I was just a little begger, about four-years old and living on the farm with my family when this story begins.

A wart had came from nowhere and grew on the knuckle of the forefinger on my right hand. It was a big gruesome looking thing and an incredible nuisense for someone as young as I to have.

Being a very, active child I was forever banging my finger and the wart which kept it perpetually, sore, cracked and bleeding. Finally, my Mom, could stand my whining about it no-longer and one day said: 'Come here, Glen! You be careful, but take my sewing scissors and cut a corner off of my dish cloth('Rag,' she called it)then take a walk down around and through the garden out back and throw the piece of cloth over your shoulder BUT don't look where it lands.'

Even, sixty-one years later I can remember cutting the cloth with the big pair of scissors and my sore knuckle banging into the metal handle. Somehow, my small hands managed the task and I set-off out the door and followed her instructions to-the-letter - - and promptly forgot all about doing it. Sometime later, perhaps, several weeks, she asked me how my wart was doing. I looked at my finger and was totally amazed to find that it was almost gone and indeed it did, soon, disappear completely.

A little later in life when we had moved from the farm into the village I had another experience with warts. About seven or eight had formed on the back my left hand and were quite large and a real nuisense. I followed another recipe that my cousin told me about and in short-order they, too, had vanished. I was very impressed, needless to say.

Years later as I started to get more-curious about life I would read articles on psychic-phenomena or 'mind-over-matter' as most called it. It seems that the experts who have studied warts over the years have found that they are caused by a virus and there is a possibility that they may indeed be 'wished-away', as my Mom called it many years ago. You just have to do something physical to re-enforce your belief that it can happen. I might add here that there are no religious connotations involved.

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Fast-tracking ahead about fifty-five years I have been told that I have colon-cancer and that if I want my life to continue that I must have surgery and have the offending 'beast' removed.

CANCER! One of the most terrible and scary words in our language and one that no one wishes to hear in conjunction with anyone they know or themselves. It frightened the hell out of me and I was sure that I had been handed a death-sentence.

In the month leading up to my successful surgery and six-month course of radiation and Chemo' I was very concerned about my chances for survival. I needed an EDGE to get me through this! Somewhere, over the years, I had read that in all likelihood, cancer too, is caused by a virus. A non-communicable one, it seems, but somehow experts are thinking that this maybe is so. I thought one day, if it worked on my warts, maybe it will do the same for my cancer??

One cold, January day I took a long walk up-around our driveway. Six years later, and counting, my wife has never mentioned losing the corner from her dish-cloth, back then. I doubt if she ever noticed it.

Glen E. Smith - AKA Ed -  Nov. 3 - 07