Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/476

466 in the search for health by pilgrims who are dissatisfied with the highways over which medical science goes its steady, though it may be, uncertain gait. Among them there is both plausible exaggeration and ignorant perversion and dishonest libel of the relations that bind together body and mind. Among the several schisms from the Mother Church of Christian Science there is one that claims to be the 'rational phase of the mental healing doctrine' that acknowledges the reality of disease and the incurability of serious organic disorders and resents any connection with the "half-fanatical personality worship [of Mrs. Eddy] as quite as foreign to its tenets as would be the views of the Tree Religious Association' to the Pope of Rome.' 'Divine Healing' exhibits its success in one notable instance, in the establishment of a school and college, a bank, a land and investment association, a printing and publishing office and sundry Divine Healing Homes; and this prosperity is now to be extended by the foundation of a city or colony of converts who shall be united by the common bond of faith in divine healing as transmitted in the personal power of their leader. The official organ of this movement announces that the personification of their faith "makes her religion a business and conducts herself upon sound business principles." With emphatic protest on the part of each that he alone holds the key to salvation, and that his system is quite original and unlike any other, comes the procession of Metaphysical Healer and Mind-Curist and Viticulturist and Magnetic Healer and Astrological Health Guide and Phrenopathist and Medical Clairvoyant and Psychic Scientist and Mesmerist and Occultist. Some use or abuse the manipulations of Hypnotism; others claim the power to concentrate the magnetism of the air and to excite the vital fluids by arousing the proper mental vibrations, or by some equally lucid and demonstrable procedure; some advertise magnetic cups and positive and negative powders and absent treatment by outputs of 'psychic force' and countless other imposing devices. In truth, they form a motley crew, and with their 'Colleges of Fine Forces' and 'Psychic Research Companies,' offering diplomas and degrees for a three weeks' course of study or the reading of a book, represent the slums of the occult. An account of their methods is likely to be of as much interest to the student of fraud as to the student of opinion.

There can be no doubt that many of these systems have been stimulated into life or into renewed vigor by the success of 'Christian Science'; this is particularly noticeable in the introduction of absent treatment as a plank in their diverse platforms. This ingenious method of restoring the health of their patients and their own exchequers appealed to all the band of healing occultists from Spiritualist to Vibrationist, as easily adaptable to their several systems. In much the same way Mesmer, more than a hundred years ago, administered to the practice which