Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/12

 There is no doubt that scientific medical men are not going to pay attention to evidence of an unscientific character. They will not waste their time over it. Nevertheless, to phenomena duly attested, and to evidence scientifically recorded, they will give the most scrupulous attention. It is the detailed and accurate collection and classification of facts by those who are trained for the task and expert in its process, that must precede generalisations upon this new, or shall we call it, revived, branch of therapeutics.

Prejudice against it will be found to exist both in ecclesiastic and in scientific circles. Your book will help to dissipate prejudice by the spread of better-informed opinion. The time, indeed, is opportune. The ''British Medical Journal'' of June 18, 1910, has published a series of papers by men 'who could speak with the highest authority on the relations between mind and body, as exhibited in the phenomena of disease.' 'Their opinion,' as the Journal tells us, 'serves as an authoritative reminder that there are bodily ills which cannot be cured by pills and potions, but which yield to methods which, for want of a better word, may be called "mental"; that cures which, in a former day, would have been denied by unbelievers and accepted