Having fruitlessly sought health in various nerve and mental hospitals for several years, when I entered another mental hospital in the year 1955, I settled down hopelessly to its dreary routine. Shortly after my arrival, the chief medical superintendent underlined his comment that I could not last five minutes outside by having me certified as insane and in need of care and protection. Though I was convinced of the injustice of this, the stigma of this additional emotional wound was quite sufficient to worsen my condition.
I consoled myself by practicing Braillewriting in the company of an inmate who was losing his sight and by scouring the dusty ward bookcases in search of reading matter. The bookcases yielded two books that were to have an incredible influence on my life; one was the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and the other was a book about the Canary Islands.
There were between one and two thousand patients in the hospital, but I had no rival claimant for these two books, which I read almost continually in the seemingly endless time available. The effect of the first book was that it brought bright, new hopes; the second brought a yearning to be free to live in the beautiful, sunny Canary Islands.
