep me in funds. Mr. Oscar Sullivan, the State Director of Rehabilitation, made it possible for me to buy the books and instruments I needed in my college work.
It was through the friendliness of a doctor that I had my first chance to take part in the social life of the University, which I had previously decided was not for me. The University Student Health Services had its quarters in the basement of Pillsbury Hall, where the geology library was housed. One Saturday afternoon when most of the students and faculty were watching the football game with Wisconsin, Dr. George McGeary, who was on the staff of this service, found me hard at work and fell into conversation with me. When he asked me why I was not at the game, I replied that I was afraid of disturbing other spectators by the involuntary movements of my arms and legs, and explained how I controlled them by holding one hand between my crossed legs and the other on my chin. He told me that I was working too hard and getting too introspective, and that I ought to get more recreation. As a starter, he suggested that I come over to his rooms that evening to play cards. I told him that I appreciated his kindness, but it was impossible for me to hold cards in my hand.
Dr. McGeary would not take not for an answer and dismissed my objections. So there was noting for it but to go to his bridge party, even though I dreaded the fuss I might make in the embarrassment of meeting a group of strangers. I underestimated Dr. McGeary’s understanding of my problem, though, for he introduced me to his other guests as a “funny sort of fellow who walks as if he were doing the Charleston,” and told them not to feel sorry for me if I knocked things over. This may sound brutal, but it put me at my ease. I never minded my unpredictable performances if those who witnessed them know what to expect, and would laugh instead of pitying me. So IN enjoyed the companionship of this evening, though I declined the refreshments, for fear of sending a plate flying across the room.
Though the nervous tension which was partly responsible for such incidents diminished as I grew up, I had by no means achieved complete physical control. Once I stopped at a soda fountain for a milk shake and the boy behind the counter was so busy that he threw my change to me instead of putting it down. I was holding the milk shake stiffly in one hand, which flew up when I tried to catch the coins with the other and sent the glass crashing to the floor. Everybody in the store stared at me, wondering what was wrong with me, and so intense was my embarrassment that I could never bring myself to enter the place again. There were many such incidents in which I tried to move one muscle and found my whole body involved in unexpected movements. I particularly dreaded the coming of winter, for icy streets meant constant tumbles for me. I dreamed of arranging my life when I grew up so that I could spend the winter in the South and thus avoid such difficulties. A sudden gust of wind was enough to send me sprawling when the pavements were slippery. There was a policeman on duty near the University who picked me up once after the wind had blown me clear across the street. We often traveled on the same streetcar and he used to bellow at me: “Remember when you were so badly off that I had to pick you up out of the gutter?” To the other passengers, this remark implied that I was a hardened drunkard, and they used to shrink away from me. But I never minded having fun poked at me in a joking way; it was openly expressed pity that upset me and made things harder for me.
Often I had to leave theaters or concerts because one leg would start jerking, and the more I tried to control it, the worse it goes. This difficulty of mine was like the stage fright which often paralyzes a normal person when he first appears on a platform; the harder he strives to overcome it, the harder it is for him to deliver his speech. Gradually I worked out a solution: instead of thinking about controlling my muscles, I thought of some act that I had successfully performed in the past. But it was always hard for me to do something in public until I had established the habit of doing it with other people watching. Physical control came slowly through establishing control of my emotions, and gradually the fright that crippled me wore off as I became used to mingling with people whose arms and legs, unlike mine, had always done as they were told.
Despite the pleaser I obtained in associating with other people, I was always reluctant to go out socially at Minnesota. This reluctance became greater after I overheard a conversation between a friend who had taken me to a party and our hostess, in which he was taken to task for bringing a person like me to a social gathering. On first acquaintance people always thought I was a hopeless case, an unfortunate to be sympathized with but not a person you wanted to have around. Later, when they learned that I possessed normal intelligence and had used my head to compensate for my physical handicaps, their attitude toward me usually changed. My unwilling hostess of that evening has since become a very good friend of mine. The difficulty was and is that most people do not realize how closely akin the problem of the spastic is to that of the stutterer. The spastic stutters with his muscles, and, like the true stutterer, gets along much better if he can let the other fellow know his handicap and get him to laugh at it instead of being overly sympathetic.
Though Dr. McGeary drove me into having some sort of a social life, I did not slacken my scholastic efforts. Geology was my major and anthropology my minor, and the courses that I took in these subjects under Professors William Harvey Emmons and Ernest Jenks were the high spots of my college career. I was also very much interested in Professor Andrew Stomber’s Swedish literature course. Swedish, which I learned at home, was the only foreign language that came easily to me, and I had never been able to get very far with French and German. This lack of knowledge was a drawback in my work as a librarian, and would have been a sever obstacle to my obtaining my master’s degree if I had not chosen the geology of the Scandinavian peninsula as my thesis subject. Such scholastic capability as I had was in science, and I had a terrible time with subjects outside this field. My interest in anthropology led me to take a course in anatomy, which gave me some idea of the processes involved in my affliction. These facts were easy to acquire, since they had a personal bearing; but it was a different matter in English courses where activities in which I had never been able to partake were assigned as them subjects. My concentration on science courses helped to improve my muscular control, for laboratory work is excellent training in muscular co-ordination. My ability to do the college work satisfactorily and to earn my way brought about a great physical improvement; I acquired a sense of personal worth and lost the sense of shame about my physical handicaps which had made me afraid of being stared at and pointed at.
After I had taken my master’s degree in 1923, since I had nothing to do during the summer, I asked Professor Emmons if I could clean up the geology museum and rearrange the specimens. It was a job that badly needed doing, and he told me to go ahead and have a try at it. I scrubbed the cases in which the specimens were displayed and mounted each piece of mineral on a block and relabeled it. At the end of a week Professor Emmons came in to see what progress had been made. He was pleased with what he found and arranged to have a couple of scrubwomen help me. When I finished up the job, he asked me if I would like to do museum work regularly in addition to my librarian duties. Of course I replied that I should be only too glad to have such work, and without saying anything more to me, he got the legislature to make an appropriation for the post that he wanted me to fill.
When he revealed what he had done, I was placed in an embarrassing position, for Professor Gerould, who had gone to Princeton, had offered me a job in the geology library there, at a better salary than my Minnesota post. But I was still none too anxious to confront new situations. My mental picture of Princeton was a college run on snobbish lines for the sons of the rich, and I was not at all sure that I could fit into that picture. At Minnesota I was known and allowances were made for my difficulties. Then, too, I knew that I could do the work at Minnesota, but was not so confident of filling the Princeton position satisfactorily. For the life of me I could not arrive at a decision.
In my dilemma I consulted Mr. Jones, whom I went to see about a job which would tide me over the summer. He got me to tell him all the factors in the situation, and then reflected for a while. Finally he asked me if I could get along on $10 a week. When I replied that I could very easily, he said: “Well, I have no job for you, but I’ll give you that if you will do nothing except get into the best possible shat to go to Princeton in the fall and to do a good job when you get there. If the job doesn’t turn out well, you needn’t feel that you’ve burned your bridges behind you by refusing the Minnesota offer. You can fall back on me; I want you to feel that I’m taking the place of your father. But understand this: I shall expect you to pay me back when you can.”
Later on I learned the remarkable story of Mr. Jones’s life. He had started as a typesetter and made his own way to the proprietorship of a newspaper for which he refused an offer of $5,000,000. In his early years he had borrowed $100, put it into the bank, and returned it six months later with the interest which had accumulated. He did the same with a $500 loan, and over a period of years built up his credit standing and the bankers’ confidence in him to such an extent that he was able to borrow a large amount of money when he wanted to launch his own paper. It was typical of him that he never acknowledged my checks as I gradually repaid his loans to me, but when the indebtedness was completely paid off, he told me to come to him whenever I had need of “some healthy lucre.”
Thanks to Mr. Jones’s help, I spent a restful summer building up my health. As the time for going East to Princeton drew nearer, I became apprehensive. It meant a complete break with all my associations so far in life, and the building of a new world on my own. When I considered how slowly I made friends, the best that I could expect was a period of desperate loneliness. And I felt less and less confident about my ability to perform the tasks required by my new position. When I set off for Princeton in August 1923, I did not enjoy the train trip East, for which Mr. Jones had supplied me with funds- because every mile took me farther from home a closer to the dreaded unknown. But, as matters worked out, I did not have an opportunity to feel lonely once I reached the end of the journey.
I had to change at Trenton, and I was having a terrible time managing my possessions when a fellow traveler helped me out. He was also bound for Princeton, where his home was, and I plied him with questions about the place. When he learned that I had come East to take a job at the University and did not even know where to spend the night, he urged me to come to his house until I could find a place to stay. There was a party at his home when we arrived there, and I was reluctant to go with him, but he insisted on my doing so. It turned out that his family were friends of Professor Gerould and he had heard him talk of me, so they promptly took me under their wing. I was told to make myself at home with them until I got settled. My new friends soon discovered that my resources were modest, and they very kindly arranged room and board for me at the Princeton Theological Seminary at considerably less expense than would have been necessary elsewhere. With their help I found that the worst of the difficulties that I had anticipated melted away.
Princeton was nothing like my mental picture of it. I thought it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, and if the majority of the students came from wealthier homes than my classmates at Minnesota, they did not show it by being stiff with one who did not share their background. Professor Gerould’s familiar presence soon banished my fear of being alone in a strange place, and it did not take me long to get used to my duties of issuing books, filing library cards, and cataloguing new books. The library where I worked was in Guyot Hall, and was not confined to geological books, since the biology department had its stacks in the same room. My desk stood between the two sections of the library, and I soon fell into the habit of browsing in the biology books, which treated of matters relatively unfamiliar to me. There was a biology seminar room adjacent to the stacks, and I got into the habit of listening to the discussions that went on there while I was on duty at the desk. In this way my interest in the subject was aroused, and I decided to take some courses in it. After my first few days at Princeton it seemed ridiculous that I had dreaded making the change so much, and I soon felt perfectly at home in my new world.
During my first few weeks at Princeton, I met Professor Charles Freeman Williams McClure, who taught anatomy and was a very well-known embryologist. One day he came into Guyot Hall with a new book by Dr. Frederick Tilney, the Columbia neurologist, which he wanted to donate to the library. It was called The Form and Function of the Central Nervous System. He suggested that I might be interested in reading it, since it would throw some light on my handicap, and that its author might be able to help me overcome my difficulties. As a matter of fact, Professor McClure wrote to Dr. Tilney, who happened to be a close friend, and arranged an appointment for me without saying anything more about it until the matter was settled. Naturally I wasn't only too eager to take this opportunity to consult on of this country’s most eminent neurologist, and I went off to New York confident that I would acquire a better understanding of my problem.
After explaining my neurological symptoms to me, Dr. Tilney offered me some real encouragement by saying that I had done wonders in overcoming my handicaps to such a degree by myself. He made me understand how fortunate I was to be able to earn my living, since the very struggle for a livelihood, hard as it might seem, would have a good influence on my progress. He made me feel that he was very much interested in my career and urged me to come and see him at least once a year. Though I deeply appreciated his kindness and meant to keep in touch with him, I did not return to his office for some years. Nevertheless, it was a real shock to me when Professor McClure told me one day in the library that Dr. Tilney had suffered a severe stroke and would be crippled if he recovered. Late I heard the story of his indomitable struggle to regain his health, and how he produced numerous scientific papers while he was still confined to a hospital bed.
It was not long before I started enjoying life a good deal more than I had at Minnesota. I made many acquaintances in my work at the library, and I soon had plenty of companionship. My particular friend at this time was a young theological student, with whom I had some amusing times. One day he asked me to go canoeing with him on Lake Carnegie. I go the loan of a canoe from a faculty friend of mine, and we started off. But there was a slight difficulty; neither of us knew how to paddle and we soon tipped over. Though the water was only a foot deep, I almost drowned in my excitement over the accident. Another time he cam to my room one warm evening with two open ginger-ale bottles and asked me if I wanted to have a drink with him. I agreed, and very shortly became aware of a rapidly mounting sense of well being. I announced that I had never felt like this before, but the only reply he made was a chuckle. When I poured out the first glassful, I had needed two hands to hold the bottle; now I could fill the glass with one hand and raise it to my mouth without spilling a drop. This was so unusual that it seemed a miracle, and I was marveling about it when my friend took pity on my innocence and informed me that the ginger-ale was strongly laced with gin. It was the first alcoholic drink of my life. Much to my surprise, I found that alcohol, of which I had always had a pious hatred, had a curiously stabilizing effect on me. My friend told me that I seemed more sober after several drinks that I normally did. But I discovered that the improvement in my muscular control was only temporary, that the original difficulties were increased for a short period after the effect of the alcohol had worn off. These facts, coupled with my feeling that drinking had played a part in my father’s suicide, were enough to deter me from habitual use of alcohol. But I began to wonder if there was not some other way of achieving the same loss of self-consciousness which brought about such a miraculous improvement in physical control, and eventually I found it.
To my inability to walk properly at this time I owe another friendship which completely altered the course of my life. One winter day in my first year at Princeton I slipped on some ice-covered steps and took a bad fall. A fellow named Stillman, with whom I had had a few conversations when he was taking books out of the library, happened to be there at the time. He picked me up and saw that I was taken to the college infirmary. Not content with that good turn, he came to see me while I was recuperating from the effects of the fall, and we soon became friends. We were in the same course in biology, which I was taking mainly as an aid to my library work; and he arranged matters so that he was my laboratory partner and could help me when I found myself at a disadvantage because of my lack of manual dexterity.
This Bud Stillman was a tall, red-haired chap, who put on no airs at all and seemed very shy. From all appearances he had no more money to spend than I did, so that it was some months before I connected his name with that of the wealthy Stillman family, whose marital difficulties had filled the newspapers in 1921. At that time I held some of my father’s socialistic views and his contempt for the much-publicized doings of the rich, and I had paid little attention to these stories. If anyone had told me then that the Stillman family would one day play an extremely important part in my life, I should have thought him mad. It certainly was improbable that the paths of a Minneapolis laborer’s son and of a New York’s banker’s son should cross, and that two people of such different backgrounds should become friends. It was something that could happen only in America, where friendship is not dependent upon birth or wealth.
Though I began to see more and more of Bud after fate had thrown us together, I had other friends during this first year at Princeton. One of the best of them was Dr. Stewart Paton, a psychiatrist, with whom I came in contact when he conducted a biology seminar. He was a friend of Dr. Tilney and developed an interest in me after I had told him how much insight into my difficulties I had gained from a visit to the New York neurologist. By giving me a copy of his book on human behavior and discussing the questions that arose in my mind as I read it, Dr. Paton furthered the growth of this insight. In turn I made a note for him of anything that had a bearing on his special interest among the new periodicals and books that came to the library. Sometimes we continued in his home discussions that had begun in the library.
During the summer I had a month’s vacation form my library job, which I spent working at the marine biology laboratory on Mt. Desert Island in Maine. It was wonderfully cool there after the hot Princeton summer, and I enjoyed my stay very much. A number of eminent scientists took a busman’s holiday at the laboratory; and I acquired a good deal of knowledge while having a very pleasant time. The general atmosphere was un-academic, though a lot of serious work was accomplished during the course of the summer.
My stay at Mt. Desert was my first taste of New England life, which appealed very much to me. Since my blood is Swedish on both sides of the family, I am at a loss to account for the lasting fondness I acquired at this time for the Puritan ritual of baked beans and brown bread on Saturday night.
When I returned to Princeton for my second year, I took on an instructorship in bibliography in addition to my duties as librarian. This gave me a substantial increase in my salary, so that I did not have to worry about making both ends meet, and I could reduce my debt to Mr. Jones. I moved from the theological school to the Nassau Inn, and then to a room in Brown Hall, one of the campus dormitories. These changes in living quarters brought me more into the life of the college, and I began to see more of Bud Stillman and to become less of an academic recluse. One week end Bud suggested that we go up to New York and see a show or two, as a break in the routine. I agreed, saying that I had to go to Baltimore the following Monday for an operation on my foot, which might help me to walk more easily. We spent the night in an inexpensive hotel in the Times Square district. Bud left me on Sunday, saying that he wanted to see his father before going back to Princeton, while I stayed on at the hotel until it was time to go to Baltimore.
The trouble with my foot was a spastic condition which stiffened my toes a right angle to the foot. Whenever this occurred it was extremely difficult for me to walk or event to put my boot on. One remedy that had been suggested was a tendon operation that would affect all the toes. But Dr. George Bennett of Johns Hopkins, whom I consulted in Baltimore, discovered that the increased spasticity was caused by the rubbing of the little toe against the shoe, and by amputating this toe he eliminated the difficulty. This minor operation brought about a great improvement in my general condition. I gained twenty pounds and was soon able to take ten-mile walks. While I was in the hospital, Dr. Bennett brought Dr. Walter Dandy, the famous brain surgeon, to see me. Dr. Dandy got me to tell him my story and took X-rays of my head in order to find out what portions of the brain had been affected by my birth injuries, and what hope there was for further improvement. He cam to the same conclusion as the other doctors who had examined me: that mine was a case that neither medicine nor surgery could help. He advised me, however, to continue trying to win control over the muscles that would not obey orders, and made me promise to let him know from time to time how I was getting on.
I returned to Princeton before my foot had completely healed, so I lived for several weeks in McCosh Infirmary, which was across the street from Guyot Hall, in order to avoid using it too much. They treated me so well at the infirmary that I soon felt more at home than if I had been in my own quarters. Bud Stillman was laid up there with a cold, and we shared a room, so I did not lack companionship. It rather surprised me that he asked no questions about my operation, but I forgot all about the matter until we went up to New York again together and spent the night in the same hotel. As we registered, the desk clerk gave me a letter which by some mischance ha not been delivered to me before I left for Baltimore. It contained a large check from Bud, and a note asking me to use it to see myself through the operation in style with a private room and a special nurse. Only then did I realize that he must be a member of the wealthy family I had read about in the newspapers.
Before we went back to Princeton, Bud took me up to his father’s Park Avenue house and introduced me to him. I must have given a very poor impression myself to Mr. Stillman, because the novelty of my surroundings gave me an appalling case of stage fright. The house seemed to me a combination of a palace and a museum, and I was tormented with the fear that one of my unanticipated motions might destroy some valuable ornament. We had tea, and my unruly muscles sent a teacup crashing to the floor just as I was trying my hardest to appear at ease. Bud, I knew, would not mind, for he had become used to my impromptu performances of this sort; but I did not dare to speculate as to what Mr. Stillman thought of me. But seemingly he did not notice what had happened, and went on talking to me in the pleasantest sort of way. In fact, he asked me to come and stay at the house whenever I was in the city. Nevertheless, it was a great relief when we had to leave for our train, and I could relax once more. I had never lost my childish dread of new faces and situations, and this glimpse into a world utterly unfamiliar to me made it worse than ever. As I left the Stillman house that day, I never dreamed that it would become a second home to me within the next few years.
My work at Princeton went well enough, but gradually I became aware of the fact that I was in a blind alley. The instructors and students whom I encountered at the library were engaged in research work which led to the writing of books and papers for the scientific journals and to promotion in the academic world, while I just went on performing the duties of a routine job which led nowhere. I recalled my earlier ambitions and decided that I did not want to be a librarian all my life. I was no longer content just to earn my own way; I wanted to make my life a more useful one. Bud and I often had long discussions in which we settled the fate of the world to our momentary satisfaction, and in one of these sessions he suggested medicine as a career for me. He himself was planning to go to medical school when he finished college, and he made a good advocate for the profession he had chosen. He pointed out that I had taken most of the required premedical courses simply because of my interest in them, and suggested that it might me sensible to make a vocation out of what had previously been only an avocation. As a matter of fact, I had already considered the idea, because one of my Chicago cousins was going into medicine, and I had a jealous desire to imitate him. But I had dismissed the idea as both physically and financially impossible for me.
Now it occurred to me that I might be able to help others who suffered from the same handicap as I did by acquiring at least the fundamentals of a medical education, even if I could not become a doctor. I thought enough of the idea to go down to Baltimore and talk it over with Dr. Dandy. He told me that the success I had in overcoming my own handicaps should be invaluable in helping others, and that a medical degree would be essential if I wanted to do any serious work of the sort I had in mind. Though he foresaw that it might be difficult to win admission to medical school, he expressed confidence in my ability to overcome this obstacle, and topped off his encouragement by offering to finance a year of my professional education.
Once I had decided upon medicine as the career I wanted to follow, I took courses in biochemistry and physiology and read everything in the library that looked as if it might be helpful in attaining my new goal. Before I left Princeton that summer for another working holiday at the Mt. Desert laboratory, I wrote to Mr. Jones in Minneapolis about my plans, and asked if he would be willing to help me again financially, provided I could win admission to a medical school. I wanted to be sure of at least two years’ freedom from money worries before I abandoned a field in which I was successful in order to prepare for another in which my prospects were doubtful, to say the least. Through an accident I did not get Mr. Jones’s affirmative reply until I returned to Princeton and I had a bad time of it until I heard from him. Then I started my campaign to get into a medical school.
It proved to be a long-drawn-out campaign. I was turned down by the deans of several medical schools on the grounds that I was too severely handicapped to be able to practice medicine, even if I could get through the four-year course, which most of them seemed to doubt. One dean with whom I had an interview happened to have a spastic child, and told me quite frankly that he was not spending any money on the child’s education, because “there was nothing to do but try and keep the poor kid happy.” This dean said that he admired my ambition, but could not help me to waste four years and a good deal of money in attempting the impossible. All this was rather discouraging, and if it had not been for Dr. Dandy’s encouragement when the prospects seemed darkest, I doubt if I would have kept up the fight. In the end I won admission to the Yale Medical School as a special student, on the basis that my showing in the first two years was to determine whether I should be allowed to continue studying for a degree.
Dr. Dandy had suggested that I apply at Yale because of a new system which the medical school there had adopted. During the first two years of the course there were optional quizzes, but no examinations for credit, until the student felt ready to take a comprehensive test on everything that he had studied. In this way a student could accomplish his work at his own pace, without having to devote all his attention at regular intervals to examinations in particular subjects. The system was much more like that which is traditional in the English universities than any other American educational plan of the time. Examinations always put me into a state of extreme nervous tension, and under any other system than this one, I probably could not have gone through medical school.
The lack of confidence displayed by a number of competent authorities in my ability to realize my ambition made me less optimistic than when I first decided on medicine as a career. I managed to obtain a two-year leave of absence from my Princeton job, so that I would have something to fall back on if the medical school work proved too much for me. It was not difficult to obtain this leave, since the courses that I was going to take would give me a better equipment as a librarian. The feeling that I had not burned my bridges behind me made the prospect of another transition much easier on me than when I had to decide between staying on at the University of Minnesota or going to Princeton. But before embarking on my new career, I was glad to renew old friendships by going to Minneapolis to spend my last vacation from Princeton.
I entered the Yale Medical School in September, 1926. Thanks to the kindness of Dr. Dandy and Mr. Jones, I was free from financial worries for the time being; and my three years at Princeton had increased my self-confidence. My old dread of meeting new faces and situations was allayed when I found my Princeton friend, Dr. Stewart Paton, had come to Yale as head of the psychiatric department. Seeing his familiar face made me feel at home. He took a great interest in getting me off to a good start and gave me a Dictaphone, which proved most useful in my written work. Various members of the medical faculty went out of their way to be helpful-not so much because I was handicapped, but because I wanted to aid others who had difficulties similar to mine. I plunged into the medical school work with the resolve that I would make a good enough showing to eliminate all doubts about my ability. But I soon discovered that medical school was a different matter from college, and that the work was much more extensive and demanding. After a day of classes I was so exhausted that often I went to bed directly after dinner, and then got up a few hours later and studied until three or four in the morning in preparation for the next day. I found it difficult to study in the boarding house where I had taken a room. When I mentioned this to Dr. Harold Burr, the professor of neurology, he gave me an office in the laboratory. Here I kept my typewriter and books and could work at any time of the day or night. This arrangement was a great help, because it was still hard for me to get much done in the midst of a crowd.
That first year I had courses in anatomy, biochemistry, physiology, and bacteriology. Anatomy is traditionally the error of medical students, and I was no exception to the rule. Only its connections with other matters in which I was more interested made its dryness endurable. I had a good deal of trouble with the dissecting which is such an important part of the study of anatomy, and had to get help from the other student who was working on the same cadaver. As long as I was completely absorbed in my work, everything went well enough, but if I started to worry about controlling my hands, I was likely to jerk the piece of tissue to pieces. My dissecting partner’s assistance had its advantages, for though I remembered with out difficulty the grosser muscle groups which I could dissect myself, I had a hard time recalling the structure of more delicate systems, in dissecting which I had received help. As in the case of the borrowed lecture notes at Minnesota, those ideas which received motor representation were more firmly fixed in my mind. At the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons the students are obliged to reconstruct muscle groups and other portions of the body in plasticine, as well as to dissect a cadaver. Thus the anatomy of the human being is doubly fixed in the memory by the processes of taking it apart and putting it together again.
This hand-in-hand relationship of physical and mental activities has an important bearing on the proper treatment of the spastic. Many parents feel that their handicapped child can be cured simply by a course of exercises designed to develop the affected muscles, and put off schooling until this cure can be brought about. This is a tragic error, for exercises are useless without simultaneous mental training. I was fortunate in not having as a child systematic physical training based upon the principal of motion for motion’s sake, but rather in being forced by circumstances to move my muscles purposefully.
Almost everything I studied gave me some further insight into my difficulties. I learned that every human being passes through stages of development which parallel those of the lower orders of life: first squirming like the simplest forms of marine life, then wriggling like a snake, then going on all fours like a dog, and finally learning to walk unsupported on its legs. During this evolution, there is a simultaneous development of the brain and nervous system. The mind learns to associate a certain sensation with a certain muscular movement, and gradually the muscular response to the sensation becomes automatic. The ability to recall the sensation determines the ability to perform the movement. I had to struggle against wrong motion patters; various irrelevant and involuntary movements had become associated with each conscious movement. My difficulty was like that of the beginner at the piano, who finds it impossible to move one finger without also moving several others. The remedy is the same in both cases; only through exercises which develop the ability to perform precise movements at will can the desired control be obtained. Even so, the correct motion patterns may be obliterated by fear or anxiety. A normal man finds no difficulty in walking along a narrow plank which lies on the ground. If the plank is raised twenty feet in the air, he will go through the same motions painfully and hesitantly, granted that he can perform them at all. He is experiencing the difficulties which beset the spastic at all times. “To be scared stiff” is no empty figure of speech, but a singularly exact one when applied to the spastic. Fear destroys the concentration which enables him to control his unruly muscles.
A good many of the facts I had to learn in medical school seemed at first to have no bearing on my particular interest, and I felt that studying them was a waste of time. One such matter was the biochemistry of respiration, which I subsequently found far from irrelevant to the problem of spasticity. Irregularities in breathing cause certain chemical changes in the blood which result in increased muscular tension. The effort to make my arms and legs obey orders always made me hold my breath, as the normal person does momentarily in threading a needle. Only in my case I would stop breathing so long that my mother thought I was going to choke, and then gulp in the air. This marked irregularity in breathing, of course, increased the muscular disorder by increasing the muscular tension. Training in correct breathing is important to all spastics, and I have seen tremendous improvement brought about in some cases by breathing exercises alone.
It is dangerous for the medical student to undertake his professional training as I did, with his life work already determined, for he is apt to neglect the acquisition of the broad background essential to alter specialization. Too much concentration in medical school on a special interest may make him unable to see the woods for the trees when he starts practice.
In addition to the regular medical school work, I had a daily session of physical training under the direction of Dr. Winthrop Phelps, the professor of orthopedic surgery. Noon was the only time I had free for taking this training, and I shall always be grateful to Mrs. Caroline M. Brown, the chief of the physical therapy department at New Haven Hospital, for giving up her lunch hour in order to put me through my exercises. Both Dr. Phelps and Mrs. Brown were somewhat skeptical about my deriving much benefit from physical training at an age when I had so many well-established wrong motion habits to overcome. They were amazed by the improvement I soon began to show, in which a number of factors were undoubtedly involved. The exercises themselves played an important part in it, and I was fortunate in having a trainer who knew how to teach the concentration which kept the old motion habits in abeyance. My own past experience in controlling these patterns, when it was essential to do so for some absorbing practical purpose such as a chemical experiment, was also helpful. But what seems to me one of the most important factors in the situation was my state of mind. The exercises went well when other things were going well, and poorly when I was upset about something.
During my training periods I discussed with Mrs. Brown this connection between the physical and emotional aspects of my handicap. The conventional orthopedic view was that improving the physical difficulties would bring about a better psychological attitude, but I felt that the way to better physical control lay in control of the emotions. Whenever I received congratulations for showing physical improvement, I could always find an explanation in some incident which had increased my self-esteem. At the time when my physical progress was most marked, I was enjoying a greatly increased sense of personal worth, thanks to having won the affection of a girl for the first time in my life. The usual intensity of a first love affair was augmented in my case by the fact that with the spastic love is a much more serious matter than with the normal person. He who has though of himself as being cut off from the rest of mankind by his handicap suddenly discovers that the barrier has vanished and he idealizes the girl who has released him from isolation. This avalanche-like emotional reaction makes love a serious problem for spastics, because it is difficult for them to choose the right mate when they are apt to be swept off their feet emotionally whenever anyone takes a personal interest in them.
Mrs. Brown and her husband became friends of mine, and I spent many pleasant week ends at their home in the country outside New Haven. I felt more at home with them than I had at any time since leaving Minneapolis, and these week ends put me into fine shape for the work of the next week. The poise and self-assurance that I gained in this way were always reflected by improvement in my muscular control and a better showing in my physical training. Whenever I succeeded in losing the feeling that I was alone and helpless in the world, the benefits obtained from my exercises would be carried over into everyday life. Whenever I became dejected or depressed about the future, this important carry-over was not achieved. I do not wish to belittle the value of physical training for the spastic, but the importance of the patient’s own emotional attitude and of the trainer’s ability to promote a favorable attitude is too often neglected.
Bud Stillman was to be married in July at his mother’s camp at Grand Anse in Canada, and he insisted on my coming to the wedding. So at the end of my first year of medical school, I started off for Canada. I had to take one train to Montreal, another to Trois Rivieres, and a boat for the last seventy miles up the St. Maurice River. The “camp” proved to be a large modern house which stood on a bluff overlooking a bend in the river and was the center of a domain extending for hundreds of square miles. Forty or fifty servants were needed to run the estate, which was on a scale so tremendous and luxurious that it frightened me. In the bustle and confusion of the wedding day I had little chance to do more than congratulate Bud and his bride, who left immediately after the ceremony on their honeymoon, a year in Europe. On the following day, when most of the guests were preparing to depart, Bud’s mother, whom I had just met for the first time, urged me to stay on at the camp. She was not a woman whose requests could easily be refused-and, besides, it did not need much persuasion to make me fall in with her idea.
Mrs. Stillman had heard all about me from Bud, and she felt that a summer of outdoor life would be the best possible preparation for my next year’s work in medical school. Under her guidance I had the most active time of my life. She never allowed me to avoid taking party in whatever was going on because of my handicaps. She drove me to a morning dip in the icy water like a hard-hearted drill sergeant; she made fun of my fears when I found myself in new situations. She told me that I had to paddle my own canoe in life, and that I might as well start by going out on the river alone. Remembering my near-escape from droning while canoeing at Princeton, I kept close to shore and found comfort in the fact that there were several Indian guides within call on the bank. Gradually I lost my timidity and ventured farther from shore. Then I got caught in a current which drew the canoe toward some dangerous rapids. Fear seized me and seemed to make it impossible for me to use my arms. I looked ashore for help, but there was not a soul in sight. I realized that I would have to save myself. Somehow I managed to free myself from that paralyzing fear and to paddle steadily back to shore. As the canoe touched the bank, the guides stepped out from behind the trees where they had been hiding al the time at Mrs. Stillman’s orders. She had wanted me to gain self-confidence by getting out of the difficulty by myself, without knowing that help was at hand if I should not succeed.
The next morning at breakfast I complained that I had not had much sleep because of a nightmare. Mrs. Stillman, who had been psychoanalyzed by Jung, was very much interested in the interpretation of dreams and got me to recount mine. It had seemed to me that I was out in the middle of the river in a canoe, and instead of having the muscular control which I had built up in thirty years of my life, I had only as much as when I was ten. I had upset the canoe in my flurry of unintended movements, and then I woke up and found that I had fallen out of bed. Mrs. Stillman thought this dream most interesting, and said it showed that I was the victim of infantile fears. Whenever I got into difficulties thereafter and started to complain about my inability to do something, she would tell me not to let the ten-year-old Earl get control. I acquired some valuable bits of psychological insight from my conversations with Mrs. Stillman She showed me how brooding and introspection destroyed one’s character, and how important it was to translate one’s fantasies into reality. Much of what she said fitted in with what I had learned during my first year of medical school, and helped to increase my understanding of myself.
The outdoor activities which occupied most of our time at the camp provided many opportunities to increase my muscular control. Though learning to shoot was a somewhat painful process for me, the first time I fired a heavy deer rifle the recoil knocked me sprawling to the ground-it have me useful training in coordinating vision with a muscular act. I made a bull’s-eye once by accident when I was still new to shooting, but could not even hit the target for a long time thereafter because I tried too hard and became too tense. Eventually I learned how to avoid expending to much effort, and I became a better marksman. Later on in my life I learned of several cases in which spastics made great physical improvement by engaging in regular target practice. The long camping trips over rough country increased my ability to handle myself satisfactorily in everyday life. Spurred on by Mrs. Stillman’s constant reminders about banishing the ten-year-old Earl, I managed such feats as crossing streams on fallen logs and struggling over rough portages. I ate meals of heroic proportions because Mrs. Stillman told me that it would be criminal to waste food which had been brought into the wilderness at considerable expense, and also because my appetite had grown enormously.
The world of the Canadian woods was completely new to me, but I quickly learned to enjoy it under Mrs. Stillman’s guidance. I got used to seeing big game at home in the woods; to eating fresh-killed moose steak and fried fish that had been swimming in lake to stream an hour before. As a grown man I was doing all the things that Harold and I had played at back home in Minneapolis as children, and sometimes I wished that he could share the delights of these new occupations with me. It occurred to me that this sort of life gave those who did not have to do physical labor the motor activity that the human system demands if it is to remain healthy. My socialistic father, who was convinced that rich people never lifted a finger if they could avoid it, would have been amazed to see how cheerfully they sweated under heavy loads on a camping trip. That summer did me a tremendous amount of good, and I returned to New Haven in the fall in far better mental and physical shape than when I had left in June.
During my second year of medical school I took a course in pathology under the dean of the medical school, concerning whom there were many legends. His manner was harsh and exacting, and he kept his students on their toes. He demanded clear answers to his questions and could not be put off with a comprehensive medical expression which covered a complex mass of facts. When such an answer was given, he would say: “Now tell me what that means in simple terms, such as you would use to describe an apple to an Eskimo.” Often when I was called upon, embarrassment would make me forget what I knew. I would get completely flustered and be unable to say what had been at the tip of my tongue the moment before. My mental confusio