Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/46

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32
FAITH-HEALING

If he had been ill of any disease which "faith-healers" or "magnetizers" could relieve, he would have received equal help. While these persons were standing and the susceptible were passing "under the influence," I was simply waiting, "only this and nothing more."

(b) As for causing the bedridden to rise, and breaking up morbid conditions that had defied medicine while being aggravated by it, these are among the simplest applications of the principle involved. The confidence of those unfamiliar with the subject would be taxed beyond endurance by the narration of illustrative facts to which there is abundant testimony and which can be paralleled easily.

(c) Intelligent missionaries and travelers in heathen lands, where they have given any investigation to the subject, unite in testifying that extraordinary cures follow the enchantments and magical rites employed by priests and physicians claiming supernatural powers.

(d) The influence of witch-doctors among the negroes of Africa, both to produce disease and cure it, is as well authenticated as any facts concerning the "Dark Continent"; nor is it necessary to go there for illustrations, which can be found in great numbers in the South. Not long since an entire community in the vicinity of Atlanta, Georgia, were greatly excited by the terrible diseases which followed threats made by a doctor of this sort. Voodooism has power to bring on diseases and also to cure; nor need this burden be placed upon the negroes and American Indians exclusively. In various parts of Austria, Germany, and Russia, among the peasantry and ignorant classes, belief in witchcraft, and the coincidences which sustain it, still exists; and on the authority of most distinguished physicians and surgeons in those