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/170

 to a friend in the City the exchange connects us on to his office. Now, supposing it to be possible to cure a man, say of indigestion by thought, the process would be the same.'

'Supposing it to be possible to cure a man of indigestion by thought,' this is a statement which no one would wish to dispute. But I expect Mr. Dearmer would be surprised to hear that the analogy of the excitation of the vaso-dilator centre, which causes blushing, can be applied to only a few varieties of indigestion. Roughly, the commonest causes of indigestion might be said to be: (a) anæmia, or an insufficient supply of blood to the mucous membrane of the stomach; (b) an imperfect secretion of hydrochloric acid and the digestive fluids owing to structural defects in the glands of the stomach, usually a hereditary condition; (c) a dilated organ; (d) some pathological condition of the accessory large glands, e.g. liver and pancreas; (e) dyspepsia, owing to faulty balance of the nervous system. Any one of these five is fairly common, but only in the last is there a shred of evidence for supposing that suggestion or any other factor which would cause the higher, and through them the lower, nervous centres to show a healthy activity, would bring about amelioration or a cure, while there is much