THE HISTORY OF PSYCHO-THERAPY
One of the most remarkable achievements
of the New Psychology is that of gathering
up the scattered instances of the effect of
the power of the mind over the body, under
the various masks and guises worn during
the ages, and uniting them in one broad and
general synthesis in which is to be seen the
one fundamental principle of Mental Healing
operating under a thousand names,
forms and theories, in every race, nation
and clime in all ages past and present. The
New Psychology is the great reconciler of
the various theories, dogmas and speculations
concerned with the subject of the
strange cures effected by the mind, as well as
with the equally strange adverse effect upon
the physical organism of negative thoughts.
From the earliest days of history we find
records of strange and marvelous cures effected
by non-material agents. In some
cases the effect is attributed to magical
power, while in others, and the majority of
cases, the cure is attributed to some particular
religious belief, creed or ceremony. Not
only in the folk-lore of the several races, and
in their general traditions, but also in the
written and graven record do we find traces
of the universality of the principle of mental
therapeutics.
H. Addington Bruce says: “Psychotherapy
might well be cited in support of
the old adage that there is nothing new but
what has been forgotten. Traces of it are to
be found almost as far back as authentic history
extends, and even allusion to methods
which bear a strong resemblance to those of
modern times. The literature and monumental
remains of ancient Egypt, Greece,
Rome, Persia, India and China reveal a
widespread knowledge of hypnotism and its
therapeutic value. There is in the British
Museum a bas-relief from Thebes which has
been interpreted as representing a physician
hypnotizing a patient by making ‘passes’
over him. According to the Ebers papyrus,
the ‘laying on of hands’ formed a prominent
feature of Egyptian medical practice as
early as 1552 B. C., or nearly thirty-five hundred
years ago; and it is known that a similar
mode of treatment was employed by
priests of Chaldea in ministering to the sick.
So, also, the priests of the famous Temples
of Health are credited with having worked
numerous cures by the mere touch of the
hands. In connection with these same
Temples of Health were sleeping chambers,
repose in which was supposed to be exceptionally
beneficial. Asclepiades of Bithynia,
who won considerable fame at Rome as a
physician, systematically made use of the
‘induced trance’ in the treatment of certain
diseases. Plautus, Martial, and Seneca refer
in their writings to some mysterious
process of manipulation which had the same
effect—that is, of putting persons into an artificial
sleep. And Solon sang, apparently,
of some form of mesmeric cure:
“‘The smallest hurts sometimes increase and rage
More than all art of physic can assuage;
Sometimes the fury of the worst disease
The hand by gentle stroking, will appease.’
“Many other instances might be mentioned
testifying to the remarkable extent to
which psycho-therapy, in one form or another,
was utilized in the countries of the
ancient world. This, of course, does not
necessarily imply that the ancients had any
real understanding of the psychological and
physiological principles governing its operation.
On the contrary, there is every reason
to believe that they used it much as do
too many of the mental healers of to-day—on
the basis of ‘faith cure’ pure and simple,
with no attempt at diagnosis, and in a hit-or-miss
fashion. It was not until the very
end of the Middle Ages, so far as history informs
us, that anything even remotely resembling
a scientific inquiry into its nature
and possibilities was undertaken, and then
only in a faint, vague, indefinite way, by
men who were metaphysicians and mystics
rather than scientists. The first of these,
Petrys Pomponatius, a sixteenth-century
philosopher, sought to prove that disease
was curable without drugs, by means of the
‘magnetism’ existing in certain specially
gifted individuals. ‘When those who are endowed
with this faculty,’ he affirmed, ‘operate
by employing the force of the imagination
and the will, this force affects their
blood and their spirits, which produce the
intended effects by means of an evaporation
thrown outwards.’ Following Pomponatius,
John Baptist von Helmont, to whom medical
science owes a great deal, also proclaimed
the curative virtue of magnetism, which he
described as an invisible fluid called forth
and directed by the influence of the human
will. Other writers, notably Sir Kenelm
Digby, laid stress on the power of the imagination
as an agent in the cause as well as
the cure of disease, compiling in a curious
little treatise published in 1658, as interesting
a collection of illustrative cases as is
contained in the literature of modern psycho-therapy.”
In the Middle Ages, we read that there
were many instances of miraculous cures effected
at the various shrines of the saints,
and in the churches in which were exhibited
the bones and other relics of the holy people
of church history. As Dr. George R.
Patton says: “A word scrawled upon parchment,
for instance, would cure fevers; an
hexameter from the Iliad of Homer cured
gout, while rheumatism succumbed to a verse
from Lamentations. These could be multiplied,
and undoubtedly all were equally potent
of cure in like manner.... At one
time holy wells were to be found in almost
every parish of Ireland, to which wearisome
journeys were made for the miraculous powers
of cure. It was the custom of the cured
to hang upon the bushes contiguous to the
springs small fragments of their clothing, or
a cane, or a crutch as a memento of cure, so
that from afar the springs could be easily
located by the many colored fragments of
clothing, rags, canes and crutches swayed
upon the branches by the wind. Inasmuch
as the bushes for many rods around were
thus adorned, the cures must have been far
from few.”
In the Middle Ages it was the custom of
persons afflicted with scrofula and kindred
disorders to come before the king upon certain
days to receive the “Royal Touch,” or
laying-on-of-hands which was held to be an
infallible specific for the disease. The custom
was instituted by Edward the Confessor,
and continued until the accession to
power of the house of Brunswick. It is a
matter of history that many persons were
cured by the touch of the king’s hands.
Wiseman, a celebrated surgeon and physician
of old London testifies as follows: “I
myself have been an eye-witness of many
thousands of cures performed by his majesty’s
touch alone, without any assistance of
medicine or surgery, and those, many of
them, such as had tired out the endeavors
of able surgeons before they came hither....
I must needs profess that what I
write will little more than show the weakness
of our ability when compared with his
majesty’s, who cureth more in one year than
all the surgeons of London have done in an
age.” The virtue of the “King’s Touch”
was finally brought in doubt by the wonderful
successes of a man by the name of Valentine
Greatrakes, who in the Seventeenth Century
began “laying on hands” and made
even more wonderful cures than those of the
king. So marked was his success that the
government had difficulty in suppressing the
growing conviction among the common people
that Greatrakes must be of royal blood,
and the rightful heir to the throne, because
of the great healing virtues of his hands,
which, they argued, could be possessed only
by those having royal blood in their veins.
The Chirurgical Society of London investigated
Greatrakes’ cures, and rendered an
opinion that he healed by virtue of “some
mysterious sanative contagion in his body.”
But perhaps the most notable figure in the
European history of Mental Healing was
Franz Anton Mesmer, a native of Switzerland,
who was born in 1734, and who later
in the century created the greatest excitement
in several European countries by his
strange theories and miraculous claims.
Frank Podmore in a recent work says of
Mesmer: “He had no pretensions to be a
thinker; he stole his philosophy ready-made
from a few belated alchemists; and his entire
system of healing was based on a delusion.
His extraordinary success was due to
the lucky accident of the times. Mesmer’s
first claim to our remembrance lies in this—that
he wrested the privilege of healing from
the churches and gave it to mankind as a
universal possession.”
Mesmer held that there was in Nature a
universal magnetic force which had a powerful
therapeutic effect when properly applied.
He cured many people by touching
them with an iron rod, through which he
claimed the universal magnetism flowed
from his body to that of the patient. He
called this magnetic fluid “animal magnetism.”
Later on he devised his celebrated
“magnetic tub” or baquet, by means of
which he was able to treat his patients en
masse. Podmore gives the following interesting
account of scenes surrounding his
treatments:
“The baquet was a large oaken tub, four
or five feet in diameter and a foot or more
in depth, closed by a wooden cover. Inside
the tub were placed bottles full of water disposed
in rows radiating from the center, the
necks in some of the rows pointing towards
the center, in others away from it. All these
bottles had been previously ‘magnetized’ by
Mesmer. Sometimes there were several
rows of bottles, one above the other; the
machine was then said to be at high pressure.
The bottles rested on layers of powdered
glass and iron filings. The tub itself
was filled with water. The whole machine,
it will be seen, was a kind of travesty of the
galvanic cell. To carry out the resemblance,
the cover of the tub was pierced with holes,
through which passed slender iron rods of
varying lengths, which were jointed and
movable, so that they could be readily applied
to any part of the patient’s body.
Round this battery the patients were seated
in a circle, each with his iron rod. Further,
a cord, attached at one end to the tub, was
passed round the body of each of the sitters,
so as to bind them all into a chain. Outside
the first a second circle would frequently
be formed, who would connect themselves
together by holding hands. Mesmer,
in a lilac robe, and his assistant operators—vigorous
and handsome young men selected
for the purpose—walked about the room,
pointing their fingers or an iron rod held in
their hands at the diseased parts.”
Mesmer made many wonderful cures, and
attracted wide attention. In 1781 the king
of France offered him a pension of thirty
thousand livres if he would make public his
secret. The offer was refused, but he gave
private instruction and opened a school.
He had many pupils and followers, prominent
among whom was the Marquis de Puysegur,
who made discoveries resulting in the
identification of Mesmerism with the “trance
condition” now commonly associated with
the term, whereas originally Mesmerism included
simply the healing process. Mesmer’s
methods continued popular for many
years after his death, until Braid’s work resulted
in the founding of the modern school
of Hypnotism, and Mesmerism died out.
The Abbe Faria, about 1815, after investigating
Mesmerism and attracting much attention,
discarded the “fluidic” theory of
Mesmer, and held, instead, that in order to
induce the mesmeric state and to produce the
phenomena thereof, it was necessary merely
to create a mental state of “expectant attention”
on the part of the patient. The
cause of the state and the phenomena, he
held, was not in the operator but in the
mind of the patient—purely subjective, in
fact. Alexander Bertrand, a Frenchman,
published a work about this time, holding
theories similar to those of Faria. In 1841
James Braid, an English physician, becoming
interested in Mesmerism, discovered that
the mesmeric state might be artificially induced
by staring at bright objects until the
eyes became fatigued, etc., and, later, that
any method whereby concentration and “expectant
attention” might be induced would
produce the phenomenon. He duplicated all
the feats of the mesmerists, including the
healing of diseases. He called his new system
“Hypnotism” to distinguish it from
Mesmerism, and under its new name it
gained favor among the medical fraternity.
Moreover, in connection with his predecessors,
Faria and Bertrand, he laid the basis
for the modern theories of Suggestive
Therapeutics.
Shortly after Braid’s death, in 1860, Dr.
A. A. Liebault, a French physician, established
his since famous School of Nancy, in
which during the after years the later wonderful
discoveries in Suggestive Therapeutics
were made. He used the methods of
hypnotism, but Suggestion was ever the operative
principle recognized and applied.
Liebault said: “It is all a matter of Suggestion.
My patients are suggested to sleep,
and their ills are suggested out of them. It
is very simple, once you understand the laws
of Suggestion.” Dr. Charcot, in his celebrated
clinic in the Salpetriere, in Paris,
did great work along the same general lines,
although proceeding under somewhat different
theories. Following the example of
these and other eminent authorities, the
medical fraternity has gradually adopted
many of the ideas of Suggestive Therapeutics,
and to-day many of the best medical
schools throughout this country and
Europe give instruction in this branch of
healing. Many books have been written on
the subject by eminent medical authorities,
and the indications are that during the present
century Suggestive Therapeutics, in its
various forms, will come even more prominently
into popular favor, and that it will
be developed far beyond its present limits.
Experimental work along these lines is now
being conducted in many psychological laboratories
in our great universities.
At the same time, as we shall now see,
Mental Healing has been attracting much attention
along other lines, outside of the
medical profession, and often allied with religious
and metaphysical movements. To
understand the subject, we must study it in
all of its phases.
In the early part of the nineteenth century
Elijah Perkins, an ignorant blacksmith living
in Connecticut conceived a queer idea of
curing disease by means of a peculiar pair
of tongs manufactured by himself, one prong
being of brass and the other of steel. These
tongs were called “tractors,” and were applied
to the body of the patient in the region
affected by disease, the body being stroked
in a downward direction for a period of
about ten minutes. The tractors were used
to treat all manner of complaints, ailments
and diseases, internal and external, with a
wonderful degree of success. Almost miraculous
cures of all manner of complaints
were reported, and people flocked to Perkins
from far and near in order to receive
the benefit of his wonderful treatments.
Soon this system of healing came to be
called “Perkinsism,” as a tribute to the inventor.
The popularity of the system spread
rapidly in the United States, particularly in
New England, every city and many towns
patronizing Perkins’ practitioners and healers.
From this country the craze spread to
Great Britain, and even to the Continent.
Centers of treatment, and even hospitals,
were established by the “Perkinsites,” and
the fame of the tractors increased daily in
ever widening circles. In Europe alone it
is reported that over 1,500,000 cures were
performed, and the medical fraternity were
at their wit’s ends to explain the phenomenon.
Finally, Dr. Haygarth, of London,
conceived the idea that the real virtue of
the cures was vested in the minds, belief and
imagination of the patients rather than in
the tractors, and that the cures were the result
of the induced mental states of the patients
instead of by the metallic qualities of
the apparatus. He determined to investigate
the matter under this hypothesis, and
accordingly constructed a pair of tractors of
wood, painted to resemble the genuine ones.
The following account by Bostock describes
the result: “He accordingly formed pieces
of wood into the shape of tractors and with
much assumed pomp and ceremony applied
them to a number of sick persons who had
been previously prepared to expect something
extraordinary. The effects were found
to be astonishing. Obstinate pains in the
limbs were suddenly cured; joints that had
long been immovable were restored to motion,
and, in short, except the renewal of lost
parts or the change in mechanical structure,
nothing seemed beyond their power to accomplish.”
The exposure of this experiment,
and the general acceptance of the explanation
of the phenomena, caused “Perkinsism”
to die out rapidly, and at the present
time it is heard of only in connection
with the history of medicine and in the pages
of works devoted to the subject of the effect
of the mind over the body.
The success of “Perkinsism” is but a
typical instance which is duplicated every
twenty years or so by the rapid rise, spread
and then rapid decline of some new “craze”
in healing, all of which, when investigated
are seen to be but new examples of the power
of the mental states of faith and imagination
upon the physical organism. The well-known
“blue glass” craze of about thirty-five
years ago gives us another interesting
example. General Pleasanton, a well-known
and prominent citizen of Philadelphia, announced
his discovery that the rays of the
sun passing through the medium of blue
glass possessed a wonderful therapeutic
value. The idea fired the public imagination
at once, and the General’s book met with a
large sale. Everyone, seemingly, began to
experiment with the blue glass rays. Windows
were fitted with blue glass panes, and
the patients sat so that the sun’s rays might
fall upon them after passing through the
blue panes. Wonderful cures were reported
from all directions, the results of “Perkinsism”
being duplicated in almost every detail.
Even cripples reported cures, and
many chronic and “incurable” cases were
healed almost instantaneously. Bedridden
people threw aside their blankets and
walked again, after a brief treatment. The
interest developed into a veritable “craze,”
and the glass factories were operated overtime
in order to meet the overwhelming
demand for blue glass, the price of which rapidly
advanced to fifty cents and even a dollar
for a small pane, because of the scarcity.
It was freely predicted that the days of
physicians were over, and that the blue glass
was the long-sought-for panacea for all human
ills. Suddenly, however, and from no
apparent cause, the interest in the matter
dropped, and now all that is left of the blue
glass craze is the occasional sight of an old
blue pane in some window, the owner of
which evidently felt disinclined to pay the
price of replacing it with a clear pane. Only
a few days ago, in an old-fashioned quarter
of a large city, the writer saw several panes
of the old blue glass in the frame of the
window of an old house which had seen better
days but which was now used as a cheap
tenement house.
The history of medicine is filled with records
of similar “crazes” following the announcement
of some new method of “cure.”
The striking peculiarity of these cures is
that they all occur during the height of the
excitement and notoriety of the early days
of the announcement, while they decline in
proportion to the decline in public faith and
interest, the explanation being that in every
instance the cure is effected by the action of
the mental states of expectancy, faith, and
the imagination of the patient, irrespective
of any virtue in the method or system itself.
In short, all these cures belong to the category
of faith-cures—they are merely duplicates
of the world-old cures resulting from
faith in sacred relics, shrines, bones of holy
people, sacred places, etc., of which nearly
every religion has given us many examples.
The history of medicine gives us many instances
of the efficacy of the therapeutic
power of Faith.
Sir Humphrey Davy relates a case in
which a man seriously ill manifested immediate
improvement after the placing of a
clinical thermometer in his mouth, he supposing
that it was some new and powerful
healing instrument. The grotesque remedies
of the ancient physicians, and the
bizarre decoctions of the quacks of the present,
all work cures. The “bread-pills” and
other placebos of the “regulars” have cured
many a case when other remedies have
failed.
It is related that several hundred years
ago, a young English law-student while on a
lark with several of his boon companions
found themselves in a rural inn, without
money with which to pay their reckoning.
Finally, after much thought, the young man
called the inn-keeper and told him that he,
the student, was a great physician, and that
he would prepare for him a magic amulet
which would cure all diseases, in return for
the receipted account of himself and friends.
The landlord gladly consented, and the
young man wrote some gibberish on a bit of
parchment, which together with sundry articles
of rubbish he inserted in a silk cover.
With a wise and dignified air he then departed.
Many years rolled by, and the
young man rose to the position of a High
Justice of the realm. One day before him
was brought a woman accused of magic and
witchcraft. The evidence showed that she
had cured many people by applying to their
bodies a little magic amulet, which the
church authorities considered to be the work
of the devil. The woman, on the stand, admitted
the use of the amulet and the many
cures resulting therefrom, but defended herself
by saying that the instrument of cure
had been given to her father, now deceased,
many years ago, by a great physician who
had stopped at her father’s inn. She held
that the cures were genuine medical cures
resulting from the medicinal virtues of the
amulet, and not the result of magic or witchcraft.
The Justice asked to be handed the
wonderful amulet. Ripping it open with his
pen-knife, he found enclosed the identical
scrawl inserted by himself many years before.
He announced the circumstances from
the bench, and discharged the woman—but
the healing virtues of the amulet had disappeared,
never to return. The cures were the
result of the faith and imagination of the
patients.
The modern instances of the several great
“Divine Healers,” such as John Alexander
Dowie of Chicago, and Francis Schlatter of
Denver, give us additional evidence of the
efficacy of Faith as a therapeutic agent.
John Alexander Dowie, a Scotch preacher,
came to America some twenty years ago, and
instituted a new religion in which healing
was an important feature. He claimed that
all disease was the result of the devil, and
that belief in God and the prayers of Dowie
and his assistants would work the cure of
the devil’s evil operations. Great numbers
flocked to Dowie’s standard, and thousands
of wonderful cures were reported. His
“Tabernacle” was filled with testimonials
and trophies from cured people. Back of
Dowie’s pulpit were displayed many
crutches, plaster-casts, braces, and other
spoils wrested from the devil by Dowie and
his aids. His experience meetings were
thronged with persons willing and anxious
to testify that whereas they had been afflicted
they were now whole again. Dowie succeeded
in building up a great following all
over the world, and had he not overreached
himself and allowed his colossal vanity to
overshadow his original ideas, the probability
is that he would have founded a church
which would have endured for centuries. As
it is, he was discredited and disowned by
his followers, and his church is now but
little more than a memory.
Francis Schlatter, the German shoemaker
of Denver, with his Divine Healing, was a
well known figure in the west several years
ago. He was undoubtedly a half-insane fanatic,
believing himself inspired by God to
heal the nations. Persons flocked to him
from afar, and he is reported to have
healed thousands, many of whom were suffering
from serious ailments. He afterward
disappeared, and is believed to have
died in the desert of the far west. Students
of Mental Suggestion and Psychic Therapeutics
find in the instances of Dowie and
Schlatter merely the same underlying principle
of Mental Healing resulting from
faith, which is operative in all of the other
cases mentioned. The theology, creed, theories
of methods have but little to do with
the cures, so long as the proper degree of
faith is induced in the mind of the patient.
Faith in anything will work cures, providing
it is sufficiently intense and active.
Another branch of Mental Healing is seen
in the modern schools of the “New Thought,”
“Mental Science,” “Christian Science,”
and the “Emmanuel Movement.” The authorities
generally agree upon tracing the
rise of these several schools to the general
interest in the subject manifested in the
United States and Great Britain about the
middle of the last century. Some of the authorities
believe that this general interest
was induced largely by the teachings of
Charles Poyen, a Frenchman who came from
France to New England about 1835, bringing
with him the French teachings and theories
regarding mesmerism and the phenomena
allied thereto. Poyen’s teachings
attracted marked interest and attention, and
he soon had a host of followers, students and
imitators. Teachers of the “new science”
sprang up on all sides. Many theories were
evolved and actively supported by the adherents
of the several prominent teachers.
The rise of interest in phrenology and the
dawning interest in spiritualism aided the
spread of the new teachings regarding mesmerism,
clairvoyance, psychic healing, etc.,
and the pages of many magazines and books
published about that time show that a public
taste had been created for the strange
and mysterious.
Dr. J. S. Grimes, a physician interested in
phrenology, taught that the phenomena were
due to the action of a strange atmospheric
force which he called “etherium.” Rev. J.
Bovee Dods evolved a theory based upon the
supposed existence of an electrical principle,
and called his system “Electro-Biology,” by
means of which he attracted to himself a
large following. Dods wrote several large
books on the subject, and traveled on lecture
tours in this country and Great Britain,
arousing great enthusiasm and making
many cures. Rev. Leroy Sunderland expounded
the doctrine of “patheism,” in
which he combined a strange mixture of
mysticism and what has since been called
“suggestion,” to which he afterward added
the current teachings of spiritualism after
his conversion to that philosophy. It would
seem that credit should be given Sunderland
for his early announcement of the principle
of suggestion, for he said: “When a relation
is once established between an operator
and his patient, corresponding changes
may be induced in the nervous system of the
latter by mere volition, and by suggestions
addressed to either of the external senses.”
The decade, 1840-1850 witnessed a remarkable
interest in psychic phenomena of all
kinds, and during that time there was undoubtedly
laid the foundations upon which
the later structures have since been erected.
Any one reading the short stories of Poe,
and other writers of that period, may readily
see the state of public interest in these
subjects at that time.
The authorities generally agree that in
Phineas Parkhurst Quimby we have the direct
connecting link between the period just
mentioned and the present. Quimby played
quite an important role in the evolution of
the modern conceptions of mental healing,
or psycho-therapy as it is now called. He
was a poor clockmaker, of quite limited
means, of good character and a strong personality.
His education is said to have been
limited, but he made up for his lack in this
respect by his naturally keen and inquiring
mind. In 1838 one of the teachers of mesmerism
visited his home in Belfast, Maine,
and Quimby attended the seance. He became
intensely interested in what he saw,
and in the theories propounded, and began
to experiment on the people in his town, the
result being that he soon acquired a reputation
as a powerful mesmerist and a good
healer. He followed along the general lines
of the “Electro-Biology” theory for a time,
and then evolved theories of his own. He
cured himself and many others by manual
treatment, and was soon kept quite busy in
his healing work.
Quimby, thinking deeply regarding the
cures he was making, soon came to the conclusion
that while his cures were genuine,
his theories were wrong. He gradually
evolved the idea that diseases are caused by
erroneous thinking, and that his cures resulted
from changing these wrong mental
states for those based upon true conceptions.
He held that all that is required to effect a
cure is to bring about “a change of thought.”
Following upon this new conception, he
ceased mesmerizing his patients, and began
to treat them by simply sitting by the side
of the afflicted person, picturing him as well
and whole, and impressing upon the patient’s
mind that he is well and whole, in Truth.
From this fundamental idea he gradually
evolved a philosophy which has strongly influenced
that of later schools. Quimby
talked much regarding his great “discovery,”
as he called it, and built great hopes
upon establishing “the science of health and
happiness.” He began to speak of the
“Truth” in his “science,” which he held to
be identical with that taught by Christ, and
by means of which Jesus performed his miraculous
cures. Before he had firmly established
his “science,” however, he died, leaving
his work to be carried on by others,
notably by Dr. Warren F. Evans, and Julius
A. Dresser, to whom should be given the
credit for launching what is now known as
“the New Thought Movement.”
Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, who afterward
established “Christian Science” was one of
Quimby’s patients and students, and Dresser
and others have positively stated and
claimed that from him she received her
ideas of the philosophy which she afterward
developed into the great “Christian Science”
movement. Mrs. Eddy, and her adherents,
as positively deny to Quimby any
credit for having inspired Mrs. Eddy’s
work. We merely state the opposing sides
of the controversy here, taking no sides in
the matter, the discussion not concerning us
in the present consideration.
The success of Evans and Dresser, and of
Mrs. Eddy, in their respective schools and
organizations, have caused many other
teachers to come to the front, until at the
present time there are many schools, cults
and organizations basing their cures upon
the broad principles of Mental Healing.
Mrs. Eddy, and her followers, deny having
anything in common with the other schools,
however, holding that the latter are concerned
with “mortal mind” while “Christian
Science” alone is based upon Divine
Mind, or Truth. In spite of the conflicting
claims and theories, the fact remains that
thousands of persons have been healed of
various diseases by the various schools,
cults, and teachings. To the authorities who
stand outside of and apart from these opposing
organizations, it seems that all the
cures are based upon the same general principle,
i. e., that of the influence of mental
states over physical conditions, and that religious
theories or metaphysical philosophies
have nothing whatever to do with the production
of the cures, except in the direction
of giving a strong suggestion to those accepting
them. The fact that all the schools
make cures, in about the same proportion,
and of the same general classes of complaints,
would seem to show that the theories
and dogmas have nothing to do with the
process of cure—and that the healing is done
in spite of the theories, rather than because
of them.
The much advertised “Emmanuel Movement”
now so popular in the orthodox
churches throughout the country, is recognized
by all the authorities as being nothing
more than suggestion applied in connection
with the religious and theological
principles of the churches in question, and, in
truth, as applying methods more in favor by
the old school of mesmerists than by the
later “New Thought” practitioners, or by
the “Christian Science” healers. From this
movement, however, there will probably
evolve a more scientific system, manifesting
none of the crudities which so disfigure its
present stage, at least in the hands of some
of its practitioners.
In the following chapter we may see that
the same element of Faith, Belief and Expectancy
is manifested in all the various
forms of Mental Healing, by whatever name,
or under whatever theory, the method is applied.
In short, that the cures are purely
psychological, rather than metaphysical or
religious, in their nature.