Page:Faithhealingchri00buckiala.djvu/284

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
270
"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND "MIND CURE"

upon the subject. During the late war, a negro was wounded in the head by the explosion of a shell. He wandered about for several years, to all appearance a driveling idiot, when certain surgeons took an interest in his case, and concluded that the removal of a piece of the skull which had been driven in and pressed upon the brain, might restore his reason. Knowing that no damage could be done to his mind by the operation, they performed it, and were almost appalled when, after the lapse of so many years, as they lifted the piece of skull and removed the pressure upon the brain, the light of intelligence returned to the eye of the man, who said, "We were at Manassas yesterday; where are we to-day?" A similar case, where there had been delirium alternating with coma for a week, occurred in March last.

The transient effect of stimulants upon persons who have been in a state of dementia apparently for a long time, is also well known.

Mrs. Eddy upon this subject directs practitioners to tell the moderately sick man,

that he suffers only as the insane suffer, from a mere belief. The only difference is that insanity implies belief in a diseased brain, while physical ailments (so called) arise from belief that some other portions of the body are deranged.... The entire mortal body is evolved from mortal mind. A bunion would produce insanity as perceptible as that produced by congestion of the brain, were it not that mortal mind calls the bunion an unconscious portion of the body. Reverse this belief, and the results would be different.

It may be readily admitted that if a man believed his mind was in his foot, and believed it was out of order, he might be crazy. But in selecting the bunion for an illustration, Mrs. Eddy was not so wide of the mark as she might have been. More than twenty years ago, while listening to the lectures of Dr. C. E.