[...WHEN PALMING IS SUCCESSFUL

Although black is, as a rule, the easiest color to remember, for
reasons explained in the next chapter, the following method sometimes
succeeds when the memory of black fails: Remember a variety of colors
- bright red, yellow, green, blue, purple, white especially - all in
the most intense shade possible. Do not attempt to hold any of them
more than a second. Keep this up for five or ten minutes. Then
remember a piece of starch about half an inch in diameter as white as
possible. Note the color of the background. Usually it will be a shade
of black. If it is, note whether it is possible to remember anything
blacker, or to see anything blacker with the eyes open. In all cases
when the white starch is remembered perfectly the background will be
so black that it will be impossible to remember anything blacker with
the eyes closed, or to see anything blacker with them open.

When palming is successful it is one of the best methods I know of for
securing relaxation of all the sensory nerves, including those of
sight. When perfect relaxation is gained in this way, as indicated by
the ability to see a perfect black, it is completely retained when the
eyes are opened, and the patient is permanently cured. At the same
time pain in the eyes and head, and even in other parts of the body,
is permanently relieved. Such cases are very rare, but they do occur.
With a lesser degree of relaxation much of it is lost when the eyes
are opened, and what is retained is not held permanently. In other
words, the greater the degree of the relaxation produced by palming
the more of it is retained when the eyes are opened and the longer it
lasts. If you palm perfectly, you retain, when you open your eyes, all
of the relaxation that you gain, and you do not lose it again. If you
palm imperfectly, you retain only part of what you gain and retain it
only temporarily - it may be only for a few moments. Even the smallest
degree of relaxation is useful, however, for by means of it a still
greater degree may be obtained.

Patients who succeed with palming from the beginning are to be
congratulated, for they are always cured very quickly. A very
remarkable case of this kind was that of a man nearly seventy years of
age with compound hypermetropic astigmatism and presbyopia,
complicated by incipient cataract. For more than forty years he had
worn glasses to improve his distant vision, and for twenty years he
had worn them for reading and desk work. Because of the cloudiness of
the lens, he had now become unable to see well enough to do his work,
even with glasses; and the other physicians whom he had consulted had
given him no hope of relief except by operation when the cataract was
ripe. When he found palming helped him, he asked:

"Can I do that too much?"

"No," he was told. "Palming is simply a means of resting your eyes,
and you cannot rest them too much."

A few days later he returned and said:

"Doctor, it was tedious, very tedious; but I did it."

"What was tedious?" I asked.

"Palming," he replied. "I did it continuously for twenty hours."

"But you couldn't have kept it up for twenty hours continuously," I
said incredulously. "You must have stopped to eat."

TEDIOUS BUT WORTH WHILE

And then he related that from four o'clock in the morning until twelve
at night he had eaten nothing only drinking large quantities of water,
and had devoted practically all of the time to palming. It must have
been tedious, as he said, but it was also worth while. When he looked
at the test card, without glasses, he read the bottom line at twenty
feet. He also read fine print at six inches and at twenty. The
cloudiness of the lens had become much less, and in the center had
entirely disappeared. Two years later there had been no relapse.

Although the majority of patients are helped by palming, a minority
are unable to see black, and only increase their strain by trying to
get relaxation in this way. In most cases it is possible, by using
some or all of the various methods outlined in this chapter, to enable
the patient to palm successfully; but if much difficulty is
experienced, it is usually better and more expeditious to drop the
method until the sight has been improved by other means. The patient
may then become able to see black when he palms, but some never
succeed in doing it until they are cured...]

- W.H. Bates, "Palming"