George Barton Cutten

“ Down the narrow way two streams of people press the whole evening. They worship at the shrines along the wall, purchase holy earth from the spot where the picture was discovered, drink at the sacred well, and are blessed by the priest at the altar. The cripples and the sick desiring healing have been engaged all day in such acts of worship; they have received bread and water from the priests in the upper church, paid homage to the all-powerful picture, offered their candles to the Madonna, and all the time sought to endue themselves with her presence. ”

“ Senso, his physician; Dr. Senso declared to me that my friend had the plague, and that every symptom announced the approach of death. 'I fear,' he said, 'that the House of Mercy (Misericordia) is about to be deprived of its good director.' I asked if medical art could not save him. 'We shall see,' replied Senso, 'but I have only a very faint hope; his blood is too much poisoned.' I withdrew, praying God to save the life of this good man. Catharine, however, had heard of the illness of Father Matthew, whom she loved sincerely, and she lost no time in repairing to him. ”

“ The history of the founder of Christian Science is its best raison d'être, especially from a psychological stand-point, and the rather strange thing is that a reaction from an abnormality, going as it naturally does to another abnormality, should find a response in the religious cravings of so many; the philosophy undoubtedly would not attract as it does were there not connected with it, in the practical working of the system, the lure of mental healing. ”

“ Now," said he, "nobody would go to see Bryant unless they had some faith that he might cure them, and when he begins his operations with great positiveness of manner, and when they see the crutches he has there, and hear the people testify that they have been cured, it produces a tremendous influence on them; and then he gets them started in the way of exercising, and they do a good many things that they thought they could not do; their appetites and spirits revive, and if toning them up can possibly reduce the diseased tendency, many of them will get well." ”

“ The fact that there is a reciprocal relation between mental states and bodily conditions, acting both for good and ill, is nothing new in human experience. Even among the most crude and unobserving, traditions and incidents have given witness to this knowledge. For centuries stories of the hair turning white during the night on account of fright or sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. ”

“ Some other relics would then acquire a reputation, spring into popular favor, and the crowds would flock to them. We have many modern instances of this kind. If sufficient confidence in the power of a concoction, a shrine, a relic, or a person can be aroused, genuine cures can be wrought regardless of the healing properties of the dose.
The whole system of mental therapeutics may be divided into two parts; what we may designate as metaphysical cure denies that either matter or evil exists, and heals by inspiring the belief that the disease cannot assail the patient because he is pure spirit ”

“ For a long time after the age of Hercules and the heroic times, invalids in Greece sought relief from their sufferings from these descendants of Æsculapius in the temples of that god, which an enlightened policy had raised on elevated spots, near medicinal springs, and in salubrious vicinities. Those men who pretended in right of birth to hold the gift of curing, finally learned the art of it. The preservation in the temple of the history of those diseases, the cure of which had been sought by them, aided greatly in this happy culmination. ”

“ The distemper increased by degrees, and as night approached became still worse, so that when day returned, he could not rise or walk alone. In this weak condition, a good thought came into his mind, which was to go to church, the best way he could, to the tomb of the reverend Father Cuthbert, and there on his knees, to beg of the Divine Goodness either to be delivered from that disease, if it were for his good, or if the Divine Providence had ordained him longer to lie under the same for his punishment, that he might bear the pain with patience and a composed mind. ”

“ Coming back, then, to the common law which underlies all cases or forms of mental healing, we find two general principles upon which it is built—the power of the mind over the body, and the importance of suggestion as a factor in the cure of the disease. ”

“ On the other hand, it is not difficult to see why mental healing would be helped by its connection with religion. Religion grips the whole mind more firmly than any other subject has ever done, and when one accepts the orthodox conception of God, 7 he naturally expects to come in contact with One whose sympathies are in favor of the cure of his diseases, and whose power is sufficient to bring about this cure. With this basis there is set up in the mind of the patient an expectancy which has always proven to be a most valuable precursor of a cure. ”

“ That this confident expectation of a cure is the most potent means of bringing it about, doing that which no medical treatment can accomplish, may be affirmed as the generalized result of experiences of the most varied kind, extending through a long series of ages. ”

“ For the last millennium there has not been a time when Christian love and benevolence have not sought the opportunity of ministering to the sick.
One can easily recognize the effect which this fact would have on mental healing. The church fostered the ideas of exorcism and the cures by relics and shrines, and deprecated the use of medicine. If the hospitals and infirmaries were almost wholly in the hands of the monks and churchmen, there was little hope for the development of other than ecclesiastical mental healing. ”

“ We find, however, that the healer connected with the Christian sect has no advantage over his Mohammedan or Buddhist brother, and that neither is able to succeed better than the non-religious healer in all cases. We recognize that when one class of healers fails in a case another may succeed, but the successful one is just as liable to fail in a second case when the first one cures. What particular form of suggestion is most effective in any given case depends upon the temperament of the individual and his education, religious training, and environment. ”

“ Charms were used to avert evil and counteract supposed malignant influences of all kinds, but it is in their connection with diseases of the body that we are chiefly interested. There is scarcely a disease for which a charm has not been given, but it will be seen that those which are most affected by charms are principally derangements of the nervous system, or those periodical in character—diseases, in fact, which have proved to be most easily influenced by suggestion. ”

“ If the mind is freed of these delusions the disease is gone. This was Quimby's method of procedure already quoted. In Science and Health she says that the object of treatment is "to destroy the patient's belief in his physical condition." She also advises: "Mentally contradict every complaint of the body." She continues: "All disease is the result of education, and can carry its ill effects no further than mortal mind maps out the way. Destroy fear," she says, "and you end the fever." However, as with other healers, practice and theory are two different things. ”

“ It is not only the body that by its sound constitution strengthens the soul, but the well-regulated soul by its authoritative power maintains the body in perfect health."—Plato.
"Aristotle mapped out philosophy and morals in lines the world yet accepts in the main, but he did not know the difference between the nerves and the tendons. Rome had a sound system of jurisprudence before it had a physician, using only priest-craft for healing. ”

“ We cannot sum up the effect by saying that this influence was either wholly good or bad—its relation to therapeutics was a mixed one. It can be truthfully said that nothing has retarded the science of medicine during 36 the past two thousand years so much as the iron grip of decadent orthodoxy, and, on the other hand, no power has caused men and women so to sacrifice time, money, and even life itself for the care and nurture of the sick, as the example and precepts of Jesus Christ. ”

“ By some it was claimed that in the practice of the magical arts evil spirits provided cure for sickness, others maintained that they could not heal any diseases, and hence the true test of Christianity was the ability to cure bodily ills. A compromise position was that demons were only successful in eliminating diseases which they had themselves caused. There was not a little doubt in some cases about the character of the possessing spirits, and it behooved people to be careful; demons might use men as habitations, and while posing as good angels vitiate health and provoke disease. ”

“ Flinging herself on her knees before him she besought his prayers and blessing. In fact, stung by intolerable suffering she asked him to cure her. 'My dear child, you ask me what no mortal has power to do. The power to cure rests alone with God. ”

“ In Greece, in early days, physicians were looked upon as gods. Even after the siege of Troy, the sons of the gods and the heroes were alone supposed to understand the secrets of medicine and surgery. At a late period Æsculapius, the son of Apollo, was worshipped as a deity. When we speak of the art of healing in Greece, one naturally thinks of the apparent monopoly of the Æsclepiades, who ministered unto the Grecian sick for centuries. ”

“ The enormous revenues procured through the means of relics, and the lack of certain means of identifying them, would naturally encourage the imposition of fraud. The crime would not appear so great after one experience, for the perpetrators could readily see that it really made no difference so far as efficacy in the cure of diseases was concerned, whether or not the relics were genuine. The history of some of the relics unfortunately proves them not to be relics at all, or at least not to be the relics which the faithful supposed them to be. ”

“ The cruder the art, the more powerful was the mental influence. The ways of primitive therapeutics are completely hidden from us except what we can gather from the races which retained their primitive practices in historic times. We can well understand, though, that the concoctions of medicine-men and witch-doctors could have little effect except in a suggestive way. Snakes' heads, toads' toes, lizards' tails, and beetles' wings have a small place in the pharmacopœia of to-day, except as placebos, and it is extremely doubtful if they were ever valuable for any other purpose. ”

“ The treatment of the insane in the Middle Ages is one of the darkest blots on the growing civilization.
The exorcism being completed, when some of the weaker demons were put to flight an after service was held in which everything belonging to the patient was exorcised, so that the demon might not hide there and return to the patient. The exorcised demons were forbidden to return, and the demons remaining in the body were commanded to leave all the remainder of the body, and to descend into the little toe of the right foot, and there to rest quietly. ”

“ CHAPTER XI THE HEALERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
"Medical cannot be separated from moral science, without reciprocal and essential mutilation."—Reid.
"Man is a dupeable animal. Quacks in medicine, quacks in religion, and quacks in politics know this, and act upon that knowledge. There is scarcely anyone who may not, like a trout, be taken by tickling."—Southey. ”

“ The science of medicine, then, is almost wholly the result of the investigations and study of the last period. This means that medicine is one of the youngest of the sciences, while from the very nature of the case it is one of the oldest of arts.
From the beginning of the art of therapeutics, mental healing has been a large factor in the cure. ”

“ As valuable as was the spirit instilled into the hearts of His followers by the tenderness of the Master, it was never sufficient to counterbalance the deterrent effects of the religion which they espoused. The retardation was caused by two related beliefs which permeated the church: The first was the doctrine of the power of demons in the lives of men, especially in the production of disease; and the second was the prevalence of the idea of the possibility and probability of the performance of miracles, particularly in the healing of diseases. ”

“ There is no best form for 18 all diseases and all persons. For example, it matters not how new associational systems are formed so long as they are substituted for the pernicious ones. It may be in the common experiences of every-day life, through the pleading of a friend, during sleep or trance, in some abnormal state of a hypnotic character, or during religious ecstasy, and we cannot well say in any given case that one form will be more efficacious than another. Mental healing creates nothing new, but simply makes use of the normal mechanism of the mind and body. ”