Love Cures

BY Neil Eskelin

Early in the 20th century, two young medical school graduates and their father started a small sanitarium for mental patients on a farm outside Topeka, Kansas. This was a time with the "rest cure" was in vouge in psychiatry, and patients were sent to impersonal institutions to life out their days.

This father and his sons had a different idea. They were determined to create a loving, family atmosphere among their patients and staff. The nurses were given special training and were told "Let each person know how much you value them. Shower these people with love."

The doctors were Karl and William Menninger, and the Minninger Clinic, with such "revolutionary" methods, became world famous and has helped countless numbers of people. Karl Menninger said, "Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it. This intangible thing love...enters into every theraputic relationship. It is an element which finds and heals, which comforts and restores, which works what we have to call for now, miracles."