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/191

 the compounds of iron, strychnine, &c., in the hospital pharmacopœia. The full consent of the patient is, of course, an indispensable preliminary. When this is obtained, the rest is easy enough.

(4) In the same way, when there is a suspicion or fairly clear evidence that health is being undermined by some evil habit, the sympathetic clergyman, who knows the patient well, can do far more for him than the most skilled doctor who has probably only seen him once or twice. Why any clergyman should want to babble about a special 'gift of healing' in dealing with these most distressing cases, considering what the evidence on the subject of a 'gift of healing' is, I cannot conceive. The unostentatious, healthy influence of a cultured Christian gentleman has a potency which no manipulation or ritual is in the least likely to enhance. If he will equip himself with the necessary information as to the 'patient's' actual physical condition, he can set to work to exercise his influence, with the knowledge that he will probably effect more, so far as a permanent result goes, than all the self-styled 'healers' who ever supported scientific misstatements with bad logic, or clouded with frothy verbiage what intellect they possess.