But Coué waved aside these too insistent admirers, and, beckoning to the three patients who could not walk, led them to a corner of the garden where there was a stretch of gravel path running beneath the boughs of fruit trees. Once more impressing on their minds the thought of strength and power, he induced each one to walk without support down this path. He now invited them to run. They hesitated, but he insisted, telling them that they could run, that they ought to run, that they had but to believe in their own power, and their thought would be manifested in action.
They started rather uncertainly, but Coué followed them with persistent encouragements. They began to raise their heads, to lift their feet from the ground and run with greater freedom and confidence. Turning at the end of the path they came back at a fair pace. Their movements were not elegant, but people on the further side of fifty are rarely elegant runners. It was a surprising sight to see these three sufferers who had hobbled to the clinic on sticks now covering the ground at a full five miles an hour, and laughing heartily at themselves as they ran. The crowd of patients who had collected broke into a spontaneous cheer, and Coué, slipping modestly away, returned to the fresh company of sufferers who awaited him within.
[[1]] The translation given here of Coué's formula differs slightly from that popularised in England during his visit of November, 1921. The above, however, is the English version which he considers most suitable.
CHAPTER II
A FEW OF COUÉ'S CURES
To give the reader a better idea of the results which Induced Autosuggestion is yielding, I shall here describe a few further cases of which I was myself in some part a witness, and thereafter let some of Coué's patients speak for themselves through the medium of their letters.
At one of the morning consultations which I subsequently attended was a woman who had suffered for five years with dyspepsia. The trouble had recently become so acute that even the milk diet to which she was now reduced caused her extreme discomfort. Consequently she had become extremely thin and anaemic, was listless, easily tired, and suffered from depression. Early in the proceedings the accounts given by several patients of the relief they had obtained seemed to appeal to her imagination. She followed Coué's remarks with keen interest, answered his questions vivaciously, and laughed very heartily at the amusing incidents with which the proceedings were interspersed. About five o'clock on the same afternoon I happened to be sitting with Coué when this woman asked to see him. Beaming with satisfaction, she was shown into the room. She reported that on leaving the clinic she had gone to a restaurant in the town and ordered a table d'hôte luncheon. Conscientiously she had partaken of every course from the hors d'oeuvres to the café noir. The meal had been concluded at 1.30, and she had so far experienced no trace of discomfort. A few days later this woman returned to the clinic to report that the dyspepsia had shown no signs of reappearing; that her health and spirits were improving, and that she looked upon herself as cured.
On another occasion one of the patients complained of asthma. The paroxysms destroyed his sleep at night and prevented him from performing any task which entailed exertion. Walking upstairs was a slow process attended by considerable distress. The experiment with the hands was so successfully performed that Coué assured him of immediate relief.