MIND AND BODY/PART 6
CHAPTER VI
FAITH CURES
Following the scientific
study of the phenomena of cures of physical illness by means of the power of
mental states, and the recognition of the fact that there is a common principle
operative under the various guises and forms, there sprang into scientific
usage the term “Faith Cures” which was used to designate all instances and
forms of cures coming under the general classification of mental healing. Prof.
Goddard defines the term as follows: “A term applied to the practice of curing
disease by an appeal to the hope, belief, or expectation of the patient, and
without the use of drugs or other material means. Formerly it was confined to
methods requiring the exercise of religious faith, such as the ‘prayer cure’
and ‘divine healing,’ but has now come to be used in the broader sense, and
includes the cures of ‘Mental Science,’ and hypnotism; also a large part
of the cures effected by patent medicines and nostrums, as well as many
folk-practices and home remedies. By some it is used to include also Christian
Science, but the believers in the latter regard it as entirely distinct.”
The term “Suggestion,” used
in the same sense as “Faith Cure” in relation to the healing of disease, has
also come into popular usage, but inasmuch as Suggestion has a much larger
meaning outside of its therapeutic phases, it may be said the best authorities
to-day use the term “Faith Cure” as representing simply one phase of
Suggestion.
Prof. Goddard, in his
article on “Faith Cure,” in the New International Encyclopaedia (Dodd,
Mead & Co., New York), says: “Besides these recognized forms (divine
healing, mental science, etc.), faith cure is an important element in cures
wrought by patent medicines and nostrums, home remedies and folk practices. The
advertisement, testimonial of friend, or family tradition arouses the faith of
the sick man, and he comes to believe that he needs only to follow directions
to be fully cured. The actual value of faith cure as a therapeutic method has
been the subject of much discussion. It can no longer be denied that it has
value. From divine healing to patent medicine and Father Kneipp’s water cure,
all cure disease. Each appeals to a particular type of mind, but the
results are practically the same in all—same diseases cured, same successes,
same failures. Many faith-curists claim that all diseases in all persons
can be cured by their method; others hold that the principle is of limited
application. Of them all, the hypnotists are the only ones who do not make
sweeping claims.”
After stating “the tendency
to exaggeration and the infrequency of impartial judgment” in connection with
many instances of claimed cures, the above mentioned authority proceeds as
follows: “The actual cures, however, are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently
striking to need an explanation. These different forms agree in only one
point—viz., the mental state of the patient is one of hope and
expectation. Can states of mind cause or cure disease? Some familiar
occurrences seem to justify an affirmative answer. It is well known that
certain glands and secretions are markedly affected by emotions. Fright causes
the saliva to cease to flow and the perspiration to start. Sorrow causes the
lachrymal glands to secrete tears. Happiness favors digestion, unhappiness
retards it. Mosso has demonstrated that the bladder is especially sensitive to
emotional states. In general, the pleasant emotions produce an opposite
physical effect from the unpleasant ones. There are many glands within the body
whose action under emotion we cannot observe; but we may reasonably assume that
they also are affected by emotional states. Hence, if unpleasant emotions so
act upon the glands as to derange the system and cause disease, the pleasant
emotions may reasonably be assumed to tend to restore the normal functions. The
various forms of faith cure tend strongly to put the patient in a happy frame
of mind—a condition favorable to health. However, there are all degrees of
faith and wide differences in the way the system responds to the emotional
state. One person is slightly affected by a strong emotion; another is
strongly affected by a weak emotion. Hence, there must always be a wide
difference in the results of faith-cure methods. The diseases most amenable to
faith cure are nervous—including many not recognized as nervous, but having a
neural condition as their basis—and functional derangements. Organic diseases
are not usually cured, though the symptoms are frequently ameliorated. Chronic
diseases due to neuro-muscular habit often yield to hypnotic treatment.”
Prof. R. P. Halleck says:
“Were it not for this power of the imagination, the majority of quack nostrums
would disappear. In most cases bread pills, properly labeled, with positive
assurances of certain cures accompanying them, would answer the purpose far
better than these nostrums, or even much better than a great deal of the
medicine administered by regular physicians. Warts have been charmed away by
medicines which could have had only a mental effect. Dr. Tuke gives many cases
of patients cured of rheumatism by rubbing them with a certain substance
declared to possess magic power. The material in some cases was metal; in
others wood; in still others, wax. He also recites the case of a very
intelligent officer who had vainly taken powerful remedies to cure cramp in the
stomach. Then ‘he was told that on the next attack he would be put under a
medicine which was generally believed to be most effective, but which was
rarely used.’ When the cramps came on again, ‘a powder containing four grains
of ground biscuit was administered every seven minutes, while the greatest
anxiety was expressed (within the hearing of the party) lest too much be given.
Half-drachm doses of bismuth had never procured the same relief in less than
three hours. For four successive times did the same kind of attack recur, and
four times was it met by the same remedy, and with like success.’ A house
surgeon in a French hospital experimented with one hundred patients, giving
them sugared water. Then, with a great show of fear, he pretended that he had
made a mistake and given them an emetic instead of the proper medicine. Dr.
Tuke says: ‘The result may easily be anticipated by those who can estimate
the influence of the imagination. No fewer than eighty—four-fifths—were
unmistakably sick.’
“We have a well
authenticated case of a butcher, who, while trying to hang up a heavy piece of
meat, slipped and was himself caught by the arm upon the hook. When he was
taken to a surgeon, the butcher said he was suffering so much that he could not
endure the removal of his coat; the sleeve must be cut off. When this was done,
it was found that the hook had passed through his clothing close to the skin,
but had not even scratched it. A man sentenced to be bled to death was blindfolded.
A harmless incision was then made in his arm and tepid water fixed so as to run
down it and drop with considerable noise into a basin. The attendants
frequently commented on the flow of blood and the weakening pulse. The
criminal’s false idea of what was taking place was as powerful in its effects
as the reality, and he soon died.... There is perhaps not a person living who
would not at times be benefited by a bread pill, administered by some one in
whom great confidence was reposed.”
The same authority also
says: “It has been known for a long time that if the attention is directed
toward any bodily organ, abnormal sensations may be caused in it, and disease
may be developed. The renowned Dr. John Hunter said: ‘I am confident that I can
fix my attention to any part, until I have a sensation in that part.’” Dr. Tuke
says that these “are words which ought to be inscribed in letters of gold over
the entrance of a hospital for the Cure of Disease by Psychopathy.” Hunter’s
confident assertion is the more interesting because, drawn from his own
experience, it shows that the principle is not confined in its operation to the
susceptible and nervous, but operates even on men of the highest mental
endowment. We have examples from the literature of the seventeenth century,
showing how the expectation of a complaint will produce it. In 1607 an ignorant
English physician told a clergyman’s wife that she had sciatica, although there
was, in reality, nothing the matter with her sciatic nerve. Her
attention was thereby directed to it and a severe attack of sciatica was
the result. When a person inexperienced in medicine reads carefully the
symptoms of some disease, he is apt to begin an attentive search for those
symptoms and to end by fancying he has them. Seasick persons have been relieved
of their nausea by being made to bail a leaking boat from the fear that it
would sink. All their attention was thereby diverted from themselves. Many can
recall how children, and grown persons, too, have forgotten all about their alleged
intense thirst, as soon as their attention was diverted. Some persons, after
eating something which they fancy is a trifle indigestible, center their
attention upon the stomach, expecting symptoms of indigestion, and are often
not disappointed. A man who had good reason to fear hydrophobia, determined
that he would not have it. The pain in the bitten arm became intense, and he
saw that he must have something to divert his attention from the wound and his
danger. He therefore went hunting, but found no game. To make amends, he
summoned a more inflexible will and exerted at every step ‘a strong mental
effort against the disease.’ He kept on hunting until he felt better, and he
mastered himself so perfectly that he probably thereby warded off an attack of
hydrophobia. Accordingly as we center our attention upon one thing or another,
we largely determine our mental happiness and hence our bodily health. One
person, in walking through a noble forest, may search only for spiders, and
venomous creatures, while another confines his attention to the singing birds
in the branches above. One reason why travel is such a cure for diseases of
body and mind is because so many new things thereby come in to claim the
attention and divert it from its former objects. The following expression from
Dr. Tuke should be remembered: ‘Thought strongly directed to any part tends
to increase its vascularity, and consequently its sensibility.’”
Dr. C. F. Winbigler says:
“The practitioner secures the same effects from a placebo or powdered pop-corn
as from some drugs by using suggestion with the former. Every successful
physician has used this method at one time or another, and sometimes when
he was utterly puzzled as to what he should prescribe, he thus secured a
marvellous result, and a cure of the patient was effected.... Every believer in
Psycho-therapeutics knows that there is a psychical as well as a physical
effect from the use of drugs. The psychical value is based on the expectation
of their special action, and that which is in the physician’s mind may be
subtly and powerfully carried over into the patient’s mind. The physician’s
personality, attitude and interest in the patient accomplishes vastly more than
the drugs he prescribes or administers. If he is cheerful and hopeful, he gives
potency to their action; if he is gloomy, pessimistic and hopeless, he
nullifies their effects. The cure of the patient is effected through the
subconscious mind, and the attitude and bearings of the physician, attendants,
the surroundings and the medicines employed, become powerful suggestions.”
Prof. Elmer Gates says:
“The system makes an effort to eliminate the metabolic products of
tissue-waste, and it is therefore not surprising that during acute grief
tears are copiously excreted; that during sudden fear the bowels and the
kidneys are caused to act, that during prolonged fear, the body is covered with
a cold perspiration; and, that during anger, the mouth tastes bitter, due
largely to the increased elimination of sulpho-cyanates. The perspiration
during fear is chemically different, and even smells different from that which
exudes during a happy mood.... Now if it can be shown in many ways that the
elimination of waste products is retarded by sad and painful emotions; nay,
worse than that, these depressing emotions directly augment the amount of these
poisons. Conversely, the pleasurable and happy emotions, during the time they
are active, inhibit the poisonous effects of the depressing moods, and cause
the bodily cells to create and store up vital energy and nutritive tissue
products.”
In an issue of “The
American Practitioner and News,” is reported a discussion before the
Lexington (Ky.) Medical and Surgical Society, in which a member, Dr. Guest,
related the following experience: “I have a brother-in-law who suffers
every summer with hay-fever. He has a relative who believes in Christian
Science. She told him that she felt positive that she could direct him to a
woman, a Christian Scientist, who would cure him. He at first objected, because
he hated to go to a woman physician. He arranged, however, to communicate with
her daily by letter. When his hay-fever broke out he suffered with it all that
day and night, and the next morning wrote her a note telling her to put him on
treatment immediately. When he returned that night he was improved and slept
better. He wrote a second note the next morning and was much encouraged. The
third day he repeated his letter writing and stated that the symptoms had
almost ceased. And he was guying me about being cured by Christian Science when
regular physicians could do nothing for him. The night of the third day, when
he came home to supper, he found a note from the Christian Scientist, stating
that she has been in the country and would put him under treatment the
next day. Realizing that all his treatment had been only in his
imagination, the symptoms reappeared with the same intensity as before.”
Dr. A. J. Parks of New
York, says: “The absolute and complete control that the sympathetic nervous
system exercises over the physical organization is so perfectly clear and
well-known to every observer that the recital of the phenomena in the vast and
countless series of manifestations is unnecessary. We are all aware of the fact
that digestion is promptly arrested upon the receipt of bad news. The appetite
at once disappears. It ceases, and the whole system feels the effect of the
depressing impulse—the mental and spiritual wave which lowers the vital
thermometer. Fear not only suspends the digestive function but arrests the
formation of the secretions upon which digestion depends. A sudden fright
frequently paralyzes the heart beyond recovery, whereas a pleasant and pleasing
message soothes and gently excites the whole granular system, increases the
secretions, aids digestion and sends a thrill of joy to the sensorium, which
diffuses the glad tidings to every nerve fibril in the complex
organization.”
Dr. T. A. Borton, in an
address before the Indiana State Medical Society, said: “The subject which I
desire to present to you to-day has to do with the influence of the mind over
the functions of the body. Its silent, unobserved force results in producing
pathological conditions, and those, by reflex action, excite morbid
sensibilities of the mind and thus derange the nerve centres, resulting in a
changed condition or over-excitability of the nerve energies, which becomes a
secondary diseased condition in the form of different types of neurasthenia. I
have been interested in this subject for many years, and in my practice have
had extended opportunities for making observations as to the potency of the
mental and suggestive pathology bearing on this subject. I would especially
refer to the healing of the body through these mental forces, changing healthy,
normal conditions into unhealthy or diseased conditions and vice versa.
These changes are not miraculous, but proceed from natural causes in the
operation of the mind, as a therapeutic agency, operating through the
functions of the body, sometimes as a tonic or stimulant, warding off diseases
under the most exposed conditions, defending and holding the system in a state
of health, while those void of these mental assurances become victims to the
ravages of disease through contagion or infection. This protective mental force
of the mind has been demonstrated many times in hospitals and other places
where contagious diseases were prevailing. The mental force possesses a
protective power when rightly exercised beyond what is usually conceded, not
only in the way of defense; but also in correcting disease when in existence. I
believe these to be much greater than has been generally admitted or
understood.... We all know how difficult it is to get good results from
medication in which our patients have no confidence, and it is an established
fact that we get better results from drugs which are given with the patient’s
knowledge of their intended effect. I have often produced desired
results from means entirely inert, stating the desired and expected effect
of its administration. I have frequently quieted the severest pain by
injecting pure water into the arm of the patient.”
Dr. G. R. Patton, in an
address before the Wabasha County (Minn.) Medical Society, said: “As Bacon
said, ‘Faith, confidence, belief and hope are the working forces that make the
cure—that work the miracle.’ The mind as a dynamic force exerted over the
functions of the body has been, doubtless, operatively manifest from the cradle
of our existence. By the phrase, ‘the mind as a dynamic force,’ I refer to the
various forms of suggestion as well as to various affective faculties of the
mind, or those states caused by the sympathetic action of the brain, such as
faith, confidence, belief, imagination, emotions, hope and the like. Any or all
of them may become active over the bodily functions.... As instance of the
mental impression acting upon observable functions revealed through the
capillary circulation as revealed to the sight, I will mention blushing or
pallor of the face, depending upon the theme presented to the thought; the
mouth watering on the sight or thought of tempting food; the flow of tears from
words or thoughts that excite grief; nausea or vomiting from a sickening
spectacle; sexual excitement from obscene thought or lascivious sights.
Instances might be multiplied. And is it not a fair inference, indeed, that
through the vasomoter nerves, the internal viscera may be subject to like
effects through mental impressions, and that thus acute as well as chronic
congestive ailments thereof may be favorably influenced or even cured
thereby?... It is my conviction that recognition of the power and usefulness of
mental dynamics, including all forms of suggestion over physiological and
pathological processes in combating diseases, is unquestionably the most impressive
advance in modern medicine. Mental influence alone may diminish or increase the
activities of the physiological processes to the extent of removing the
pathological effects of disease.... A celebrated medical teacher, after an
exhaustive dissertation over a case was leaving the bedside without prescribing
any treatment when the house physician asked what should be given the patient.
‘Oh,’ said the professor, ‘a hopeful prognosis and anything else you
please.’ To this he added, ‘the doleful doctor will be a failure, while the
hopeful one will prove a winner from start to finish.’ It is reasonably assured
that ultimately the physician will become not so much the man behind the pill
as the judicious advisor, the wise counsellor, gently leading the sick ‘into
green pastures, beside still waters,’ through paths that lead onward to
recovery, assisting nature at times, if needs be, with a big bread pill.”
Dr. Herbert A. Parkyn, the
well-known authority on suggestive therapeutics, says: “Certain results will
follow certain thoughts, and in every instance that it is possible to get the
patient to think the thoughts we desire, we secure the results we desire. It is
the work of the suggestionist to place these thoughts in the mind of the
patient so that he is bound to think them, and this can be done to some degree,
if not perfectly, in every case. It is well to have faith, but faith is not
absolutely necessary at the outset. It is time enough for the patient to have
faith in the treatment when he can perceive the benefit he is receiving.
Understanding the mental and physical changes which follow a certain thought,
the suggestionist is able to bring about those mental or physical changes, by
using direct suggestion in such a way that his patient is bound to think the
thoughts which will produce the results. A man may not have faith in the
statement that the thought of lemon juice will stimulate the flow of saliva,
but if he will imagine for a moment that he is squeezing the juice of a lemon
into his mouth the saliva will immediately flow more freely than usual,
regardless of his faith. Similarly, many, if not all of the organs of the body,
can be affected by impulses following certain lines of thought, and these
impulses will follow the thought and stimulate the organs regardless of faith.
It is simply necessary to get a patient to think the proper thoughts, and it is
in the thought directing that the work of the suggestionist lies.”
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