The Emmanuel movement in San Francisco, so far at least as
it has to do with St. Luke’s Hospital, is a confest failure.
The local experiment has lasted a year, and every effort, it
is claimed, has been made to give the prescribed treatment
a thorough test. The hospital’s psychopathic ward has been
discontinued, and the clerical superintendent of the mental
healing part of the institution, the Rev. A. P. Shields, D.D.,
has sent in his resignation. “It was found,” says Bishop
Nichols, “impossible to secure beneficial results by placing
patients in a psychopathic ward associated with a hospital. All
the depressing influences of the hospital bore down upon them.
The constant atmosphere of suffering made a cure impossible,
and, finally, we were forced to the conclusion that we had
failed.” This same reasoning condemns the cause of those people
outside of hospitals who are always talking of disease and
fatalities (unless it be distinctly for curative purposes in
the case of disease), so helping to make the more depressive
the depression of mental and nervous sufferers. There are well
people who always, by their lugubrious manner or talk, carry
about with them the atmosphere of the sick-room--who are simply
walking hospitals.--_The Observer._
(3172)
=Taming Animals=--See KINDNESS TO ANIMALS.
=Tampering with Peril=--See TEMPTATION.