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/138

 which might tend to mitigate the force of such conclusions.

Now, there are obviously two main lines of investigation. We may consider (1) the à priori reasonableness of the claim that certain bodily diseases can be cured by 'mental' or spiritual processes, or we may proceed to (2) an à posteriori investigation of cases of alleged cures. A third method of investigation, that which is, of course, adopted in all cases of scientific treatment of disease by new methods, viz. the tabulation of all cases treated, with the diagnosis, extent of disease, immediate and permanent results, negative as well as positive, noted in each case, is not usually possible, since no psychic or spiritual healer whom I have ever met seems to consider such tabulation at all necessary or even desirable.

In the first place, I submit a somewhat long quotation from an admirable paper by one of the greatest medical authorities in the English-speaking world, Professor W. Osler.

'An influenza-like outbreak of faith-healing seems to have the public of the American continent in its grip. It is an old story, the oldest indeed in our history, and one in which