Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/60

56 mesmeric sleep, why may not self-induced results follow upon attention in the case of any one of us? Does this not explain many of the ancient mysteries, and the self-induced states of Apollonius of Tyana, Mahomet and Swedenborg?

At this point Quimby's lecture-notes come to a sudden end, and we are left to infer that having reached these significant conclusions he was not interested to lecture upon them any further, but might better turn his results to practical account in healing the sick. For these notes show that here too he had reached the same conclusion which we noted in the foregoing, namely, that the results produced by physicians in treating the sick depend upon securing the attention of the patient in favor of a certain diagnosis and the proper medicine to be taken for the supposed disease. In fact he says, convincingly, that “all medical remedies affect the body only through the mind.” The one who takes medicine must believe in medicine and anticipate the desired result. The result is then created by the believer.

Here, then, were interests enough to follow for a life-time. The human mind is plastic to ideas and imagery, and these take form according to belief. What enlists the attention long enough to produce a distinct impression, has power to affect the body, and an idea accepted as truth is as good as reality in its influence upon the person believing it. Thus a person may be made to feel heat or cold, to be frightened by the mental picture of a lion, or be dispossessed of a desire to eat lemons. There is an endless range of possibilities. Belief in magnetism on the part of an audience tends to the production of anticipated magnetic phenomena, but the results change when the hypothesis of a magnetic or electric “fluid” is dismissed. Spirits can be summoned up from the vasty deep, or precisely the same results may be created without their aid. A patient will proceed to create a disease according to a doctor's description of what he is likely to feel, or this process can be checked by diverting the attention in favor of some other idea.

Again, man has great power over his own states, and need not depend either on a mesmerist, a spiritist, physician or any other person. For strength of will proves to be, not the power of a fluid or current, but concentration upon an interest or object that has engaged the attention. There is nothing occult or uncanny in such power. There is no reason