by William W. Atkinson

The Power Of The Imagination

Dr. G. R. Patton, in an address before the Wabasha County (Minn.) Medical Society, gives the following interesting case of the effect of faith and expectant attention, or Suggestion: He said: “While surgeon of a Cincinnati hospital one of the messenger boys was often disobedient of orders. The sister superior once asked me how to punish him. I suggested putting him to bed and making him sick with medicine. My advice was acted upon with alacrity. A teaspoonful of colored water was given him every fifteen minutes. With assumed gravity, I ordered the nurse, in the boy’s presence, to keep giving the medicine until he became sick and vomited. Within an hour he vomited profusely…. A funny incident illustrative of the faith and confidence sometimes reposed in the medical man and his power in curing disease, happened in my first year of practice. An Irish laborer, much given to profanity, came to my office, with a cold on his chest. I prescribed a soothing mixture and a liniment of camphor, ammonia and soap. A few days later, meeting him on the street, I asked him if the medicine had cured him all right. He replied with enthusiasm, ‘Oh! yes, yes, it acted most beautifully and cured me pretty d——d quick, but it was awful hot stuff, for it burned in my throat like hell-fire itself.’ I knew at once, but did not tell him, that he had been swallowing the liniment of camphor, hartshorn and soap, and rubbing the cough mixture on the outside. His faith was even stronger than the liniment, and cured him in spite of the blunder.

“Perhaps the most wonderful confirmation came under my observation while wintering in San Antonio, Texas, in 1880. Some nostrum fakirs with a retinue of fourteen musicians and comedians came to this city in an immense chariot, drawn by eight gaily caparisoned horses. Every evening they came upon the military plaza to sell their panacea. I went over one evening out of curiosity, being attracted by the songs and music. The head fakir was shouting to an immense crowd about the virtues of his specific. He claimed that it contained thirteen ingredients, gathered at a great expense from all quarters of the globe, and would cure all the ills that flesh was heir to. Cures were warranted in every case, or the money refunded on the following evening. After this harangue, he said that the medicine was for sale at $1 per bottle, until 300 bottles had been sold, as it was an invariable rule to sell only that number on any one evening. Immediately a frenzied mob rushed pell-mell to the end of the chariot, each one holding aloft a silver dollar. He had previously announced that no change would be made, and that every one to get the medicine should have a dollar ready in his hand. In half an hour 300 bottles had been sold, the empty trunk closed with a bang, and the statement made that no more could be had until the following evening, although there was yet a great multitude clamoring for more. Curiosity again led me to the plaza the next evening, and I went early. The initial performance was a free tooth-pulling, to last thirty minutes. He said he was the kingpin of the tooth-pullers, and I believe he was. The rapidity of his work was a marvel. He snatched from various jaws about 250 teeth, including the good ones, within the limit, throwing them from his forceps right and left among his audience. Those operated upon were wrought to such a frenzy of excitement and wonder that each one, without an exception, declared that no pain whatever had been experienced. A call was then made for the 300 who had bought medicine on the previous evening to mount the chariot and tell what the medicine had done for them.

“From every quarter men and women pressed forward to give their experience. Their stories were grotesque and curious enough, but no matter what their ailments, cures had resulted in every case. At the end of half an hour, while the experience meeting was at its acme, the fakir abruptly closed it, saying, in a regretful voice, that the rest would have to wait until the next evening to tell of their cures, as he now wanted those to come forward who had not been cured by the medicine bought on the previous evening. He stood in silence with folded arms for three minutes. No one having come forward, the voice of this arrant charlatan rang out in stentorian tones, ‘All, all have been cured! We have cured everyone!’ Then another 300 bottles were sold in a jiffy, I myself being one of the fortunate purchasers. The chief of this outfit stopped in the hotel where I was. After dinner the next day, I made his acquaintance in the smoking room, saying I was a doctor, too; that I had attended two of his soirees, bought his medicine and was greatly interested in it. I surprised him by the statement that his medicine was made by M. & Co., wholesale druggists of Cincinnati, and that it was fluid extract of podophyllin. He stared for some moments, but made no reply. I continued, ‘I know M.’s fluid extract, as his process of its manufacture is peculiar, and differs from other manufacturers in this, that he exhausts the root by percolation with alcohol, ether and glycerine, giving the product a sweetish taste and a slight ethereal odor.’ The man asked if I was also a chemist. I replied, ‘Yes, I once lectured in a medical college in Cincinnati on drugs and their uses, and I can readily tell fluid extracts by their taste, odor and physical characteristics.’

“After some hesitation, he said, ‘Yes, this is M.’s podophyllin and nothing else.’ I inquired if he attributed all his success to the medicine. He answered, ‘No, for once in Missouri the mandrake ran out before a new lot arrived. We found something like it in a drug store of the town, and the people got well just the same. If the people believe you can cure them, and have faith in your medicine, they get well anyway, or they think they do, which is the same thing.’ The fakirs remained one week, sold 2,100 bottles, and presumably cured 2,100 people, as no one came forward to reclaim his dollar for the medicine, which was contained in a two-drachm vial of 120 drops. A dose was one drop after each meal in one spoonful of water.

“When I was in California recently a friend mentioned that an intelligent relative of his was being treated by a celebrated Chinese doctor. The relative claimed that Chinese physicians were better than our own; that they had devoted 5,000 years to medicine and had thus become so learned and skillful that they could tell all diseases without asking a single question, simply by feeling the pulse. Out of curiosity I visited this physician, ostensibly as a patient. Without so declaring myself, he knew intuitively that I came to consult him. Without asking any questions he placed his finger upon my right wrist, communed with himself for a few moments, and then gravely informed me that I had thirty-seven diseases; some in the blood, some in the brain, some in the kidneys, some in the liver, and many others in the heart and lungs. He said it would take sixteen different herbs to cure me. He volunteered the statement that he could detect 6,000 diseases by the pulse alone, and that he used 400 herbs in the treatment of the various diseases. Upon his request, I examined his portfolio containing 350 testimonials of marvelous cures, wrought upon American residents of California during his seventeen years’ practice on the coast. Many of them were from parties of intelligence and eminence, and were so extraordinary that nothing short of their being attested by numerous witnesses of unimpeachable veracity, could satisfy one of their truth. Now, permit me to say that I have no pulse in the right wrist, the pulse being congenitally absent; but through it he made the pretense of locating so many diseases. This doubtless is the form and character of medical practice in China among the native Chinamen, and probably has been for many centuries among a population of 400,000,000. Is not the logic from the above facts irresistible, that in China the native physician cannot tell one disease from another, and that all his work is simply nonsense and guess work? There can be no escape from this conclusion – it follows as lucidly as a demonstrated problem in Euclid – that any benefit that may ever accrue from their treatment is wholly due to the dynamic force of the brain upon the functions of the body.”

The following, from a Philadelphia journal, gives a striking illustration of the fact that the imagination is a real factor in many cases of physical ailment: “The fact that the throes of the imagination under great nervous excitement often produce a corresponding physical frenzy was illustrated recently in the case of a man who had gone to sleep with his artificial teeth in his mouth. Waking suddenly with a choking sensation, he found his teeth had disappeared. He looked in the glass of water where they were usually deposited, did not see them and realized they must be far down his throat. Choking and struggling, he hammered on the door of a friend sleeping in the house, who, seeing his critical condition, vainly tried to draw the teeth out of the sufferer’s throat. He could feel the teeth, but had not the strength to extract them. He ran for a blacksmith who lived a few doors away, but the blacksmith’s hand was too big to put into the man’s mouth. A doctor had been sent for, but he was so long in coming that the victim of the accident seemed likely to die of suffocation before the physician arrived. A little girl of ten years was brought under the impression that her small hand might reach the obstacle and withdraw it, but she got frightened and began to cry. The sufferer became black in the face, his throat swelled out, and his friends expected every moment to be his last, when finally the doctor arrived. He heard the history of the case, saw that the teeth were not in the man’s jaws nor in their nightly receptacle, felt the throat and cast his eyes seriously upon the floor. There, on the floor, he saw the whole set of teeth. He adjusted them to the jaws of the patient, told him to breathe freely, and every symptom of suffocation disappeared.”

The following from an Eastern journal illustrates another phase of the subject: “Saltpetriere, the hospital for nervous diseases, made famous by the investigations of Dr. Charcot, has an interesting case of religious mania. The patient, who is a woman of about forty years of age, entertains the belief that she is crucified, and this belief has caused a contraction of the muscles of the feet of such a nature that she can walk only on tip-toe. The patient, moreover, is subject occasionally to the still more extraordinary manifestation – that of ‘stigmata.’ Instances of ‘stigmata’ are tolerably frequent in the ‘Lives of the Saints’ of alleged supernatural marks on the body in imitation of the wounds of Christ. These ‘stigmata’ have been observed beyond all question on the woman at the Saltpetriere. Their appearance on the body coincides with the return of the most solemn religious anniversaries. These ‘stigmata’ are so visible that it has been possible to photograph them. The doctors of the Saltpetriere in order to assure themselves that these manifestations were not the result of trickery, contrived a sort of shade having a glass front and metal sides, and capable of being hermetically attached to the body by means of India rubber fixings. These shades were placed in position a considerable time before the dates at which the stigmata are wont to appear. When they were affixed there were no marks whatever on the patient’s body, but at the expected period the ‘stigmata’ were visible as usual through the glass.”

In a Southern journal there is reported an interesting case, in which a New Orleans physician tells the following story: “A nervous man recently called on me and asked, ‘In what part of the abdomen are the premonitory pains of appendicitis felt?’ ‘On the left side, exactly here,’ I replied, indicating a spot a little above the point of the hip bone. He went out, and next afternoon I was summoned in hot haste to the St. Charles hotel. I found the planter writhing on his bed, his forehead beaded with sweat, and his whole appearance indicating intense suffering. ‘I have an attack of appendicitis,’ he groaned, ‘and I’m a dead man! I’ll never survive an operation!’ ‘Where do you feel the pain?’ I asked. ‘Oh, right here,’ he replied, putting his finger on the spot I had located at the office. ‘I feel as if somebody had a knife in me turning it around.’ ‘Well, then, it isn’t appendicitis, at any rate,’ I said cheerfully, ‘because it is the wrong side.’ ‘The wrong side!’ he exclaimed, glaring at me indignantly. ‘Why, you told me yourself it was on the left side!’ ‘Then I must have been abstracted,’ I replied calmly; ‘I should have said the right side.’ I prescribed something that wouldn’t hurt him, and learned afterward that he ate his dinner in the dining room the same evening. Oh! yes; he was no doubt in real pain when I called, but you can make your finger ache merely by concentrating your attention on it for a few moments.”

Frank F. Moore, in “A Journalist’s Note Book” tells the following amusing and significant story of the influence of imagination upon health. “A young civil servant in India, feeling fagged from the excessive heat and from long hours of work consulted the best doctor within reach. The doctor looked him over, sounded his heart and lungs, and then said gravely: ‘I will write you tomorrow.’ The next day the young man received a letter telling him that his left lung was gone and his heart seriously affected, and advising him to lose no time in adjusting his business affairs. ‘Of course, you may live for weeks,’ the latter said, ‘but you had best not leave important matters undecided.’ Naturally the young official was dismayed by so dark a prognosis – nothing less than a death warrant. Within twenty-four hours he was having difficulty with his respiration, and was seized with an acute pain in the region of the heart. He took to his bed with the feeling that he should never rise from it. During the night he became so much worse that his servant sent for the doctor. ‘What on earth have you been doing to yourself?’ demanded the doctor. ‘There were no indications of this sort when I saw you yesterday?’ ‘It is my heart, I suppose,’ weakly answered the patient. ‘Your heart!’ repeated the doctor. ‘Your heart was all right yesterday.’ ‘My lungs, then.’ ‘What is the matter with you, man? You don’t seem to have been drinking?’ ‘Your letter,’ gasped the patient. ‘You said I had only a few weeks to live.’ ‘Are you crazy?’ said the doctor. ‘I wrote you to take a few weeks vacation in the hills, and you would be all right.’ For reply the patient drew the letter from under the bedclothes and gave it to the doctor. ‘Heavens!’ cried that gentleman as he glanced at it. ‘This was meant for another man! My assistant has mixed up the letters.’ The young man at once sat up in bed and made a rapid recovery. And what of the patient for whom the direful prognosis was intended? Delighted with the report that a sojourn in the hills would set him right, he started at once, and five years later was alive and in fair health.”

The following is clipped from a medical journal: “Some physician makes use of this suggestive phrase – ‘the dynamic power of an idea,’ and, as an illustration of what is meant by this expression, the following incident is related. Not long ago a man in taking medicine was suddenly possessed by the notion that he had by mistake taken arsenic. His wife insisted to the contrary, but he proceeded to manifest all the peculiar symptoms of arsenical poisoning, and finally died. So certain was his wife that he had not taken arsenic that an autopsy was held, when not an atom of the poison could be found. Of what did this man die? Arsenic? No, of the dynamic power of an idea of arsenic. Happily for humanity this dynamic power of ideas works constructively no less certainly than it does destructively, and an idea of health fixed in the consciousness and persistently adhered to would tend to bring the best results. Over a hundred years ago, old John Hunter said, ‘As the state of mind is capable of producing disease, another state of it may effect a cure.’”

Dr. William C. Prime relates the following case in his book “Among the Northern Hills.” “The judge was summoned in a hurry to see an old lady who had managed her farm for forty years since her husband’s death. She had two sons, and a stepson, John, who was not an admirable person. After a long drive on a stormy night the judge found the old lady apparently just alive, and was told by the doctor in attendance to hurry, as his patient was very weak. The judge brought paper and ink with him. He found a stand and a candle, placed them at the head of the bed, and after saying a few words to the woman, told her he was ready to prepare the will if she would go on and tell him what she wanted him to do. He wrote the introductory phrase rapidly, and leaning over toward her said, ‘Now, go on, Mrs. Norton.’

“Her voice was quite faint, and she seemed to speak with an effort. She said: ‘First of all, I want to give the farm to my sons, Harry and James. Just put that down.’ ‘But,’ said the judge, ‘you can’t do that, Mrs. Norton. The farm isn’t yours to give away.’ ‘The farm isn’t mine?’ she said in a voice decidedly stronger than before. ‘No, the farm isn’t yours. You have only a life interest in it.’ ‘This farm that I’ve run for goin’ on forty-three years next spring isn’t mine to do with what I please with it? Why not, Judge I’d like to know what you mean!’ ‘Why, Mr. Norton, your husband, gave you a life estate in all his property, and on your death the farm goes to his son, John, and your children get the village houses. I have explained that to you very often before.’ ‘And when I die, John Norton is to have this house and farm whether I will or not?’ ‘Just so. It will be his.’ ‘Then I ain’t goin’ to die!’ said the old woman, in a clear and decidedly ringing and healthy voice. And so saying, she threw her feet over the front of the bed, sat up, gathered a blanket and coverlet about her, straightened her gaunt form, walked across the room and sat down in a great chair before the fire.

“The doctor and the judge went home. That was fifteen years ago. The old lady is alive today. And she accomplished her intent, She beat John after all. He died four years ago.”

The Power Of Belief And Suggestion

The writer has been informed by a prominent physician of Chicago, that for many years he has been in the habit of administering hypodermic injections of distilled water, accompanying the same by the statement that he is injecting morphine. He states that in every case, he has succeeded in inducing a quiet, peaceful sleep, and a cessation of pain after the injection, which can be attributed only to the belief of the patient. The same physician also relates the case of a woman who believed that she had taken strychnine by mistake. When the doctor was called he found the woman manifesting every symptom of strychnine poisoning, even down to the most minute details, and he is of the opinion that death would have ensued in a short time had he not proceeded to administer the regular antidotes and restorative treatment. After the woman was brought out of the condition, it was discovered that the supposed strychnine was nothing but a harmless powder. In relating the case, the physician always adds that the woman had witnessed the death struggles of a dog which had been poisoned by strychnine several months previous, which might have had some effect in enabling her to unconsciously counterfeit the symptoms.

Dr. Max Eastman, in a recent magazine article says: “The mission of this paper is to offer guidance in a matter about which a great quantity of the general public is very much at sea. In this question of ‘mind over matter,’ the reformers have done their work. They have stirred things up. They have bestowed upon the world about a hundred and fifty little religions and a confused idea that there must be some truth in the matter somewhere. The ignorant have done their work. They have persecuted the believers, jeered at them, or damned them with a vacuous smile. The world will never lack ballast. It is only the scientists that have failed of their duty. They have stalked through a routine of elevated lectures, written a few incomprehensible books, and kept the science of psychology, so far as the hungry world goes, sealed up in their own proud bosoms. In all this uproar of faith cures, and miracles, and shouting prophets, we have heard few illuminating words from the universities. The consequence is that we are without a helm, and the reform blows now one way and now another….

“The law of suggestion, which is one of the great discoveries of modern science, was first formulated by Dr. Liebault at Paris, in a book published in 1866. Since his day the number of physicians who practice ‘suggestive therapeutics’ has steadily increased, until today no thorough clinical hospital is without a professional suggestionist. It is one of the simplest and coolest of scientific theories. It is a question of the relation between the brain and the bodily organs. It seems never to have been clearly stated that healing disease by suggestion depends not in the least degree upon any theory of the relation of mind and matter…. The attempt to fix an idea in the mind without reason is suggestion. It is accomplished usually in medical practice by asking the patient to lie down and relax his body and his mind and then vigorously stating to him the desired idea. It may be accomplished in a number of ways. The patient may be told that the operator is a wizard and is about to transfer an idea from his own mind to that of the patient. If the patient believes him he will very likely accept the idea. It may be accomplished by gestures or incantations which the patient regards with superstitious awe, provided it is explained beforehand what these gestures are meant to produce. It may be accomplished by sitting with him for awhile in silence, provided he knows what to expect.

“All these methods, if one believes in them, are good, and they prove by their success the law of suggestion. But the method that is based on a sure truth is the method of the scientist. He reasons with his patient, he stirs in him what moral or religious enthusiasm he can, and to these means he adds tactfully the subtle suggestive powers of his own presence and eloquence. This force, together with the power which is revealed in a man of correcting his own mental habits, is the greatest practical discovery of modern psychology…. Suggestive therapeutics is the use of suggestion to fix in the mind ideas of healthy mental habits….

“Our question is: can the physical conditions of the brain affect the physical condition of the stomach? We know that the brain-building condition which accompanies the idea of raising our hand can affect the condition of the muscles of our arm – and we call that a voluntary function. Now the question is whether the brain condition which accompanies the idea of enlivening our stomach can have an effect upon that involuntary function. Experiments with suggestion have proved that in some cases it can, if it continues long enough. Persons of a very suggestible nature, can, for instance, by concentrating their mind upon a certain part of the body, increase the flow of blood to that part, although the regulation of blood flow is supposed to be entirely involuntary. The action of the heart, also the movements of the digestive organs particularly, and of the organs of elimination, are almost directly affected in suggestible persons by that change in their brains which accompanies certain ideas…. Science has established then, that suggestion can effect to some extent, the so-called involuntary functions of the body; but the extent or limitation of these effects is by no means determined. It could not be determined scientifically without years of diligent experiment and tabulation. Any dogmatic statement upon one side or the other of that question, is therefore premature and against the spirit of science.”

Dr. Krafft-Ebing has produced a rise from 37 degrees centigrade to 38.5 degrees centigrade in patients by fixing their minds by suggestion. In the same way Binet lowered the temperature 10 degrees centigrade. The latter authority says: “How can it be, when one merely says to the patient: ‘Your hand will become cold,’ and the vasomotor system answers by constricting the artery?” Schofield commenting on the above, says: “Indeed there is no way of accounting for such a phenomena but by freely admitting the presence of unconscious psychic forces in the body, capable of so influencing the structures of the body as to produce physical changes.” Tuke says: “A lady saw a child in immediate danger of having its ankle crushed by an iron gate. She was greatly agitated, but could not move, owing to intense pain coming on in her corresponding ankle. She walked home with difficulty, took off her stocking and found a circle around the ankle of a light red color, with a large red spot on the outer side. By the morning her whole foot was inflamed, and she had to remain in bed for some days. A young woman witnessing the lancing of an abscess in the axilla immediately felt pain in that region, followed by inflammation. Dr. Marmise of Bordeaux tells us of a lady’s maid, who when the surgeon put his lancet into her mistress’s arm to bleed her, felt the prick in her own arm, and shortly after there appeared a bruise at the spot.”

It is related that St. Francis d’Assisi dwelt so long in concentrated meditation upon the thought and picture of the Crucifixion that he suffered intense pain in his hands and feet, at the points corresponding to the place of the nails in the hands and feet of Christ, which was afterward followed by marked inflammation at those points, terminating in actual ulceration. Prof. Barrett says of the phenomenon: “It is not so well known, but it is nevertheless the fact, that utterly startling physiological changes can be produced in a hypnotized subject merely by conscious or unconscious mental suggestion. Thus a red scar or a painful burn, or even a figure of a definite shape, such as a cross or an initial, can be caused to appear on the body of the entranced subject solely through suggesting the idea. By creating some local disturbance of the blood vessel in the skin, the unconscious self has done what would be impossible for the conscious to perform. And so in the well-attested cases of stigmata, where a close resemblance to the wounds of the body of the crucified Savior appears on the body of the ecstatic. This is a case of unconscious self-suggestion, arising from the intent and adoring gaze of the ecstatic upon the bleeding figure on the crucifix.”

Dr. Schofield says: “The breath is altered by the emotions. The short quiet breath of joy contrasts with the long sigh of relief after breathless suspense. Joy gives eupnœa or easy breathing, grief or rather fear tends to dyspnœa or difficult breathing. Sobbing goes with grief, laughter with joy, and one often merges into the other. Yawning is produced by pure idea or by seeing it, as well as by fatigue. Dr. Morton Prince says a lady he knew always had violent catarrh in the nose (hay fever) if a rose was in the room. He gave her an artificial one and the usual symptoms followed. How many cases of hay fever have a somewhat similar origin in the unconscious mind?… The hair may be turned gray and white by emotion in a few hours or sooner. With regard to the stomach and digestion, apart from actual disease, we may notice one or two instances of unconscious mind action. A man who was very sea-sick lost a valuable set of artificial teeth overboard, and was instantly cured. If the thoughts are strongly directed to the intestinal canal, as by bread-pills, it will produce strong peristaltic action. Vomiting occurs from mental causes, apart from organic brain disease. Bad news will produce nausea; emotion also, or seeing another person vomit, or certain smells or ideas, or thoughts about a sea-voyage, etc., or the thought that an emetic has been taken…. The thought of an acid fruit will fill the mouth with water. A successful way of stopping discordant street music is to suck a lemon within a full view of a German band. Fear will so dry the throat that dry rice cannot be swallowed. This is a test in India for the detection of a murderer. The suspected man is brought forward and given a handful of dry rice to swallow. If he can do this he is innocent; if he cannot he is guilty, fear having dried up his mouth…. A young lady who could not be cured of vomiting was engaged to be married. On being told that the wedding day must be postponed till cured, the vomiting ceased…. A mother nursing her child always found the milk secreted when she heard the child crying for any length of time. Fear stops the secretion of milk, and worry will entirely change its character, so as to become injurious to the child.”

Maudsley says: “Perhaps we do not as physicians consider sufficiently the influence of mental states in the production of disease, their importance as symptoms; or realize all the advantages which we take of them in our efforts to cure disease. Quackery seems to have got hold of a truth which legitimate medicine fails to appreciate or use adequately.” Dr. Buckley says: “A doctor was called to see a lady with severe rheumatism, and tried to extemporize a vapor bath in bed, with an old tin pipe and a tea kettle; and only succeeded in scalding the patient with the boiling water proceeding from the overfull kettle through the pipe. The patient screamed: ‘Doctor, you have scalded me,’ and leaped out of bed. But the rheumatism was cured, and did not return.” Tuke relates an amusing instance of the effect of suggestion and faith upon warts. He had been considering the subject of the various “pow-wows” or “wart-cures” of the old women, and determined to try some experiments in order to see whether these cures were not due simply to mental influences and expectant attention. On an official tour he visited an asylum, where he was regarded as a great personage by reason of his office. He noticed that several of the inmates were afflicted with warts, and muttering a few words over the excresences, he told the owners that by such and such a day the warts would have completely disappeared. He forgot the circumstances, owing to the press of his official duties, and was agreeably surprised when, on his next round of visits, he was told that his patients had been cured at the time he had predicted. Nearly everyone has had some personal acquaintance with some of these “pow-wow” wart cures, in one form or another. Tying a knot in a piece of cord, then rubbing the wart with it, and burying the string, has cured thousands of cases of warts – the suggestion being the real cause behind the mask.

Ferassi cured fifty cases of ague by a charm, which consisted merely of a piece of paper with the word “Febrifuge” written on it. The patient was directed to clip off one letter of the word each day until cured. Some patients recovered as soon as the first “F” was clipped from the paper. The writer hereof knows personally of a number of people having been cured of fever and ague by means of a written “charm” which an old man in Philadelphia sold them at a dollar a copy. The old man informed him that he, “and his father before him” had cured thousands of people in this way, making a comfortable living from the practice. Dr. Gerbe, of Paris, cured 401 out of 629 cases of toothache by masked suggestion administered in the form of causing the patients to crush a small insect between their fingers, after having strongly impressed upon them the fact that this was an infallible cure.

Dr. Schofield reports the following interesting cases of cures by autosuggestion and faith: “A surgeon took into a hospital ward some time ago, a little boy who had kept his bed for five years, having hurt his spine in a fall. He had been all the time totally paralyzed in the legs, and could not feel when they were touched or pinched; nor could he move them in the least degree. After careful examination, the doctor explained minutely to the boy the awful nature of the electric battery, and told him to prepare for its application the next day. At the same time he showed him a sixpence, and sympathizing with his state, told him that the sixpence should be his if, notwithstanding, he should have improved enough the next day to walk leaning on and pushing a chair, which would also save the need of the battery. In two weeks the boy was running races in the park, and his cure was reported in the ‘Lancet.’ … A woman was brought on a couch into a London hospital by two ladies, who said she had been suffering from incurable paralysis of the spine for two years, and having exhausted all their means in nursing her, they now sought to get her admitted, pending her removal to a home for incurables. In two hours I had cured her by agencies which owed all their virtue to their influence on the mind, and I walked with the woman half a mile up and down the waitingroom, and she then returned home in an omnibus, being completely cured. An amusing case is that of a paralyzed girl, who on learning that she had secured the affections of the curate, who used to visit her, got out of bed and walked – cured; and soon afterwards made an excellent pastor’s wife. A remarkable instance of this sort of cure is that of a child afflicted with paralysis, who was brought up from the country to Paris to the Hotel Dieu. The child, who had heard a great deal of the wonderful metropolis, its magnificent hospitals, its omnipotent doctors, and their wonderful cures, was awe-struck, and so vividly impressed with the idea that such surroundings must have a curative influence, that the day after her arrival she sat up in bed much better. The good doctor just passed around, but had not time to treat her till the third day; by which time when he came round she was out of bed, walking about the room, quite restored by the glimpses she had got of his majestic presence.”

Having now shown by numerous disinterested authorities, the majority of whom belong to the medical profession, that the mental states of belief, faith and expectancy, and their negative aspects of fear, apprehension, and false belief, may, and do, influence physical conditions, functioning and activities, irrespective of the particular theory, creed, or explanation accepted by the patient himself, or herself, we see the necessity of seeking for the common principle of cure manifesting in the various forms of this phenomena.

Excerpt from Mind And Body

See Part I here.