Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/601

Rh studied the action of mental states upon the bodily organism. And that round a nucleus of truth there should have gathered a large accretion of error, under the influence of the mental preconception whose modus operandi I have endeavored to elucidate, is accordant with the teachings of our own recent experience, in such cases as that of Dr. Newton and the Zouave Jacob. In these and similar phenomena, a strong conviction of the possession of the power on the part of the healer seems to be necessary for the excitement of the faith of those operated on; and the healer recognizes, by a kind of intuition, the existence of that faith on the part of the patient. Do not several phrases in the gospel narratives point to the same relations as existing between Jesus and the sufferers who sought his aid? The cure is constantly attributed to the "faith" of the patient; while, on the other hand, we are told that Jesus did not do many mighty works in his own country "because of their unbelief"—the very condition which, if these mighty works had been performed by his own will alone, would have been supposed to call forth its exertion, but which is perfectly conformable to our own experience of the wonders of mesmerism, spiritualism, etc. So Paul is spoken of as "steadfastly beholding" the cripple at Lystra, "and seeing that he had faith to be healed."

The potency of influences of the opposite kind upon minds predisposed to them, and through their minds upon their bodies, is shown in the "Obeah practices" still lingering among the negroes of the "West India colonies, in spite of most stringent legislation. A slow pining away, ending in death, has been the not unfrequent result of the fixed belief on the part of the victim that "Obi" has been put upon him by some old man or old woman reputed to possess the injurious power; and I see no reason to doubt that the Obi men or women were firm believers in the occult power attributed to them.

Every medical man of large experience is well aware how strongly the patient's undoubting faith in the efficacy of a particular remedy or mode of treatment assists its action; and, where the doctor is himself animated by such a faith, he has the more power of exciting it in others. A simple prediction, without any remedial measure, will sometimes work its own fulfillment. Thus, Sir James Paget tells of a case in which he strongly impressed a woman, having a sluggish, nonmalignant tumor in the breast, that this tumor would disperse within a month or six weeks; and so it did. He perceived the patient's nature to be one on which the assurance would act favorably, and no one could more earnestly and effectually enforce it. On the other hand, a fixed belief on the part of the patient that a mortal disease has seized upon the frame, or that a particular operation or system of treatment will prove unsuccessful, seems in numerous instances to have been the real occasion of the fatal result.

Many of the so-called "miracles" of the Romish Church, such as