Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing

The present decade has experienced an intense interest in mental healing. This has come as a culmination of the development along these lines during the past half century. It has shown itself in the beginning of new religious sects with this as a, or the, fundamental tenet, in more wide-spread general movements, and in the scientific study and application of the principles underlying this form of therapeutics.

Many have been led astray because, being ignorant of the mental healing movements and vagaries of the past, the late applications, veiled in metaphysical or religious verbiage, have seemed to them to be new in origin and principle. No one could consider an historical survey of the subject and reasonably hold this opinion. It is on account of the ignorance of similar movements, millenniums old, that so much, if any, originality can be credited to the founders.

The object of this volume is to present a general view of mental healing, dealing more especially with the historical side of the subject. While this is divided topically, the topics are presented in a comparatively chronological order, and thereby trace the development of the subject to the present century.

The term "mental healing" is given the broadest possible use, and comprehends any cures which may be brought about by the effect of the mind over the body, regardless of whether the power back of the cure is supposed to be deity, demons, other human beings, or the individual mind of the patient.

It is hoped that this may contribute to the knowledge of a subject which is of such wide-spread popular interest.

George Barton Cutten.

Wolfville, Nova Scotia, December 1, 1910.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Bas-relief representing the Gallic AEsculapius dispatching a demon Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Cure through the Intercession of a Healing Saint 72

Valentine Greatrakes 134

Sir Kenelm Digby 152

King's Touch-pieces 226

F. A. Mesmer 252

John Alexander Dowie 276

George O. Barnes 290

Mary Baker Eddy 302

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF MENTAL HEALING

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--MENTAL HEALING

"'Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay."--ARMSTRONG.

"Oh, if I could once make a resolution, and determine to be well!"--WALDERSTEIN.

"The body and the mind are like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining, rumple the one and you rumple the other."--STERNE.

"I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when the one suffers, the other sympathizes."--CHESTERFIELD.

"Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that for a time can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty."--STOWE.

"The surest road to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill; Most of those evils we poor mortals know From doctors and imagination flow."--CHURCHILL.

The fact that there is a reciprocal relation between mental states and bodily conditions, acting both for good and ill, is nothing new in human experience. Even among the most crude and unobserving, traditions and incidents have given witness to this knowledge. For centuries stories of the hair turning white during the night on account of fright or sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness caused by disordered organs of digestion, change of acumen or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effect of the body on the mind.