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422 doctor should administer a drug to counteract the working of a remedy prescribed by another. It is equally

important, in metaphysical practice, that the minds which surround your patient should not act against your influence, by continually expressing such opinions as may alarm or discourage, — either by giving antagonistic advice, or through unspoken thoughts resting on your patient. While it is certain that Mind can remove any obstacle, you yet need the ear of your auditor. It is more difficult to make yourself heard mentally when others are thinking about your patients, or conversing with them. Therefore you should seek to be alone with God and the sick, while treating the cases confided to your care.

To prevent or cure scrofula, and other so-called hereditary diseases, you must destroy the belief in these ills,

and the faith in the possibility of their transmission. The patient may tell you that he has a humor in the blood, a scrofulous diathesis. His parents, or some of his progenitors farther back, have so believed before him. Mortal mind, not matter, induces this conclusion and its results. You will have humors, just as long as you believe them either to be safety-valves or to be ineradicable.

If the case to be mentally treated is consumption, take up the leading points included (according to belief) in

this disease. Show that it is not inherited; that inflammation, tubercles, hemorrhage, and decomposition are beliefs, images of mortal thoughts, superimposed upon the body; that they are not the Truth of man; that they should be treated as error, and put out of thought. Then these ills will disappear.