Possession (verse)

...I do not think a different sort of man could have accomplished the things that Monsenhor Barrat has accomplished...

...A meadow looks So lazy as it stretches in the sun, So peaceful with its grazing cows, its brooks, Its languid willows...

...where you are-that is somewhere...

...They weave A tapestry of vines and throw it over The fences that are near...

...With the last rays of sunlight, all hang their hammocks under the roof--the bishop's among his hosts...

...These sleeping sickness cases in the past have involved only a small portion of the population, and many were not recognized until they had already become chronic...

...In many of the serious nervous disorders, unfortunately, the mental processes are involved in an indirect way...

...We knew every rise of every slope, as you know the mounds on the lawn or the turns of your face, and with the help of landmarks, little individual ins and outs of the hills, we could place anything exactly for one who knew our world and our language...

...DOWN THE ROAD EAST By LEO R. WARD A YELLOW sierra of hills lay to the east of our place, down the road...

...Our fathers plowed the steep wall and planted it...

...In many instances these innocent victims are totally disabled, yet wofully neglected...

...August 28, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 423 canoes paddled by Indians...

...At night they stop at a small dry palm hut, built on spikes planted in the mud along the river bank...

...Even today many states do not require reports on this disease, and no state legislature seems fully aware of the need for any legislation...

...It was a saying with us that hills are the oldest thing in the world...

...Unless one happens to be a member of the family in which epidemic encephalitis has found a victim, it is not likely that his attention has been brought to the inadequacy of the means available in our public institutions for the care and study of these cases...

...Such neglect is a disgrace to enlightened civilization...

...Oh, yes, but those were the old days, ancient times when people could know a road so familiarly...

...We knew where an unhealthy elm rose out of woolly grey mullens on your left, half-way up the third hill as you went east...

...It is a disease which is disconcerting, disabling and pauperizing...

...Many adults likewise suffer prolonged disability and peculiarities in behavior following an attack...

...I was taken out of the bit of quiet that a city affords and hurried through the streets one day last summer by a friend who wished to go faster than the human flow, and as I followed I could only catch at the thought that he had got it into his head that if he did not hustle and keep "on the go" he would never get anywhere...

...Because these residual effects are of such long duration, the number of individuals incapacitated by the disease increases each year...

...Possession The fields resent intrusion...

...This disease, perhaps better known as sleeping sickness, has a high death rate, is probably contagious and carries serious after-effects...

...Even though there is no definite mental confusion, there is difficulty in the emotional control field...

...Here is the Squire's place, burry and unproductive as it has always been, here is J. C.'s, here is Susie's timbered eighty...

...There may be a mask-like face, double vision, stupor, speech difficulties, behavior disorders or extreme irritability, but these patients are not insane and should not be classed or confined with the insane...

...All day long they go sheltered by the small roof of dry palm that covers the centre of the native canoe...

...The state which establishes a means whereby the victims of sleeping sickness could be cared for over a length of time sufficient to study the disease and help the patient, will take first place in the fight against a tremendous and baffling problem...

...Many others have never been recognized, for the disease presents most variegated symptoms...

...Epidemic encephalitis is to be feared, for it is a disease from which no one is immune...

...I understand...

...Many may think that one of refined tastes, of culture, of aristocratic bearing, as is the bishop of Teff6, is wasting his gifts among the Indians...

...hardly anyone Would think a meadow restless...

...Special measures, including careful cleansing of the nose, mouth and throat...

...If hospitalization and spiritual treatment are provided in connection with well-supervised farms, many of the individuals will earn their own support with limited indoor and outdoor work, and be less of a burden to themselves and others than they are now...

...In epidemic encephalitis we have a serious disease of the nervous system in which further study and proper hospital care may mean more than words can tell...

...But they left a mark on all us hill people...

...It is confined to no country and has spread over the world like the biblical plagues...

...I think they must have a way of renewing themselves, for, though they stand out in the weather, time tells very little on them...

...The symptoms in the chronic forms of the disease are largely those of disordered muscular control, disturbances of the emotions and inability to make a living...

...In an investigation made in Germany by Hess, it was found that every patient examined from one to two years after the initial attack still had serious physical and nervous disorders...

...Look at the road out here, black with cars...

...Surely it needs only the thorough awakening of public opinion to bring about the required legislation, and to attract the attention of private philanthropy...

...Just stop and look around...

...Many of the behavior disorders which have amazed and shocked the public mind in children of good mentality and apparently good home training, can be traced to attacks of acute epidemic encephalitis...

...It comes through nobody's fault, as insidiously as a cold or the influenza and doubtless by the same portal of entry...

...everything, perhaps llfe itself, is speeded up...

...With the increase in prevalence, does not our chance of catching it increase ? The treatment of epidemic encephalitis cases, with the residual aftermath, also calls for more scientific study, care and hospital observation...

...The ceremony ends with the confirmation of those who are prepared to receive the sacrament...

...Should not social and mental welfare workers search for a means of lessening the untold misery which it causes...

...We gazed toward the light that breaks over the point of a hill and we watched our steps down into the valley every day of our lives...

...The mato is as eternal--it seems--as are his faith, his hope and his charity...

...WHEN SLEEP IS SICKNESS By ADRIAN SCOLTEN N THE state of Wisconsin there are, at the present time, over eight hundred cases of epidemic encephalitis...

...At sunrise all are up and they bathe in the rio-for Amazonians bathe at least twice a day...

...In our hills and on our road, you would be somewhere...

...Many a useful member of society is thereby lost, and a definite economic burden is created which must ultimately be saddled on federal pensions, state aid and private charity...

...It is those personal gifts--the magnetism of the man blended with the consoling teachings of the Church he upholds--that gain him the respect and love of his humble flock as well as of those in power...

...The entire Indian family greets their prelate with respect and love--native Amazonians are pious...

...where the clay was gravelly, blue-veined, marlish...

...and I thought to myself, still pursuing, "Man, you are somewhere now, if you'd only stop...

...They are, too often, without sympathetic understanding, have no hope for the future, and end in despair and sometimes suicide...

...Here conditions are anything but conducive to improvement...

...They serve dinner of fish and farinha on the wooden platform in front of the house, amid gnats and mosquitoes...

...If some state gives adequate attention to the disease, other states will surely follow...

...But, I am glad to say, the road east is in no danger of becoming an auto run, though it might do to mark an airway...

...The plains were at our back, but we never ranged toward them...

...No effective means of curbing its spread is now protecting us...

...Often without conspicuous deformities to excite pity, the emotional unbalance of the sleeping sickness victim makes him hard to associate with, and causes lack of sympathy and understanding...

...Because no special facilities have been provided for the care of these unfortunates, many of them are confined in reform schools...

...He marries the young couples, baptizes the children and hears confession...

...When you leave A wagon rut they fill it full of clover And buttercups and Queen Anne's lace...

...He is now praying each day that I may sometime come back to the Amazon in a large seaplane, and land on Teff6 lake to give him his wish...

...To many victims it is, in truth, a "living death...

...The fields resent intrusion...

...They are entirely conscious of their plight, rarely living in the happy dream world, not caring what others think or say about them...

...At the present time there are in the United 424 T H E C O M M O N W E A L August 28, I929 States thousands of persons suffering from its ravages, even though only a few hundred new cases are discovered and reported to state health departments each year...

...Persons of all ages, classes and conditions of living are open to its attack...

...as you note, has more mobility...

...we played there and went down the hilly road to school...

...Yet they scheme-Forever crafty, eager to regain Some old abandoned garden or redeem The winding beauty of a country lane...

...There is often a great depression of the spirits, a loss of will power, poorly controlled impulses with violent outbursts of temper, loss of interest in surroundings and unfounded fears and anxieties...

...Our houses, our pigs, our orchards, everything that we had, as well as ourselves, hung on the side of the hill...

...GERTRUDE RYDER BENNETT...

...They would grow The way they did a thousand years ago...

...we move faster now...

...Here in this hazelbrush, barked...

...The symptoms are much like those presented by an extremely neurotic person...

...I cannot end without disciosing my bishop's one temporal wish: it is to have one flight in an airplane l For Saint Michael, the great archangel who had wings to fly with, is his patron saint, and Monsenhor would like to borrow those wings for one day...

...As a result, a great many of these unfortunate victims are not receiving what their condition demands...

...They radiate a peace, a serenity, the spell of which one cannot cast aside once one has absorbed it...

...I prefer its calm...

...Then around a jog or two was another choppy row of them that we called "the Washboard...

...All this has an organic basis--the patient is not simply % neurotic...

...With the benefit of these measures and the serious attention of trained workers, definite improvement can be secured in the present rather alarming state of affairs...

...But it is not so...

...As things at present stand for these patients, adequate relief and treatment can be secured only at private institutions at an expense that is usually beyond the means of most...

...where pinoaks and hickories thinned toward the tops of hills and the soil soured and would grow only a wiry grass specked with red and the sheep-sorrel that ate into our tongues and the lining of our cheeks...

...The post-mortem table, however, should not be the best diagnostic table...

...Epidemic encephalitis is perhaps caused by an unidentified microbe that invades the brain and spinal cord, without involving the higher cortical or thinking centres of the brain...

...Then he celebrates mass amid the mato, his holy stone set on a crude plank or table, and everyone receives Holy Communion--which they have, perhaps, not done for a year or more...

...where the greater black-oaks and elms spread out on the slit of the bottoms...

...Because there is inadequate provision for study and hospitalization of such cases, and because the mental aberration is not serious enough to class them as insane, these people float about, a burden to themselves, their families and associates...

...massage, baths and especially psychotherapy are suggested treatments...

...By the time the bishop has put on his vestments, the neighbors of the forest have gathered...