THE POWER OF THE IMAGINATION
Dr. F. W. Southworth says: "Fear is itself a contagious disease and is
sometimes reflected from one mind to another with great rapidity. It
passes from one to another, from the healthy to the ill, from doctor or
nurse to patient, from mother to child, and so on. The greatest fears
we can usually get away from, but it is the little fears and anxieties,
constant apprehension, fears of imagined evils of all sorts which
prey upon our vitality and lessen our powers, thus rendering us more
susceptible to disease. To avert disease, then, we must eradicate fear;
but how shall we accomplish it? Through wise education--educating the
people to a higher standard of living; by teaching a sounder hygiene;
a wiser philosophy and a more cheerful theology. By erasing a thousand
errors and superstitions from fearful minds and pointing them to the
light, beauty and loveliness of the truth. This mental and moral
sanitation is still ahead of us, but it is more valuable and desirable
than all quarantines, inventions, experiments, and microscopical
researches after physical or material causes."
Sir George Paget, M. D., says: "In many cases I have seen reasons for
believing that cancer has had its origin in prolonged anxiety." Dr.
Murchison says: "I have been surprised to find how often patients with
primary cancer of the liver have traced the cause of this illness to
protracted grief and anxiety. These cases have been far too numerous to
be accounted for as merely coincidents." Sir B. W. Richardson, M. D.,
says: "Eruptions of the skin frequently follow excessive mental strain.
In all these, as well as in cancer, epilepsy and mania, the cause is
frequently partly or wholly mental. It is remarkable how little the
question of the origin of physical disease from mental influences
has been studied." Prof. Elmer Gates says: "My experiments show that
irascible, malevolent and depressing emotions generate in the system
injurious compounds, some of which are extremely poisonous. Also that
agreeable, happy emotions generate chemical compounds of nutritious
value which stimulate the cells to manufacture energy."
Dr. Patton, in the address before the Wabasha County Medical Society,
above mentioned, gives the following interesting case of the effect
of faith and expectant attention, or Suggestion: He said: "While
surgeon of a Cincinnati hospital one of the messenger boys was often
disobedient of orders. The sister superior once asked me how to
punish him. I suggested putting him to bed and making him sick with
medicine. My advice was acted upon with alacrity. A tea-spoonful of
_colored water_ was given him every fifteen minutes. With assumed
gravity, I ordered the nurse, in the boy's presence, to keep giving the
medicine until he became sick and vomited. Within an hour he vomited
profusely.... A funny incident illustrative of the faith and confidence
sometimes reposed in the medical man and his power in curing disease,
happened in my first year of practice. An Irish laborer, much given to
profanity, came to my office, with a cold on his chest. I prescribed
a soothing mixture and a liniment of camphor, ammonia and soap. A few
days later, meeting him on the street, I asked him if the medicine
had cured him all right. He replied with enthusiasm, 'Oh! yes, yes,
it acted most beautifully and cured me pretty d---- d quick, but it was
awful hot stuff, for it burned in my throat like hell-fire itself.' I
knew at once, but did not tell him, that he had been swallowing the
liniment of camphor, hartshorn and soap, and rubbing the cough mixture
on the outside. His faith was even stronger than the liniment, and
cured him in spite of the blunder.
"Perhaps the most wonderful confirmation came under my observation
while wintering in San Antonio, Texas, in 1880. Some nostrum fakirs
with a retinue of fourteen musicians and comedians came to this city
in an immense chariot, drawn by eight gaily caparisoned horses. Every
evening they came upon the military plaza to sell their panacea. I
went over one evening out of curiosity, being attracted by the songs
and music. The head fakir was shouting to an immense crowd about
the virtues of his specific. He claimed that it contained thirteen
ingredients, gathered at a great expense from all quarters of the
globe, and would cure all the ills that flesh was heir to. Cures
were warranted in every case, or the money refunded on the following
evening. After this harangue, he said that the medicine was for sale at
$1 per bottle, until 300 bottles had been sold, as it was an invariable
rule to sell only that number on any one evening. Immediately a
frenzied mob rushed pell-mell to the end of the chariot, each one
holding aloft a silver dollar. He had previously announced that no
change would be made, and that every one to get the medicine should
have a dollar ready in his hand. In half an hour 300 bottles had been
sold, the empty trunk closed with a bang, and the statement made that
no more could be had until the following evening, although there was
yet a great multitude clamoring for more. Curiosity again led me to the
plaza the next evening, and I went early. The initial performance was a
free tooth-pulling, to last thirty minutes. He said he was the kingpin
of the tooth-pullers, and I believe he was. The rapidity of his work
was a marvel. He snatched from various jaws about 250 teeth, including
the good ones, within the limit, throwing them from his forceps right
and left among his audience. Those operated upon were wrought to such
a frenzy of excitement and wonder that each one, without an exception,
declared that no pain whatever had been experienced. A call was then
made for the 300 who had bought medicine on the previous evening to
mount the chariot and tell what the medicine had done for them.
"From every quarter men and women, both white and colored, pressed
forward to give their experience. Their stories were grotesque and
curious enough, but no matter what their ailments, cures had resulted
in every case. At the end of half an hour, while the experience meeting
was at its acme, the fakir abruptly closed it, saying, in a regretful
voice, that the rest would have to wait until the next evening to tell
of their cures, as he now wanted those to come forward who had not
been cured by the medicine bought on the previous evening. He stood in
silence with folded arms for three minutes. No one having come forward,
the voice of this arrant charlatan rang out in stentorian tones, 'All,
_all_ have been cured! We have cured _everyone_!' Then another 300
bottles were sold in a jiffy, I myself being one of the fortunate
purchasers. The chief of this outfit stopped in the hotel where I was.
After dinner the next day, I made his acquaintance in the smoking room,
saying I was a doctor, too; that I had attended two of his soirees,
bought his medicine and was greatly interested in it. I surprised him
by the statement that his medicine was made by M. & Co., wholesale
druggists of Cincinnati, and that it was fluid extract of podophyllin.
He stared for some moments, but made no reply. I continued, 'I know
M.'s fluid extract, as his process of its manufacture is peculiar, and
differs from other manufacturers in this, that he exhausts the root
by percolation with alcohol, ether and glycerine, giving the product
a sweetish taste and a slight ethereal odor.' The man asked if I was
also a chemist. I replied, 'Yes, I once lectured in a medical college
in Cincinnati on drugs and their uses, and I can readily tell fluid
extracts by their taste, odor and physical characteristics.'
"After some hesitation, he said, 'Yes, this is M.'s podophyllin _and
nothing else_.' I inquired if he attributed all his success to the
medicine. He answered, 'No, for once in Missouri the mandrake ran out
before a new lot arrived. We found something like it in a drug store of
the town, and the people got well just the same. _If the people believe
you can cure them, and have faith in your medicine, they get well
anyway, or they think they do, which is the same thing._' The fakirs
remained one week, sold 2,100 bottles, and presumably cured 2,100
people, as no one came forward to reclaim his dollar for the medicine,
which was contained in a two-drachm vial of 120 drops. A dose was one
drop after each meal in one spoonful of water.
"When I was in California recently a friend mentioned that an
intelligent relative of his was being treated by a celebrated Chinese
doctor. The relative claimed that Chinese physicians were better than
our own; that they had devoted 5,000 years to medicine and had thus
become so learned and skillful that they could tell all diseases
without asking a single question, simply by feeling the pulse. Out of
curiosity I visited this physician, ostensibly as a patient. Without
so declaring myself, he knew intuitively that I came to consult him.
Without asking any questions he placed his finger upon my right wrist,
communed with himself for a few moments, and then gravely informed
me that I had _thirty-seven diseases_; some in the blood, some in
the brain, some in the kidneys, some in the liver, and many others
in the heart and lungs. He said it would take _sixteen different
herbs_ to cure me. He volunteered the statement that he could detect
6,000 diseases by the pulse alone, and that he used 400 herbs in the
treatment of the various diseases. Upon his request, I examined his
portfolio containing 350 testimonials of marvellous cures, wrought
upon American residents of California during his seventeen years'
practice on the coast. Many of them were from parties of intelligence
and eminence, and were so extraordinary that nothing short of their
being attested by numerous witnesses of unimpeachable veracity, could
satisfy one of their truth. Now, permit me to say that I have no pulse
in the right wrist, the pulse being congenitally absent; but through it
he made the pretense of locating so many diseases. This doubtless is
the form and character of medical practice in China among the native
Chinamen, and probably has been for many centuries among a population
of 400,000,000. Is not the logic from the above facts irresistible,
that in China the native physician cannot tell one disease from
another, and that all his work is simply nonsense and guess work?
There can be no escape from this conclusion--it follows as lucidly as a
demonstrated problem in Euclid--_that_ any benefit that may ever accrue
from their treatment is wholly due to the dynamic force of the brain
upon the functions of the body."
The following, from a Philadelphia journal, gives a striking
illustration of the fact that the imagination is a _real_ factor
in many cases of physical ailment: "The fact that the throes of
the imagination under great nervous excitement often produce a
corresponding physical frenzy was illustrated recently in the case of
a man who had gone to sleep with his artificial teeth in his mouth.
Waking suddenly with a choking sensation, he found his teeth had
disappeared. He looked in the glass of water where they were usually
deposited, did not see them and realized they must be far down his
throat. Choking and struggling, he hammered on the door of a friend
sleeping in the house, who, seeing his critical condition, vainly
tried to draw the teeth out of the sufferer's throat. He could feel
the teeth, but had not the strength to extract them. He ran for a
blacksmith who lived a few doors away, but the blacksmith's hand was
too big to put into the man's mouth. A doctor had been sent for, but he
was so long in coming that the victim of the accident seemed likely to
die of suffocation before the physician arrived. A little girl of ten
years was brought under the impression that her small hand might reach
the obstacle and withdraw it, but she got frightened and began to cry.
The sufferer became black in the face, his throat swelled out, and his
friends expected every moment to be his last, when finally the doctor
arrived. He heard the history of the case, saw that the teeth were not
in the man's jaws nor in their nightly receptacle, felt the throat
and cast his eyes seriously upon the floor. _There, on the floor,
he saw the whole set of teeth._ He adjusted them to the jaws of the
patient, told him to breathe freely, and every symptom of suffocation
disappeared."
The following from an Eastern journal illustrates another phase of
the subject: "Saltpetriere, the hospital for nervous diseases, made
famous by the investigations of Dr. Charcot, has an interesting case
of religious mania. The patient, who is a woman of about forty years
of age, entertains the belief that she is crucified, and this delusion
has caused a contraction of the muscles of the feet of such a nature
that she can walk only on tip-toe. The patient, moreover, is subject
occasionally to the still more extraordinary manifestation--that of
'stigmata.' Instances of 'stigmata' are tolerably frequent in the
'Lives of the Saints' of alleged supernatural marks on the body
in imitation of the wounds of Christ. These 'stigmata' have been
observed beyond all question on the woman at the Saltpetriere. Their
appearance on the body coincides with the return of the most solemn
religious anniversaries. These 'stigmata' are so visible that it has
been possible to photograph them. The doctors of the Saltpetriere in
order to assure themselves that these manifestations were not the
result of trickery, contrived a sort of shade having a glass front and
metal sides, and capable of being hermetically attached to the body by
means of India rubber fixings. These shades were placed in position
a considerable time before the dates at which the stigmata are wont
to appear. When they were affixed there were no marks whatever on the
patient's body, but at the expected period the 'stigmata' were visible
as usual through the glass."
In a Southern journal there is reported an interesting case, in which
a New Orleans physician tells the following story: "A nervous man
recently called on me and asked, 'In what part of the abdomen are the
premonitory pains of appendicitis felt?' On the _left_ side, exactly
here,' I replied, indicating a spot a little above the point of the
hip-bone. He went out, and next afternoon I was summoned in hot haste
to the St. Charles hotel. I found the planter writhing on his bed,
his forehead beaded with sweat, and his whole appearance indicating
intense suffering. 'I have an attack of appendicitis,' he groaned, 'and
I'm a dead man! I'll never survive an operation!' 'Where do you feel
the pain?' I asked. 'Oh, right here,' he replied, putting his finger
on the spot I had located at the office. 'I feel as if somebody had a
knife in me turning it around.' 'Well, then, it isn't appendicitis,
at any rate,' I said cheerfully, 'because _it is the wrong side_.'
'The wrong side!' he exclaimed, glaring at me indignantly. 'Why, you
told me yourself it was on the _left_ side!' 'Then I must have been
abstracted,' I replied calmly; 'I should have said the _right_ side.'
I prescribed something that wouldn't hurt him, and learned afterward
that he ate his dinner in the dining-room the same evening. Oh! yes; he
was no doubt in real pain when I called, _but you can make your finger
ache merely by concentrating your attention on it for a few moments_."
Frank F. Moore, in "A Journalist's Note Book" tells the following
amusing and significant story of the influence of imagination upon
health. "A young civil servant in India, feeling fagged from the
excessive heat and from long hours of work consulted the best doctor
within reach. The doctor looked him over, sounded his heart and lungs,
and then said gravely: 'I will write you tomorrow.' The next day
the young man received a letter telling him that his left lung was
gone and his heart seriously affected, and advising him to lose no
time in adjusting his business affairs. 'Of course, you may live for
weeks,' the latter said, 'but you had best not leave important matters
undecided.' Naturally the young official was dismayed by so dark a
prognosis--nothing less than a death warrant. Within twenty-four hours
he was having difficulty with his respiration, and was seized with an
acute pain in the region of the heart. He took to his bed with the
feeling that he should never rise from it. During the night he became
so much worse that his servant sent for the doctor. 'What on earth
have you been doing to yourself?' demanded the doctor. 'There were no
indications of this sort when I saw you yesterday?' 'It is my heart,
I suppose,' weakly answered the patient. 'Your heart!' repeated the
doctor. 'Your heart was all right yesterday.' 'My lungs, then.' 'What
is the matter with you, man? You don't seem to have been drinking?'
'Your letter,' gasped the patient. 'You said I had only a few weeks to
live.' 'Are you crazy?' said the doctor. 'I wrote you to take a few
weeks vacation in the hills, and you would be all right.' For reply
the patient drew the letter from under the bedclothes and gave it to
the doctor. 'Heavens!' cried that gentleman as he glanced at it. 'This
was meant for another man! My assistant has mixed up the letters.' The
young man at once sat up in bed and made a rapid recovery. And what of
the patient for whom the direful prognosis was intended? Delighted with
the report that a sojourn in the hills would set him right, he started
at once, and five years later was alive and in fair health."
The following is clipped from a medical journal: "Some physician makes
use of this suggestive phrase--'the dynamic power of an idea,' and, as
an illustration of what is meant by this expression, the following
incident is related. Not long ago a man in taking medicine was suddenly
possessed by the notion that he had by mistake taken arsenic. His
wife insisted to the contrary, but he proceeded to manifest all the
peculiar symptoms of arsenical poisoning, and finally died. So certain
was his wife that he had not taken arsenic that an autopsy was held,
when not an atom of the poison could be found. Of what did this man
die? Arsenic? No, of the dynamic power of an idea or arsenic. Happily
for humanity this dynamic power of ideas works constructively no less
certainly than it does destructively, and an idea of health fixed in
the consciousness and persistently adhered to would tend to bring the
best results. Over a hundred years ago, old John Hunter said, '_As the
state of mind is capable of producing disease, another state of it may
effect a cure_.'"
Dr. William C. Prime relates the following case in his book "Among
the Northern Hills." "The judge was summoned in a hurry to see an old
lady who had managed her farm for forty years since her husband's
death. She had two sons, and a stepson, John, who was not an admirable
person. After a long drive on a stormy night the judge found the old
lady apparently just alive, and was told by the doctor in attendance to
hurry, as his patient was very weak. The judge brought paper and ink
with him. He found a stand and a candle, placed them at the head of the
bed, and after saying a few words to the woman, told her he was ready
to prepare the will if she would go on and tell him what she wanted
him to do. He wrote the introductory phrase rapidly, and leaning over
toward her said, 'Now, go on, Mrs. Norton.'
"Her voice was quite faint, and she seemed to speak with an effort.
She said: 'First of all, I want to give the farm to my sons, Harry and
James. Just put that down.' 'But,' said the judge, 'you can't do that,
Mrs. Norton. The farm isn't yours to give away.' 'The farm isn't mine?'
she said in a voice decidedly stronger than before. 'No, the farm isn't
yours. You have only a life interest in it.' 'This farm that I've run
for goin' on forty-three year next spring isn't mine to do with what I
please with it? Why not, Judge I'd like to know what you mean!' 'Why,
Mr. Norton, your husband, gave you a life estate in all his property,
and on your death the farm goes to his son, John, and _your_ children
get the village houses. I have explained that to you very often
before.' 'And when I die, John Norton is to have this house and farm
whether I will or not?' 'Just so. It will be his.' '_Then I ain't goin'
to die!_' said the old woman, in a clear and decidedly ringing and
healthy voice. And so saying, she threw her feet over the front of the
bed, sat up, gathered a blanket and coverlet about her, straightened
her gaunt form, walked across the room and sat down in a great chair
before the fire.
"The doctor and the judge went home. That was fifteen years ago. _The
old lady is alive to-day._ And she accomplished her intent, She beat
John after all. He died four years ago."