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CHAPTER VIII

SUMMARY

Psychotherapeutics. Definition of therapeutics. — Drugs, surgery, orthopedics, electricity, mechanotherapy, refraction, hydrotherapy, massage, in all a physical element. — Psychotherapeutics, elimination of the physical agent. - Man a suggestible animal. — Historical: "Thy faith hath made thee whole; " royal touch; shrines; prayer cure; Christian Science ; "mental healing;" Whipple, New York; Newcomb, Boston. — Claim everything, but refuse to substantiate. — Silent treatments, accord with Sidis' law. Indirect suggestions, accord with Sidis' law. Bernheim, a-hypnotic suggestion. Hypnosis necessary to overcome auto-suggestions. Method of giving treatments. Sphere of psychotherapeutics subconscious memory of pain, hallucinations, insomnia, neuralgia, constipation. - Drug habit and degeneracy, Quackenboss. - Dubois : nervous diseases. - Organic disease? Anderson's "muscle bed." - Thinking out an exercise. An adjunct to general medicine.

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PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS

THERAPEUTICS is the science which treats of remedial agents, first and foremost among which, from time immemorial, have been drugs. We have extended the definition to include surgery, electricity, orthopedics, and mechanotherapy. The correction of refractive errors by means of lenses may very properly be classed as orthopedics. In all of these well-recognized divisions of therapeutics there is

SUGGESTIVE THERAPEUTICS

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evident a physical means, namely, the drug, the knife, the electricity, the mechanical appliance.

As suggestive therapeutics means the elimination of these physical agents, and the use of mental forces, psychotherapeutics would seem to be the most logical term. Psychics is certainly the antonym of physics.

The mental control which every individual exercises over his various functions is a matter of common knowledge. The proposition that this normal control can be interfered with by outside influences needs no proof.

Now if disease sometimes results from abnormal mental influences, what could be more rational than to expect to cure by reëstablishing the mental tone? The history of civilization is replete with instances of the application of this principle, tho it is only in recent years that we have come to recognize the underlying truth that "man is a suggestible animal."

An adequate historical review of this subject would fill many volumes. Religious devotees in all ages have practised the healing art. It is evident that at the beginning of the Christian era it was a matter of common belief. Successful healing was regarded as the criterion of the truth of the religion.

Jesus seems to have clearly perceived the truth, when he said to the woman who touched the hem of his garment, "Thy faith hath made thee whole."

The account reads that this power was transferred to the disciples, who "laid hands on the sick and they recovered."

The doctrine of the divine right of kings carried with it the belief in the royal touch. Andrew D. White says: "This mode of cure began, so far as history throws light upon it, with Edward the Confessor in the eleventh century, and came down from reign to reign, passing from the Catholic saint to the Protestant debauchees upon the English throne, with ever-increasing miraculous efficacy.

"Testimony to the reality of these cures is overwhelming. As a simple matter of fact there are no miracles of healing in the history of the human race more thoroly attested than those wrought by the touch of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, the Stuarts, and especially of that chosen vessel, Charles II.

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Altho Elizabeth could not bring herself to believe in the realities of these cures, Doctor Tooker, the queen's chaplain, afterward Dean of Litchfield, testifies fully of his own knowledge of the cures wrought by her, as also does William Clowes, the queen's surgeon. Fuller in his Church History gives an account of a Roman Catholic, who was thus cured by the queen's touch and converted to Protestantism. Similar testimony exists as to the cures wrought by James I. Charles also enjoyed the same power in spite of the public declaration against its reality by Parliament. . . . But the most incontrovertible evidence of this miraculous power is

ROYAL TOUCH

III

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found in the case of Charles II., the most thoroly cynical debauchee who ever sat on the English throne before the advent of George IV. He touched nearly one hundred thousand persons, and the outlay for gold medals issued to the afflicted on these occasions rose in some years as high as £10,000. William III. evidently regarded the whole thing as a superstition, and on one occasion is said to have touched a patient, saying to him: 'God give you better health and more sense.' Whiston assures us that this person was healed notwithstanding William's incredulity. This curative power was, then, acknowledged far and wide by Catholics and Protestants alike, upon the Continent, in Great Britain and America, and it descended, not only in spite of the transition of the English kings from Catholicism to Protestantism, but in spite of the transition from the legitimate sovereignty of the Stuarts to the illegitimate succession of the house of Orange, and yet within a few years after the whole world held this belief, it was dead, it had shrivelled away in the growing scientific light at the dawn of the eighteenth century." I

But humanity has not lost its faith in divine healing. Even in the twentieth century the world has its shrines, where we have the best of evidence for believing many genuine cures are wrought. Every year pilgrimages are made to the shrine of St. Ann de Beaupré, near Quebec. Scarce a week passes I History of the Conflict of Theology and Science in Christendom.

but the press has some notices of the prayer cures of the prophet Sanford at Shiloh, Me.

The unprecedented growth of Christian Science among the most intelligent class of the community is proof of an underlying curative principle.

Mr. Alfred Farlow, who seems to be the spokesman for Boston, says: "Various magnetic and mental forms of treatment have long been in vogue, but their success has never been sufficiently uniform to command any great amount of attention.

"Mrs. Eddy, the discoverer and founder of Christian Science, was once treated by a magnetic practitioner and temporarily relieved, but the benefits were not permanent. After her discovery she recognized that magnetic treatment depended upon the human will, in contradistinction to the Divine Mind, and therefore fell short of the exalted spiritual method which was employed by Jesus and the Apostles, hence its inadequacy."

It is difficult to comprehend the subtle distinctions of the various sects of psychic healers. Many philosophers have struggled with the problem of the relation of the human will to the divine, and to some of us common mortals it seems somewhat doubtful if these people can always distinguish between the manifestations of human souls and the presence of the great Over Soul.

Very much like the Christian Scientists are the mental or "metaphysical" healers, so called.

The Medical Student, April, 1906.

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