One man's service in restoring eyesight to millions has grown into a big institution and may become a movement in South India. The wonders of modern medicine are inconceivable. Back in the 1930's, losing one's sight was considered to be one's karma and was silently suffered. People would be ashamed of speaking out their diseases, as it revealed their own heinous crimes in past lives! It is no longer so.
There was a poor weaver whose eyesight was failing. He would not let it be known. When both eyes lost their sight and he needed help to move, it could no longer be hidden from the other members of his family. In the local temple, there was a Mutt. Its head was a Tamil scholar of wide renown. Spiritual power was attributed to him. This weaver often attended his lecturers.
He mustered courage to speak to the head of the Mutt about his growing blindness. Without answering the weaver, he asked him to come back on a fixed day. The weaver returned on the appointed day. The saint handed over to him a paper of 30 verses on Shiva and asked him to go round the Pataleeswar temple every day reciting one verse a day. The poor weaver had faith in the man and did so as ordered.
Those were days when people had greater faith in such remedies than in the doctor. He went round the temple holding his son's hands as many times as was prescribed.
He fully regained the sight in both eyes.
No one would believe such an advice today when a medical remedy is available. Medical remedy has its limits. Though faith has unlimited powers, man's faith is variously limited in various periods.