Produced by Don Kostuch
[Transcriber's Notes]
This book is derived from a copy on the Internet Archive:
psychotherapy00walsgoog/psychotherapy00walsgoog_djvu.txt>
A publication contemporary to this book is "Mother's Remedies"
by Thomas Jefferson Ritter. It contains hundreds of suggestions
that hindsight shows to be purely "mental" in their effect.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17439
One of the author's favorite terms is "over-solicitous". The patient
literally "worrys themselves sick" over trivial symptoms and makes
serious cases worse than necessary. Most of his use of psychotherapy
consists of informing, diverting and cheering the patient so that
worry and its consequences are not piled on top of real or imagined
disease.
This book illustrates the general state of medicine in 1910.
Psychotherapy was more important to medical care because so little
was known of the complex physical mechanisms of the body. I
particularly reacted to the discussion of hay fever because it
plagued me for thirty years until experimental desensitization
therapy successfully cured my case. Nonetheless, much of value has
been lost with the decline of psychotherapy by the family physician.
A personal relationship with the physician is often replaced with
expensive impersonal technology that mostly tells what is not wrong.
Many paragraphs have bold or italic titles. These are rendered
by a extra blank line--a total of two blank lines.
Obvious spelling or typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistent spelling of names and inventive and alternative
spelling is left as printed.
The outline format of the book uses these conventions:
Major Topics, [Upper Case title]
Sections, [Upper Case, italic title]
Chapters,
Minor topics, denoted by bold face and an em-dash
Topic subheads denoted by italics and and em-dash
for example:
SPECIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
SECTION VII. _Cardiotherapy_
Chapter III. Cardiac Neuroses
Varieties.-- [Bold]
_Palpitation_.-- [italic]
During the transcription of this book Dr. Michael Stewart of the
Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL., diagnosed me with a retinal
condition that had deprived me of the ability to read with my left
eye. His skilled surgery corrected the condition. I dedicate this
transcription to Dr. Stewart and the skilled and thoughtful staff of
Mayo.
[End Transcriber's Notes]
PSYCHOTHERAPY
PSYCHOTHERAPY
INCLUDING THE HISTORY OF THE USE OF MENTAL INFLUENCE,
DIRECTLY AND INDIRECTLY, IN HEALING AND THE
PRINCIPLES FOR THE APPLICATION OF ENERGIES
DERIVED FROM THE MIND TO THE
TREATMENT OF DISEASE.
BY
JAMES J. WALSH, M.D.. Ph.D.
DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF FUNCTIONAL NERVOUS DISEASE AND OF THE HISTORY
OF MEDICINE AT FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, AND OF PHYSIOLOGICAL
PSYCHOLOGY AT CATHEDRAL COLLEGE, NEW YORK; FELLOW OF NEW YORK ACADEMY OF
MEDICINE; MEMBER A.M.A., A.A.A.S., NEW YORK STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY,
GERMAN SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE AND THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES,
NEW ORLEANS PARISH MEDICAL SOCIETY, ST. LOUIS MEDICAL HISTORY
CLUB, ETC.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Printed in
New York, U. S. A.
TO THE JESUITS
TO WHOM THE AUTHOR OWES A HAPPY INTRODUCTION TO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE
AND CONSTANTLY RENEWED INSPIRATION IN HIS WORK
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
{vii}
PREFACE
"Prefaces are a great waste of time," said Francis Bacon, "and, though
they seem to proceed of modesty, they are bravery." In spite of this
deterring expression of the Lord Chancellor, the author ventures to
write a short _apologia pro libro suo_. Five years ago he began at
Fordham University School of Medicine a series of lectures on
Psychotherapy. This book consists of material gathered for these
lectures. It will be found in many ways to partake more of the nature
of a course of lectures than a true text-book. In this it follows
French rather than English or American precedent. Its relation to
lectures makes it more diffuse than the author would have wished, but
this is offered as an explanation, not an excuse. Addressed to medical
students and not specialists the language employed is as untechnical
as possible, and, indeed, was meant as a rule to be such as young
physicians might use to their patients for suggestion purposes.
The historical portion is probably longer than some may deem
necessary. The place of psychotherapy in the past seemed so important,
however, and psychotherapeutics masqueraded under so many forms that
an historical resume of its many phases appeared the best kind of an
introduction to a book which pleads for more extensive and more
deliberate use of psychotherapy in our time. The historical portion
was developed for the lectures on the history of medicine at Fordham
and perhaps that fact helps to account for the space allotted to this
section of the book.
So far as the author knows, this is the first time in the history of
medicine that an attempt has been made to write a text-book of the
whole subject of psychotherapy. We have had many applications of
psychotherapeutics to functional and organic nervous and mental
disease and also indirectly to nutritional diseases; but no one
apparently has attempted to systematize the application of
psychotherapeutic principles, not only to functional diseases, but
specifically to all the organic diseases. A chapter on the use of
mental influence in anesthesia was, during the course of the
preparation of this volume, written for Dr. Taylor Gwathmey's
text-book on Anesthesia, which is to appear shortly (Appletons).
No one knows better than the author how difficult is the subject and
how liable to misunderstanding and abuse. He appreciates well, too,
how almost hopeless it would be to make a perfectly satisfactory
text-book of so large a subject at the first attempt. The present
volume is founded, however, on considerable experience, on wide
reading in the subject, and on much reflection on its problems. It is
offered to those who are interested in the old new department of
psychotherapy until a better one is available. The author's principal
idea in the book has been to help students and practitioners of {viii}
medicine to care for (_curare_) suffering men and women and not cases,
to treat individual human beings, not compounds in which various
chemical, physical and biological qualities have been observed,
diligently enough and with noteworthy success, but incompletely as
yet, and quite without the satisfying adequacy which it is to be hoped
will result from future investigations.
James J. Walsh.
110 West Seventy-fourth Street,
New York City.
{ix}
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction 1
HISTORY OF PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS
SECTION I
_Psychotherapy in the History of Medicine_
I. Great Physicians in Psychotherapy 7
II. Unconscious Psychotherapeutics 19
III. Genuine Remedies and Suggestive Exaggeration 25
IV. Signatures And Psychotherapy 35
V. Pseudo-science and Mental Healing 38
VI. Quackery and Mind Cures 46
VII. Nostrums and the Healing Power of Suggestion 53
VIII. Amulets, Talismans, Charms 60
IX. Deterrent Therapeutics 63
X. Influence of the Personality in Therapeutics 69
XI. Faith Cures 77
GENERAL PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS