solemn assertion of a responsible person that he was cured of heart-disease, can prove only that the symptoms of what he thought was heart-disease have disappeared.
Also, in any state not accompanied with acute pain, testimony to an immediate cure is of no value unless the disease be of an external character and actually disappears before the eye of the witness. All other cures must have the test of time; hence testimony given on the spot, at the grave of Father Mathew, or at Lourdes, or at the camp-meeting at Old Orchard, or in the Tabernacle of Mr. Simpson, can prove merely that then and there the witness was not conscious of pain or weakness, or of the symptoms of the disease which he believed he had.
The foregoing observations relate to internal diseases, but it is by no means easy to determine what an external disease is. Tumors are often mistaken for cancers, and cancers are of different species—some incurable by any means known to the medical profession, others curable. It is by these differences that quack cancer-doctors thrive. When the patient has anything resembling cancer, they promptly apply some salve, and if the patient recovers he signs a certificate saying that he was cured of a cancer of a most terrible character which would have been fatal in three months or six weeks; or when the quack himself writes the certificate for the patient to sign, which is generally the case, the time in which the cancer would have proved fatal may be reduced to a few days. There is also a difference in tumors: some under no circumstances cause death; others are liable to become as fatal as a malignant pustule.
In supposed injuries to the joints, the exact cause of the swelling is not always easily determined; and internal abscesses have sometimes been months in
