sicians who cure by "laying on of hands" still exist, increasing rather than diminishing in number.
The circumstance of meeting a person who had been in the habit of going into trances in religious meetings, was an easy subject for "mesmerizers," had been cured by a "healer," and finally became a spiritualist and "trance medium," suggested the question whether there might not be a natural susceptibility acted upon by a general law. Nothing which could shed light upon this problem has been knowingly neglected by the writer during the past thirty years.
Two root questions arise concerning the phenomena; they are the inquiries which lie at the foundation of all knowledge: What are the facts, and how may they be explained?
THE FACTS
The career of Prince Hohenlohe, Roman Catholic Bishop of Sardica, is as well authenticated as any fact in history. Dr. Tuke, in his thoroughly scientific work on the "Influence of the Mind upon the Body," admits his cures as facts. The Prince, who was born in 1794, in Waldenburg, was of high position and broad education, having studied at several universities. When twenty-six years of age, he met a peasant who had performed several astonishing cures, "and from him caught the enthusiasm which he subsequently manifested in healing the sick." I quote two cases on the authority of Professor Onymus of the University of Würtzburg. "Captain Ruthlein, an old gentleman of Thundorf, 70 years of age, who had long been pronounced incurable of paralysis which kept his hand clinched, and who had not left his room for many years, was perfectly cured.
