Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/25

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FAITH-HEALING
11

lungs by competent specialists gave results which agreed with each other and with the external symptoms, and the patient, by changing from a sedentary to an outdoor and active life, entirely recovers and lives for many years without return of the symptoms. Possibility of error in the diagnosis remains, but where all these conditions exist it is reduced to a minimum. Such cases are numerous. Conclusive demonstration is found in post-mortem examinations. The late Prof. Austin Flint of New York, author of the "Practice of Medicine," was also the author of a "Clinical Report on Consumption," and describes sixty-two cases in which an arrest of the disease took place; in seven cases it occurred without any special medical or hygienic treatment, and in four of the seven he declares that recovery was complete.

Prof. J. Hughes Bennett, of the Royal Infirmary at Edinburgh, in a lecture says: "Up to a recent period the general opinion has been that consumption almost always marches on to a fatal termination, and that the cases of those known to be restored were so few as to be merely an exception to the general rule. Morbid anatomy has now, I think, demonstrated that tubercles in an early stage degenerate and become abortive with extreme frequency, in the proportion of one third to one half of all the incurables who die over forty."

Both the Edinburgh "Journal of Medical Science" and the London "Lancet" indorse this conclusion. It is equivalent to saying that from one third to one half of all the incurables of Scotland who die over forty have had incipient consumption and got well of it. To meet those who would say that practically consumption does not mean the existence of a few isolated tubercles, but an advanced stage in which the lungs are in a state of ulceration, and the powers are so