In each of the above cases the general state of health showed a great improvement. The child put on weight, was cheerful and bright even under the trying conditions of convalescence in a poverty-stricken home, and in character and disposition fully realised the suggestions formulated to it.
Since the suggestions of Mlle. Kauffmant are applied individually, the mothers were permitted to enter and leave the clinic at any time they wished. Mademoiselle was present on certain days every week, but this was not the sum of her labours. The greater part of her spare time was spent in visiting the little ones in their own homes. She penetrated into the dingiest tenements, the poorest slums, on this errand of mercy. I was able to accompany her on several of these visits, and saw her everywhere received not only with welcome, but with a respect akin to awe. She was regarded, almost as much as Coué himself, as a worker of miracles. But the reputation of both Coué and Mlle. Kauffmant rests on a broader basis even than autosuggestion, namely on their great goodness of heart.
They have placed not only their private means, but their whole life at the service of others. Neither ever accepts a penny-piece for the treatments they give, and I have never seen Coué refuse to give a treatment at however awkward an hour the subject may have asked it. The fame of the school has now spread to all parts not only of France, but of Europe and America. Coué's work has assumed such proportions that his time is taken up often to the extent of fifteen or sixteen hours a day. He is now nearing his seventieth year, but thanks to the health-giving powers of his own method he is able to keep abreast of his work without any sign of fatigue and without the clouding of his habitual cheerfulness by even the shadow of a complaint. In fact, he is a living monument to the efficacy of Induced Autosuggestion.
It will be seen that Induced Autosuggestion is a method by which the mind can act directly upon itself and upon the body to produce whatever improvements, in reason, we desire. That it is efficient and successful should be manifest from what has gone before. Of all the questions which arise, the most urgent from the viewpoint of the average man seems to be this—Is a suggester necessary? Must one submit oneself to the influence of some other person, or can one in the privacy of one's own chamber exercise with equal success this potent instrument of health?
Coué's own opinion has already been quoted. Induced Autosuggestion is not dependent upon the mediation of another person. We can practise it for ourselves without others being even aware of what we are doing, and without devoting to it more than a few minutes of each day.
Here are a few quotations from letters written by those who have thus practised it for themselves.
"For a good many years now a rheumatic right shoulder has made it impossible for me to sleep on my right side and it seriously affected, and increasingly so, the use of my right arm. A masseuse told me she could effect no permanent improvement as there was granulation of the joints and a lesion. I suddenly realised two days ago that this shoulder no longer troubled me and that I was sleeping on that side without any pain. I have now lost any sensation of rheumatism in this shoulder and can get my right arm back as far as the other without the slightest twinge or discomfort. I have not applied any remedy or done anything that could possibly have worked these results except my practise of Coué."
L. S. (Sidmouth, Devon).
1 January, 1922.
"At my suggestion a lady friend of mine who had been ill for a good ten years read La Maîtrise de soi-meme. I encouraged her as well as I could, and in a month she was transformed. Her husband, returning from a long journey, could not believe his eyes. This woman who never got up till midday, who never left the fire-side, whom the doctors had given up, now goes out at 10 a.m. even in the greatest cold. Other friends are anxiously waiting to read your pamphlet.
L. C. (Paris).
17 December, 1921.