Page:Medicine and the church.djvu/118

 following extract from the ''British Medical Journal'', November 6, 1909:

'We welcome the discussion at the Harveian Society, as a sign that the profession is more fully realising the value of certain potentialities of healing and relief, which an ingrained materialism passes by on one side. All around us spiritual or mental healing is going on. It is our duty, as it is our interest, to study the process scientifically, to define its limitations both in regard to the conditions to which it is applicable and to the persons who can successfully apply it, and to recognise perhaps more fully than before that man is a compound of body and spirit, both of which have to be taken into account by those who undertake the treatment of disease. The first step to be taken, if the profession is not to surrender a large part of its sphere of usefulness, is that medical practitioners should be trained in psychology as well as in physiology. In saying this we do not wish to be understood as pinning our faith entirely to experimental psychology. A careful study of the works of the great masters of the human heart is at least as important as the estimate of time reactions and the accuracy of visual impressions.' 'A careful study of the works of the great masters of the human heart'—this rings true, and makes