Page:Science and Health.djvu/345

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PHYSIOLOGY.
341

They propagate it mentally, and then consider a thing of mind should be dosed with matter; but after all, 'tis faith in drugs, etc., that cures, mind is their remedy at last.

Faith is all that ever made a drug remedy the ailments of a man. Mortal mind is belief, the immortal is understanding, the latter is Spirit, the former personal sense; we must learn to hold immortal and mortal mind or belief separate. The cause and cure of disease is solely mental, and to understand this renders mind less productive of disease, and able to destroy it. Matter has neither action nor sensation of its own; mind moves the body, and feels for it. We cannot retain the old positions diametrically opposite to metaphysical science, and conquer disease with mind. And because physics must eventually yield to metaphysics, it will keep the old schools fighting science for the next century. Ignorance, superstition, or avarice will shut the door on health and harmony not obtained through their systems. When there were fewer doctors and less thought bestowed on sanitary subjects there were better constitutions and less disease.

In olden times, who ever heard of a case of dyspepsia; if one had chanced to appear it would have yielded at once to benevolence, or hard work; people had little time then to be selfish, or to think of their bodies, and for sickly after-dinner-talk. The exact amount of labor the stomach could perform was not mapped out in mind by physiology; therefore a man's belief was not a law to his digestive organs. The action of mind on the body was more harmonious before the “tree of knowledge” had taken deeper root in man's belief. The