Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/618

 PSYCHOTHERAPY

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PSYCHOTHERAPY

cure the body without the soul. . . . You begin by curing the soul [or mind]." These expressions occur in a well-known passage in which Socrates tells of curing a young man of headache by sug- gestion. He pretended to ha\-e a remedy that had been used at the court of an Eastern king to cure headache; though it was really indiiTerent in its effect, the employment of it produced the desired result. In this storj' we have the essence of psycho- therapy at aU times. The patient must trust the suggestor and must be persuaded that the suggestion has already been efficient on others, and then the cure results. There are many passages of Plato in which he discusses the influence of the mind in lessening physical ills and also in increasing them, and even creating them, so that he says in the "Repubhc" that in his generation men were educating themselves in cUsease instead of in health, and this was making many very miserable.

A special form of psj'chotherapy is by hj-pnotism. This consists in suggestion made to the patient while he is in a state of concentration of attention that may be so deep as to resemble sleep. We find traces of this from the early days in Egypt, and especially in the temple hospitals. The Eastern nations paid much attention to it and succeeded in producing many manifestations that we are likely to think of as quite modern. As the result of more careful investigation in modern times we have come to realize that what- ever there is in h\-pnotism is due entirely to the sub- ject and not to the operator. It is not the power of the operator's will, but the influence of the subject on himself that produces the condition. (See Hyp- notism.) Hypnotism may be useful at the beginning of certain neurotic cases, but it depends for its effi- ciency on the patient's will. If repeated frequently it always does harm. The recurrence of attention to it in each succeeding generation is one of the most in- teresting phenomena in the history of the use of the mind to influence the body.

Unconscious Psychotherapy. — Besides deliber- ate psychotherapy, there is not a little unconscious psychotherapeutics in the historj' of medicine. Many remedies have been introduced, have seemed to bene- fit patients, have then had considerable vogue, and subsequently proved to be quite ^-ithout effect. The patients were helped by the confidence aroused by the new remedy. Such therapeutic incidents make it difficult to determine the real value of new remedies. Remedies of comparatively slight efficiencj' acquire a reputation because of their recommendation by some- one who commands confidence: only after this loses its effect can the true value of the remedy be esti- mated.

Xearly every branch of science has furnished medi- cine with supposed remedies which have been of bene- fit for a time and have subsequently proved to be of little or no avail. In the later Middle Ages magnets were supposed to draw diseases out of people and actually affected many patients favourably. As electricity developed, each new phase of it found ap- plications in medicine that were very promising at first, but afterwards proved to be of Uttle therapeutic value. The supposed effect of the Leyden jar shortly after its discovery is ludicrous reading. Galvani's work gave new impetus to electrical therapy. A wandering quack from ."Vmerica, Perkins, made a fortune in Europe by means of two metal instruments about the size of lead pencils with which he stroked patients. They were supjiosed somehow to make an application of Galvani's di.scovery of animal electricity to the human body, .-^fter a time, of course, "Per- kins tractors" failed to produce any such results. In .spite of disappointments, each new development has ha<l the same results. When the stronger electrical machines, and then the methotls of producing high- frequency currents, were invented, these were an- nounced as having wonderful curative powers and

actually cured many patients, until the suggestive value of the new discovery failed to act favourably on the mind. When the Rontgen rays attracted atten- tion, they too were used with the most promising results in nearly every disease, though now their range of therapeutic value is known to be very limited.

F.\iTH Cures. — Faith has always been a strong therapeutic agent. Science, or the supposed apphca- tion of scientific principles, has probably been the responsible cause of more faith cures than anything else. The reason why astrologj' maintained its in- fluence in medicine was because of faith in scientific knowledge transferred to the realm of human affairs. When light was studied, it toocameinto therapeutics. With the discoverj- of the ultra-violet rays and their actinic value, blue-glass therapy became a fad, thou- sands of tons of blue glass were sold, and people sat beneath it and were cured of all kinds of pains and aches. Each new development of chemistry and of physics led to new applications to therapeutics, though after a time most of them have proved to be nugatorj'. The faith in the scientific discovery had acted through the mind of the patient so as to bring about an amelioration of symptoms, if not a cure of the disease. The patients who are cured are usually sufferers from chronic diseases, who either have only a persuasion that they are ill or, having some phj-sical ailment, inhibit through solicitude and worrj' the natural forces that would bring about a cure. This inhibition cannot be lifted until the mind is relieved by confidence in some wonderful remedy or scientific discovery that gives them a conviction of cure.

Qu.\CKEUY AND MixD CuRES. — The history of quackery is really a chapter of psychotherapy. The quack's best remedy is always his promise to cure. ■This he does for all diseases. As a consequence he benefits people very much through their minds. Such patients have never before fully trusted that they could be cured, and, without having much the matter with them, they have suffered, or at least complained. When they lift the burden of solicitude from them- selves, nature cures them by verj' simple means, but the cure is attributed to the last remedy employed. We ha\'e no remedies in medicine that have come to us from quacks: their wonderful cures have been ob- tained from simple well-knowTi remedies plus mental influence. The same power over the mind helps nostrums, or special medicines, sold with the promise of cure. At times such remedies have worked so many cures that governments have purchased the special secret from its inventor and pubhshed it to the world. The secret has always proved to be some ordinarj' remedy known before, and just as soon as its secrecy was lost it failed to cure. The spread of popular education, instead of making such faith cures by nostn.mis less common, has rather sers-ed to give them wider diffusion. The ability to read leaves people open to the suggestive influence of print, though it does not necessarily supply the judgment requisite for a proper appreciation of what is thus presented. As a consequence our generation is nostrum-ridden and spends millions of money for remedies which are quite indifferent or, at most, trivially helpful, and sometimes are absolutely noxious. Government analy- sis of a score of the most popular remedies widely consumed throughout the country five years ago showed that the only active ingredient was alcohol and that a dose of the medicine was about equivalent to a drink of whisky. This lessened the sale of these remedies, however, only for the time being, and most of them have regained their old popularity. The most popular present source of scientific superstition concerns electricity. \\\ sorts of rings, medals, and electrodes are bought at high prices with the con- fidence that they will produce wonderful results. Rheumatic rings and wristlets, foot electrodes, one of copper and the other of zinc, electric belts, shields