the best was so feeble as to seem on the verge of death.[1]
The specimen mental treatment given on page 257 shows how the practitioner worked herself up to the point; and it is easy to fancy how forcibly she spoke when a surge of conviction that seemed to act on all the blood-vessels of her body and made her tingle all over, went through her; and it is equally easy to imagine the effect upon the patient.
The relation of the Mind Cure movement to ordinary medical practice is important. It emphasizes what the most philosophical physicians of all schools have always deemed of the first importance, though many have neglected it. It teaches that medicine is but occasionally necessary. It hastens the time when patients of discrimination will rather pay more for advice how to live, and for frank declarations that they do not need medicine, than for drugs. It promotes general reliance upon those processes which go on equally in health and disease.
But these ethereal practitioners have no new force to offer; there is no causal connection between their cures and their theories.
What they believe has practically nothing to do with their success. If a new school were to arise
- ↑ In practice it seems to be more difficult to successfully treat one's self than to treat another person. The reason for this is that, when personally under the influence of supposed disease, the appeal of the senses is more forcible than when the deception shows itself in another. But that one can couquer the results of his own inverted thinking, there is not the slightest occasion to doubt.... We must not, however, make the mistake of supposing that he who would attempt to bring healing to others must first be sound himself.... The effect of a treatment depends not on its length, but on the condition of the healer who exercises it, and the dynamic power of the thought exerted.—Marston.
