Those cults which are either founded upon faith healing or involve it
have a long ancestry. George Barton Cutten's very suggestive book[8]
makes that clear enough and supplies an informing mass of detail.
Medical Science and Psychology have been slow to take into account the
facts thus submitted, but they have of late made amends for their
somewhat unaccountable delay, and we have now reached certain
conclusions about which there is little controversy except, indeed, as
to the range of their application. Beneath all faith healing and kindred
phenomena there are three pretty clearly defined bases. First, the
action or reaction of mind upon body; second, the control of mental
attitudes by the complex of faith; and, as an interrelated third, the
control of the lower nerve centers by suggestion.
[Footnote 8: "Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing."]
_The Bases of Faith and Mental Healing_
There is an almost baffling interplay of what one may call these three
controlling principles, and the exhaustive discussion of the whole
subject demands the knowledge of the specialist. But we do know, to
begin with, that just as there are demonstrated bodily approaches to
both the mental and spiritual aspects of life, so there are equally
undeniable mental and even spiritual approaches to physical conditions.
We have here to fall back upon facts rather than upon a definite
knowledge of what happens in the shadowy border-land across which the
mind takes over and organizes and acts upon what is presented to it by
the afferent nervous system. Nothing, for example, could be really more
profound than the difference between waves of compression and
rarefaction transmitted through the luminiferous ether and the
translation of their impact into light. Somewhere between the retina of
the eye, with its magic web of sensitive nerve ends, and the proper
registering and transforming regions of the brain something happens
about which Science can say no final word.
What happens in the case of light is equally true of sound and tactual
sensation. That vivid and happy consciousness of well-being which we
call health is just the translation of normal balances, pressures and
functionings in the mechanism of the body into an entirely different
order of phenomena. Health is a word of manifold meaning and if its
foundations are established in the harmonious cooeperation of physical
processes, its superstructure rises through mental attitudes into what,
for want of a more clearly defined word, we call spiritual states. Two
orders meet and merge within us. Above a world of idea, insight, desire
and subordination of means to ends, the whole driven by the will and
saturated with emotion, a world which has its contacts with the unseen
and eternal and derives its strength from the truly immaterial; below a
world of material and forces in subjection to the laws of physics and
chemistry and involved in the processes of the conservation and
transformation of physical energy, and consciousness the clearing-house
for the whole.
_Cannon's Study of Emotional Reactions Upon Physical States_
This interplay of body and mind has of late been made the subject of
careful and long continued experimentation with a special reference to
the reactions of strong emotion upon bodily states, particularly as
registered in chemical changes. These experiments have been carried on
with an almost incredible patience and attention to detail under the
most difficult circumstances, and their conclusions seem final.
Professor Walter B. Cannon of Harvard University has recently put the
result of such investigation at our service in a most interesting
way.[9] (It ought to be said, however, that a similar series of
experiments repeated at the laboratories of the University of Chicago
failed to produce the same results.)
[Footnote 9: "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage," quoted
without page references.]
Strong emotion affects almost every physical region, modifies almost
every physical function. The normal secretion of digestive fluids is
greatly increased by hunger (though here, of course, hunger itself may
have a physical basis) and also by what the investigator calls sham
feeding--food, that is, taken by an animal and so deflected as not to
pass into the digestive tract at all stimulates the gastric flow quite
as much as if it were actually received into the stomach. On the other
hand unhappy emotional disturbance greatly retards the digestive
processes. Pain, for example, results in pronounced inhibitions of the
secretion of gastric juice while happy emotional states produce
naturally the opposite effect. Pain is often accompanied by nausea,
indeed the nausea of a sick headache may be only secondary, induced by a
pain springing from quite another source than retarded digestion.
Professor Cannon's experiments are most interesting as he traces the
variations of the flow of adrenal secretion induced by emotion and then
retraces the effect of the chemical changes so produced upon bodily and
mental states. The secretion of adrenin[10] is greatly increased by pain
or excitement. The percentage of blood sugar is also greatly increased
by the same causes. The heaviness of fatigue is due, as we know, to
poisonous uneliminated by-products resulting from long continued or
over-taxing exertion of any sort. Under the influence of fatigue the
power of the muscles to respond to any kind of stimulus is greatly
reduced. (It is interesting to note, however, that muscular fibre
detached from the living organism and mechanically stretched and relaxed
shows after a period the same decrease in contractability under
stimulation.) On the other hand any increase in adrenal secretion
results in renewed sensitiveness to stimulation, that is by an increased
power of the muscle to respond. Falling blood pressures diminish
proportionately the power of muscular response. Rising blood pressure is
effective "in largely restoring in fatigued structures their normal
irritability" and an increase of adrenin seems to raise blood pressure
by driving the blood from the interior regions of the body "into the
skeleton muscles which have to meet, by extra action, the urgent demands
of struggle or escape."
[Footnote 10: I follow Cannon in the form of this word.]
Adrenin is of real use in counteracting the effects of fatigue or in
enabling the body to respond to some unusual call for effort. The
coagulation of the blood is also affected by the same agent, that is, it
coagulates very much more rapidly.[11] Coagulation is also hastened by
heightened emotion; a wound does not bleed so freely when the wounded
one is angry or excited. A soldier, then, in the stress of combat is not
only rendered insensible to fatigue and capable of abnormal activity,
but his wounds are really not so dangerous as they would otherwise be.
There are here suggestions of elemental conditions having to do with
struggle and survival, conditions which play their very great part in
the contests of life.
[Footnote 11: Cannon thinks, however, that this effect is produced
indirectly.]
Emotions set free, as has been said, larger percentages of sugar which
are immediately utilized by the muscles in heightened or fatiguing
effort. All these experiments point very clearly to reservoirs of power,
both physical and mental, upon which we may draw in times of stress and
under emotional excitement.[12] Such emotionally induced chemical
actions and reactions as have been indicated release these stored
energies, render us for the time being unconscious of fatigue and even
guard us against the too rapid exhaustion of vital power. Whatever
heightens emotion, therefore, modifies the very chemical structure of
the body.
[Footnote 12: Excessive emotional reactions upon bodily states may
explain, as Cannon suggests, the more obscure phenomena of religious
frenzy such as the ceremonial dances of savages, the "Danse Macabre" of
the Middle Ages, the feats of the whirling dervishes, the jumping and
shouting of revivalism; also, maybe, the modern jazz.]
_The Two Doors_
There are other changes as well. The breath is quickened, the lungs are
expanded, waste products are very much more rapidly eliminated and so in
answer to summoning states of the soul the body as a whole readjusts
itself in marvellous subtle forms, mobilizing all its forces for the
contests which the emotion anticipates, or indeed which the emotion
itself calls out. And if all this seems unduly technical it is only to
bear out with something like a scientific accuracy the statements made a
little earlier that two orders meet and merge within us and that the
reactions of our loves, our fears, or our longings upon our bodily
processes may be stated in terms of the test tube and the chemist's
scale.
Such changes as are thus registered react in turn upon mental
attitudes. Fatigue produces mental depression. An accumulation of
uneliminated waste darkens all our horizons; irritability of mind and
soul attend physical irritability; any unhappy modification in the
balance of the physical registers automatically an equally unhappy
modification in the balance of the psychic. Most of us, as we come to
know ourselves better, recognize marked alterations even in spiritual
states which we are taught to refer to physical condition, but just as
truly altered spiritual conditions produce altered physical states.
There is an endless give and take and there are, therefore, two doors of
approach to our pains, wearinesses and sicknesses.
_The Challenge of Hypnotism_
Medicine, surgery and hygiene as at present organized largely approach
personal well-being from the physical side. They have for their support
a body of fact and a record of accomplishment which cannot be put out of
court without sheer intellectual stultification. Modern medicine has
been so massively successful in dealing with disease on the basis of a
philosophy which makes everything, or nearly everything, of the body and
nothing or next to nothing of the mind, that medicine was in danger of
becoming more sheerly materialistic than almost any other of our
sciences; Physics and Chemistry had their backgrounds in which they
recognized the interplay of realities too great for their formulae and
forces too subtle for their most sensitive instruments. But medicine was
almost in the way of forgetting all this when it was compelled--and
that for its own good--to take account of an entirely different set of
forces.
This was, to begin with, as far as the modern scientific approach is
concerned, first made clearly apparent in Hypnotism. Hypnotism seems to
be such a modification of normal mental conditions under the power of
commanding suggestion as really for the time being to focus
consciousness and mental action generally in one suggested line. A new
set of inhibitions and permissions are thus imposed upon normal
consciousness. Attention is withdrawn from the usual frontiers (if one
may use the word) to which, consciously or subconsciously, it has always
been directed and centered upon one single thing.[13]
[Footnote 13: Sidis defines Hypnosis as the disassociation of the
superior and inferior nerve centers. They commonly work in perfect
harmony, their blended unity forming one conscious personality. "In
hypnosis the two systems or nervous centers are disassociated, the
superior centers and the upper consciousness are inhibited or better cut
off, split off from the rest of the nervous system with its organic
consciousness, which is thus laid bare, open to the influence of
external stimuli or suggestions.... In hypnotic trance ... we have
direct access to man's organic consciousness and through it to organic
life itself."... If we broaden this last sentence to include not only
organic consciousness but the deeper strata of personality in which not
only individual but perhaps racial experience is bedded, we have the key
to a vast range of obscure phenomena. Sidis believes that "strong
permanent impressions or suggestions made on the reflex organic
consciousness of the inferior centers may modify their functional
disposition, induce trophic changes, and even change organic structure"
and this in a sentence is probably what lies behind all faith and mental
healing.--"The Psychology of Suggestion," pp. 69 and 70.]
The hypnotized person becomes, therefore, unconscious of any reporting
agencies outside the field of his abnormally focused attention. Normal
conditions of pain or pleasure cease for the time to become real.
Attention has been forced entirely out of normal channels and given a
new direction. Then we discover, strangely enough, that though those
messages of the afferent nerves cease to have any effect upon the
subject, the imaginings of the subject carried back along outgoing lines
produce the most unexpected results in physical states. If a postage
stamp be placed upon the hand of the hypnotized subject and he be told
that the stamp is a mustard plaster, the stamp reddens the skin and
presently raises a blister. In other words, heightened and intensified
expectant attention is able to produce the same results as an irritating
agency.[14]
[Footnote 14: Experiments by Krafft-Ebing and Forel. To be taken with
caution. See Jacoby, "Suggestion and Psycho-Therapy," p. 153.]
_Changed Attention Affects Physical States_
We are concerned here chiefly with the fact and it is a fact capable of
far-reaching application. Of course the nature and extent of the changes
thus produced are the battlegrounds of the two schools. Medical Science
is quite willing to admit that while functional action may thus be
modified no real organic changes can be produced. There is a border-land
so much still in shadow that no final word can be said about the whole
matter, but it is incontestably true that modifications of attention
have a reflex in the modification of physical states.
A pain which is not registered does not, for the time being at least,
exist, and if the attention can either through hypnotism or by a
persistent mental discipline be withdrawn from disturbing physical
reports, then the conditions which produce them will at least be left to
correct themselves without interference from consciousness and since the
whole tendency of disturbed physical organism is to correct itself, the
whole process probably goes on more quickly as it certainly goes on with
less discomfort if attention is withdrawn.[15] The assumption of health
is a tremendous health-giving force and if the condition to be remedied
is really due to a mental complex which needs only some strong exertion
of the will or readjustment of attitude to change, then marvellous
results may follow changed mental and spiritual states. The apparently
dumb may speak, the apparently paralyzed rise from their beds, the
shell-shocked pull themselves together and those under the bondage of
their fears and their pains be set free. There are so many illustrations
of all this that the fact itself is not in debate.
[Footnote 15: Organic changes (the storm center of the controversy) may
possibly be induced through a better general physical tone. Such changes
would not be directly due to suggestion but to processes released by
suggestion. Organic change may certainly be checked and the effect of it
overcome by increased resistance. So much conservative physicians admit.
How far reconstruction thus induced may go is a question for the
specialist.]
_The Power of Faith to Change Mental Attitudes_
Now since mental attitudes so react upon bodily states, whatever
strongly controls mental attitudes becomes a very great factor in
mental healing. There is a long line of testimony that what may be
called the complex of faith does just this with unique power, for faith
implies supernatural intervention. If there be anywhere an
all-prevailing power whose word is law and we could really be persuaded
that such a power had really intervened--even if it actually had not--on
our behalf and brought its supernatural resource to bear upon our
troubled case, then we should have a confidence more potent in the
immediate transformation of mental attitudes than anything else we could
possibly conceive. If we really believed such a power were ready to help
us, if we as vividly expected its immediate help, then we might
anticipate the utmost possible therapeutic reaction of mind upon body. A
faith so called into action should produce arresting results, and this
as a matter of investigation is true.
In following through the theories of faith healing we may take here
either of two lines. The devout may assert a direct divine
interposition. God is. He has the power and the will; all things are
plastic to His touch; He asks only faith and, given faith enough, the
thing is done and there is no explaining it. Those who believe this are
not inclined to reason about it; in fact it is beyond reason save as
reason posits a God who is equal to such a process and an order in which
such results can be secured. This is rather an achievement of faith than
reason but the Christian Church generally has held such a faith--a faith
sustained by the testimony which favours it and unaffected by the
testimony which challenges it. The scientific temper which seeks
economy in all its explanations and asks only for a cause sufficient for
the effect and which is, moreover, constantly trying to relate the
unknown to the known, takes another line and finds in faith healing just
one more illustration of the power of mind over body. This does not
exclude God but it discovers Him in resident forces and finds in law the
revelation of His method. The conclusions, then, to which we are
generally coming may not only be reconciled with a devout faith, they
may, when followed through, enrich faith; but they do subdue the whole
great matter to a sequence of cause and effect and they are gradually
finding a satisfactory explanation for what has heretofore been deeply
involved in mystery.
Just as Hypnotism, through the very dramatic abnormality of it, in
altering the sensitiveness of those physical tracts from which attention
is withdrawn or in producing physical effects through suggestive
focusing, has helped us to understand the part which attention plays in
the flux of physical states, so our later studies of the subconscious
help us here. We do know that a great deal may really take place in
personality of which consciousness takes no account. Consciousness in
its most active phases is alert, purposeful and preoccupied with the
immediate concern of the moment. Consciousness heeds commands and takes
account of such conditions as strongly assert themselves, but does not
in its full drive take much account of suggestion unless the suggestion
possesses unusual force. Suggestions usually need leisurely turning over
in the mind and the mind commonly refers them--often without knowing
it--to those regions of mental action which lie beneath the threshold of
strongly focused consciousness.
But suggestion does not thereby cease to work. It starts processes all
its own which go on till they are worked through. After a longer or
shorter period of incubation the outcome of suggestion is lifted into
the light of consciousness, often to produce results all the more
striking because we cannot explain them to ourselves or any one else.
All this does not withdraw such phenomena from the realm of law; it only
clothes them with the mystery of the unknown and extends the fields in
which they may operate. Proper suggestion let fall into these unknown
depths or improper suggestion as well, becomes an incalculable force in
shaping the ends of life. We have here, then, well attested truths or
laws--it is difficult to know what to call them--which help us to
understand the bases of faith healing or mental healing by suggestion.
Now directly we turn to such records as remain to us we find that such
forces as these have been in action from the very beginning. All disease
was in early times referred generally to spirit possession. If only the
evil spirit could be exorcised the patient would get well and the priest
was, of course, the proper person to undertake this. Religion and
medicine were, therefore, most intimately united to begin with and
healing most intimately associated with magic. The first priests were
doctors and the first doctors were priests and what they did as priests
and what they did as doctors were alike unreasonable and capricious.
The priest and his church have very unwillingly surrendered the very
great hold over the faithful which this early association of medicine
and religion made possible. Any order or institution which can approach
or control humanity through the longing of the sick for health, has an
immense and unfailing empire.
_Demon Possession the Earliest Explanation of Disease_
There are, says Cutten, three fairly well defined periods in the history
of Medicine. The first, beginning as far back as anything human begins
and coming down to the end of the second century; the second, ending
with the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries; and the third from perhaps
the sixteenth century on. The second period, he adds, was by far the
most sterile and stationary of the three "largely due to the prohibitive
attitude of the Church. The science of Medicine, then, is almost wholly
the result of the investigations and study of the last period. This
means that medicine is one of the youngest of the sciences, while from
the very nature of the case it is one of the oldest of the arts."
Demon possession was, as has been said, the earliest explanation of
disease. This would naturally be true of a time almost wholly wanting in
any conception either of law or any relation of cause and effect beyond
the most limited regions of experience. Since the only cause of which
man had any real knowledge was his own effort he peopled his world with
forces more or less like himself, except that they were invisible, who
operated practically the whole of natural phenomena. There was a spirit
for every place and every happening; spirits for fields and hearths,
thresholds and springs. Some of them were friendly, some of them
naturally unfriendly, but they were everywhere in existence, everywhere
in action and naturally if they were unfriendly they would from time to
time and in various most curious ways get into the body itself and there
do any amount of mischief.
The priest-doctor's task, therefore, was to get them out. He might scare
them out, or scold them out, or pray them out, or trick them out. He
would use his medicine as much to make the place of their temporary
abode uncomfortable for the demon as remedial for the patient and,
indeed, the curious and loathsome things which have been used for
medicines might well disgust even a malevolent demon. One thing stands
out very clearly and that is that whatever the medicine did or left
undone, it worked through its influence upon the mind of the patient and
not through any real medicinal value.
_The Beginnings of Scientific Medicine_
Of course along with all this would go a kind of esoteric wisdom which
was part of the stock in trade of the healer. There were charms,
incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. The medicine man of
uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the
mind rather than the body. There were, however, gleams of scientific
light through all this murky region. The Egyptians knew something of
anatomy though they made a most capricious use of it and there must have
been some knowledge of hygienic methods; the prohibitions of Leviticus,
for example, and of the Jewish law generally for which the Jew must have
been, as far as medical science is concerned, somewhat in debt to the
Egyptian and the Chaldean, really have sound hygienic reasons behind
them. The Greeks began with demons but they ended with something which
approached true science.
The real contribution of Greece, however, seems to have been on the
positive rather than the negative side. They made much of health as an
end in itself, had gods and goddesses of physical well-being. The Greek
had constantly held before him such an ideal of physical excellence as
had never before been approached and has never since been equalled. He
seems to have been abstemious in eating; he practiced the most strenuous
physical exercises; he lived a wholesome outdoor life, and so created a
civilization in which health very largely took care of itself. An
examination of what records remain to us hardly sustains the accepted
opinion that the Greeks had made substantial advances along purely
scientific lines,[16] but at any rate as far as medicine goes, there is
little to choose between the Greece of the fourth century before Christ
and the Europe of the sixteenth century after, save that the life of the
Greek was far more normal, temperate and hygienic and the mind of the
Greek more open, sane and balanced.
[Footnote 16: Probably too strong a statement. For an opposite view
strongly supported by a scholar's research see Singer's article in "The
Legacy of Greece" (Oxford Press), p. 201.]
Plato anticipated conclusions which we are just beginning to reach when
he said, "the office of the physician extends equally to the
purification of mind and body. To neglect the one is to expose the other
to evident peril. It is not only the body which, by sound constitution,
strengthens the soul, but the well regulated soul, by its authoritative
power, maintains the body in perfect health." Whether the best classic
civilization made, consciously, its own this very noble insight of
Plato, the best classic civilization did secure the sound mind and the
sound body to an extent which puts a far later and far more complex
civilization to shame. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the Greek to
this whole great subject was his passion for bodily well-being and his
marvellous adaptation of his habits and type of life to that end.
He did, moreover, separate religion, magic and medicine to some
appreciable extent and he gave us at least the beginnings of a medical
profession, approaching medicine from the scientific rather than the
religious or traditional point of view. Even though his science was a
poor enough thing, his doctors were none the less doctors and the
medical profession to-day is entirely within its right when it goes back
to Hippocrates for the fathering of it.
_The Attitude of the Early and Medieval Church_
Christianity changed all this and on the whole for the worse. And yet
that statement ought to be immediately qualified, for Christianity did
bring with it a very great compassion for suffering, a very great
willingness to help the sick and the needy. The Gospels are inextricably
interwoven with accounts of the healing power of the founder of
Christianity. All the later attitude of Christianity toward disease must
be considered in the light of this fact. We owe to Christianity the
first real hospitals, the first really compassionate and unselfish care
for the sick and impulses which, as they have finally worked out, have
had more to do with giving quality and direction to medicine and
particularly in investing the whole practice of medicine with its true
atmosphere than any other single force.
And yet all this has been a long, long time coming true and for almost
1,500 years the Church and its authorities were a hindrance rather than
a help and that for two or three outstanding reasons. Christianity, to
begin with, sadly underestimated physical values in its overinsistence
upon spiritual values. The body was at best but the tabernacle of the
soul and the soul being the chief concern, whatever happened to the body
was of little importance. The body was not only underestimated, it was
scorned and abused, starved and scourged; it was the seat of unholy
influences and impulses; its natural longings were at the best under
suspicion, at the worst under absolute condemnation. Christianity,
speaking through the Church, took immense care for its spiritual
hygiene, though even here it went wrong because it forgot Plato's noble
word, but it failed utterly in physical hygiene.
Then again sickness and suffering were for the Church but the manifest
punishment of some sin known or concealed. To interfere, therefore, was
in some way to defeat the justice of God. Pestilences were inscrutable
providences; they were the wrath of God made manifest. In the face of so
stupendous a calamity anything man might do was not only futile but
impertinent.
By a strange contradiction early and medieval Christianity, while making
little of the body, nevertheless strongly opposed any study of anatomy
which depended upon post-mortems or dissection. This probably because of
their belief in the resurrection of the body. Any mutilation of the body
after death would be a real handicap in the day of resurrection. But
behind all this, equally real though intangible, was the desire of the
Church to have the whole of life under its own direct control. It
instinctively feared methods of thought or processes of investigation
not directly a part of its own imperial administration of life. Some
subtle distrust of the human reason went along with all this. As a
result the Church, in the main, threw herself against the more
independent processes of scientific thought, sought to subdue all the
facts of life to her creeds and understandings and so became a real
hindrance to any pursuit of truth or any investigation of fact which lay
outside the region of theological control. How largely all this retarded
growth and knowledge and the extension of human well-being it is
difficult to say, but the fact itself is well established.
_Saints and Shrines_
For one thing early Christianity continued the belief in demoniac
possession. By one of those accidents which greatly influence history
the belief in demon possession was strongly held in Palestine in the
time of Christ and the Gospel narratives reflect all this in ways upon
which it is not necessary to enlarge. The Gospels themselves lent their
mighty sanction to this persuasion and there was nothing in the temper
of the Church for more than a thousand years afterward to greatly modify
it. Indeed the temper of the Church rather strengthened it. Origen
believed that demons produce famine, unfruitfulness, corruptions of the
air and pestilences. They hover concealed in clouds in the lower
atmosphere and are attracted by the blood and incense which the heathen
offered them as gods.
According to St. Augustine all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed
to these demons and the church fathers generally agreed with these two,
the greatest of them all. It was, therefore, sinful to do anything but
trust to the intercession of the saints. The objection of the Church to
dissection which is, of course, the indispensable basis for any real
knowledge of anatomy was very slowly worn down. The story of Andreas
Vesalius whom Andrew White calls the founder of the modern science of
anatomy is at once fascinating and illuminating. He pursued his studies
under incredible difficulties and perhaps could never have carried them
through without the protection of Charles V whose physician he was. He
was finally driven out, a wanderer in quest of truth, was shipwrecked
on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and in the prime of his life and
strength "he was lost to the world." But he had, none the less, won his
fight and the opposition of the Church to the scientific study of
anatomy was gradually withdrawn. But every marked advance in medical
science had really to fight the battle over again. The Sorbonne
condemned inoculation, vaccination had slowly to fight its way and even
the discovery of anesthetic, perhaps the greatest single blessing ever
given surgery, met with no little theological obstruction. It is only
fair to say in this connection that so stupid a conservatism has been by
no means the sole possession of the Church and the clergy. Medicine has
been upon occasion almost as conservative and the difficulties which Sir
Joseph Lister encountered in his endeavour to win the London hospitals
for asepsis and anti-sepsis were quite as bitter. The difficulties were
of a piece with the opposition of the Church to scientific advancement.
After all a conservatism of this sort is a matter of temperament rather
than creed or class.
But if the Church was strangely slow to give place to medicine and
surgery, the Church sought, through agencies and methods of its own, to
cure disease. It is impossible to follow through in detail the long
story though it all bears upon the line we are following through its
massive testimony to the power of mind over body. Since the Church
believed in demon possession it sought to cure by exorcism and there are
in the ritual of the Church, as the ritual has finally taken form,
offices growing out of this long, long battle against evil spirits which
have now little suggestion of their original purpose. The sign of the
Cross was supposed to have commanding power, the invocation of the
triune deity had its own virtue, the very breathing of the priest was
supposed to influence the evil spirit and he fled defeated from the
touch of holy water.
The Church possessed, as was everywhere then believed, not only a
prevailing power over demons, but a supernatural power all her own for
the healing of disease. This power was associated with saints and relics
and shrines. During the lifetime of the saint this power was exercised
through direct saintly interposition. After the death of the saint it
was continued in some relic which he left behind him, or some shrine
with which he had been particularly associated. There grew up gradually
a kind of "division of labour among the saints in the Middle Ages." Each
saint had its own peculiar power over some bodily region or over some
particular disease. And so the faithful were guarded by a legion of
protecting influences against everything from coughs to sudden death.
There is almost an unimaginable range of relics. Parts of the true Cross
possessed supreme value. St. Louis of France was brought back almost
from death to life by the touch of the sacred wood. The bones and hairs
of saints, rings which they had worn and all such things as these had
value and to prove that the value was not resident in the relic but in
the faith with which the relic was approached we have reported bones of
saints possessing well authenticated healing value, later proved to have
been the bones not of men but of animals. There have been sacred springs
and consecrated waters almost without number. They will still show you
in Canterbury Cathedral stones worn by the feet of countless pilgrims
seeking at the shrine of Thomas a Becket a healing to the reality of
which those who wore away those stones bore testimony in a variety of
gifts which made the shrine of a Becket at one time one of the treasure
houses of Christendom.
"The two shrines at present best known are those of Lourdes in France
and Ste. Anne de Beaupre in the Province of Quebec. Lourdes owes its
reputed healing power to a belief in a vision of the Virgin received
there during the last century. Over 300,000 persons visit there each
year." Charcot, it is worth noting, had confidence enough not in the
shrine but in the healing power of faith to send fifty or sixty patients
to Lourdes every year. His patients were, of course, the mentally and
nervously unbalanced. The French government supervises the sanitary
conditions at Lourdes and a committee of doctors have undertaken some
examination of the diseased who visit the shrine for the guidance of
their profession. Ste. Anne de Beaupre owes its fame to certain wrist
bones of the mother of Christ.
_Magic, Charms, and the King's Touch: The Rise of the Faith Healer_
Religious faith is not always necessary--any faith will do. Charms,
amulets, talismans have all played their part in this long compelling
story. The various metals, gems, stones and curious and capricious
combinations of pretty much every imaginable thing have all been so
used. Birth girdles worn by women in childbirth eased their pain. A
circular piece of copper guarded against cholera. A coral was a good
guard against the evil eye and sail-cloth from a shipwrecked vessel tied
to the right arm was a preventive as well as a cure for epilepsy. There
is almost no end to such instances. The list of charms and incantations
is quite as curious. There are forms of words which will cure insomnia
and indeed, if one may trust current observation, forms of words not
primarily so intended may still induce sleepfulness.
The history of the king's touch as particularly helpful in epilepsy and
scrofula, though useful also for the healing of various diseases, is
especially interesting. This practice apparently began with Edward the
Confessor in England and St. Louis in France and was due to the faith of
those who came to be touched and healed in the divine right and lonely
power of the king. It is significant that the practice began with these
two for they, more than any kings of their time or most kings since,
were really men of rare and saintly character. Curiously but naturally
enough the English have denied any real power in this region to French
kings and the French have claimed a monopoly for their own sovereigns.
The belief in the king's touch persisted long and seems toward the end
to have had no connection with the character of the monarch, for
Charles II did more in this line than any one who ever sat on an English
throne. During the whole of his reign he touched upward of 100,000
people. Andrew White adds that "it is instructive to note, however, that
while in no other reign were so many people touched for scrofula and so
many cures vouched for, in no other reign did so many people die of the
disease."
Along with the king's touch went the king's gift--a piece of gold--and
the drain upon the royal treasury was so considerable that after the
reign of Elizabeth the size of the coin was reduced. Special coins were
minted for the king's use in that office and these touching pieces are
still in existence. William III refused to take this particular power
seriously. "God give you better health and more sense," he said as he
once touched a patient. In this particular instance the honest
skepticism of the king was outweighed by the faith of the suppliant. We
are assured that the person was cured. The royal touch was discontinued
after the death of Queen Anne.
The list of healers began early and is by no means ended now. The power
of the healer was sometimes associated with his official station in the
Church, sometimes due to his saintly character and often enough only to
a personal influence, the fact of which is well enough established,
though there can be in the nature of things no finality in the estimate
of his real efficacy. George Fox performed some cures; John Wesley also.
In the seventeenth century one Valentine Greatrakes seems to have been
the center of such excitements and reported healings as Alexander Dowie
and others in our own time and it is finally through the healer rather
than the saint or the king or shrine or relic that we approach the
renaissance of mental and faith healing in our own time.