Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/320

316 word strength is a mere word with no more meaning than to lead man astray.

The corner stone of the medical science is based on this word strength. This or that thing is said to give a person strength. In the case of a fever the whole invention of the medical faculty is brought to play to discover some medicine that will give strength. The chemist is employed to discover the chemical properties which such and such things contain, and numberless articles are said to contain strengthening virtue. The food is strengthening, the air is strengthening and you can find no end to the strengthening things given to the sick, and all the while they are growing weaker.

Every one knows that a horse is stronger than a man, it cannot be the food, for a man fed on grass would die according to our belief, while the animal will live, and so he will live on the same food as man and still grow no stronger. Man puts the construction on the word to suit himself. If the power applied to man's will is called strength; the thing that will is applied to is not called strong. You may ask what this has to do with the curing of disease. I will tell you, for it is the very thing to correct. There is such a term as resistance and this is opposed to strength. For instance, you wish to raise a stone, the wish that wants to raise a stone is one thing, and the stone is another. If wisdom chooses to apply its strength through the arms its motive or will is applied according to the idea of resistance. If a horse is attached to a dead weight it applies its will or strength and if it fails it makes another effort to overcome the resistance. Strength is intelligence; it embraces all man's wisdom, and if his wisdom is of God or Science his strength is not in himself, and to be wise is to be strong.

I will illustrate my idea of strength as I apply it to the sick. When I use the word I couple it with skill. These two are governed either by natural wisdom or scientific wisdom. I will state a case of my own experience. I treated a man who had lost the use of his lower limbs, he could not move them when he was sitting in his chair. The doctor called it spinal affection. When he attempted to rise he had not strength enough in his spine to keep his body erect, he would give out at the pit of the stomach, and this took all the power from his legs. This was the doctor's theory and the man believed it and applied his will or strength according