My recovery

Experience, they say, is the most convincing teacher, and I would like to begin with details of my
own case history as a means of indicating the major health problems that nature cure can
overcome. While doing my intermediate arts, at the age of 16, I contracted two serious illness -
pleurisy and typhoid fever - simultaneously. Having run their course for about 45 days, both
ailments left me so debilitated that I had to dis- continue my studies for one year, on medical
advice.
My recovery was gradually but not complete, as I developed heartburn and breathing problems.
At 28 came the worst crisis, when I suffered a stroke in the early hours of an extremely hot day
in May after acute heartburn throughout the night. The stroke made the left side of my body
extremely heavy and weak, and the attending physician referred my case to a well- known
neurosurgeon, suspecting a brain tumour. For nearly two months I lay helpless in the special
ward of a reputed hospital, undergoing several tests and at the same time observing around me
frequent deaths following unsuccessful brain surgery. Finally, having twice failed to inject air
through the spinal cord for taking X-rays of the brain, the specialist decided to make holes in my
skull for that purpose and even operate if necessary. Fortunately for me, the specialist had to
attend a medical conference elsewhere and, therefore, instructed his assistant to try the
newly-introduced method of cerebral angiography, which involved injecting dye through an
exposed vein in the neck to enable X-raying of veins in the brain. When these X-rays did not
reveal anything abnormal, I was allowed to go, but not before the harrowing experience had left
me a complete nervous wreck.