Miracles of Healing, Faith Cures, Mind Cures, Christian Science Healing, etc., etc.
There are many things connected with the healing art on which the public mind is better informed than the recognised authorities on medicine. Mesmerism is now accepted by the faculty under the name of hypnotism, and the miracles of healing wrought at the shrines of saints, long the objects of scorn and contempt at the hands of the medical profession, are now declared to be well within the domain of scientific fact. The miracles of Lourdes, the faith cures at Bethshan, and similar phenomena, having been subjected to the strictest investigation by the most competent medical authorities, are proved to be not impostures and delusions, but simple matters of fact. Science having reluctantly accepted the faith-cure, now declares it to be “an ideal method, since it often attains its end when all other means have failed.”[1057]
Professor Charcot, while declaring that the faith-cure is entirely of a scientific order, insists that its domain is limited; “to produce its effects it must be applied to those cases which demand for their cure no intervention beyond the power which the mind has over the body.” That is to say, faith will cure paralysis and other disorders of motion and sensation dependent on idea, but does not avail to restore a lost organ or an amputated limb.
Professor Charcot believes also that the faith-cure may cause ulcers and tumours to disappear, if such lesions be of the same nature as the paralysis cured by the same means. In all this there is no miracle. The diseases are all of hysterical origin, according to this eminent authority, and being purely dynamic, and not organic, the mind has power to influence and cure them. The mind of the invalid becomes possessed of the overpowering idea that a cure is to be effected, and it is so.
M. Littré has explained for us how this happens.[1058] The mind, which is most eminently receptive of suggestion, will be the most likely to be influential in curing the body in which it is enshrined, by the powerful force of auto-suggestion.[1059]
In expressing this opinion, no question need arise of the efficacy of prayer or of the intervention of the Divine power. The aim of the physician is to understand the medical side of the subject, and science is daily becoming more capable of offering an explanation of such phenomena from a purely medical point of view. A curious instance of faith-cure was recently given in a Catholic magazine.
The Month for June, 1892, published an account, by the late Earl of Denbigh, of a cure worked by a member of a family named Cancelli on Lady Denbigh in 1850. She was suffering severely from rheumatism, and the Pope (Pius IX.) mentioned to the Earl that near Foligno there was a family of peasants who were credited with a miraculous power of curing rheumatic disorders. Lord Denbigh succeeded in getting one of the family, an old man, to come, and learned from him the legend of the cure. The belief was that in the reign of Nero, the Apostles Peter and Paul took refuge in the hut of an old couple named Cancelli, near Foligno, and as a proof of gratitude, gave to the male descendants of the family living near the spot the power of curing rheumatic disorders to the end of time. Lord Denbigh described how the old man made a solemn invocation, using the sign of the cross, and, in fact, Lady Denbigh did recover at once. In a few days the pains returned, but she made an act of resignation, and they then left her, and never returned with any acuteness.
Experimental Physiology.
The question of vivisection, or experimental physiology, pathology, and pharmacology, has become a burning one in England and America of recent years. In a history of medicine so prominent a question cannot be entirely ignored, although it would be out of place to discuss it here at length. It has been claimed that almost all our real knowledge of the healing art, and the most important steps of medical progress, have been gained by experiments upon living animals. On the other hand, it has been maintained by practical physicians and surgeons that the method in question is not less misleading than cruel; that “the only correct path is that of thoughtful experience.”[1060] On behalf of the advocates of the experimental method, Professor Michael Foster shall state the case; that of the other side shall be given in the words of Sir Andrew Clark, “the prince of physicians, and one of the noblest of men,” under whom it was my happiness and privilege to study medicine in the wards of the London Hospital.
Professor Michael Foster says: “It would not be a hard task to give chapter and verse for the assertion that the experimental method has, especially in these later times, supplied the chief means of progress in physiology; but it would be a long task, and we may content ourselves with calling attention to what is in many respects a typical case. We referred a short time back to the phenomena of ‘inhibition.’ It is not too much to say that the discovery of the inhibitory function of certain nerves marks one of the most important steps in the progress of physiology during the past half-century. The mere attainment of the fact that the stimulation of a nerve might stop action instead of inducing action constituted in itself almost a revolution; and the value of that fact in helping us on the one hand to unravel the tangled puzzles of physiological action and reaction, and on the other hand to push our inquiries into the still more difficult problems of molecular changes, has proved immense. One cannot at the present time take up a physiological memoir covering any large extent of ground without finding some use made of inhibitory processes for the purpose of explaining physiological phenomena. Now, however skilfully we may read older statements between the lines, no scientific—that is, no exact—knowledge of inhibition was possessed by any physiologist, until Weber, by a direct experiment on a living animal, discovered the inhibitory influence of the pneumogastric nerve over the beating of the heart. It was, of course, previously known that under certain circumstances the beating of the heart might be stopped; but all ideas as to how the stoppage was, or might be, brought about, were vague and uncertain before Weber made his experiment. That experiment gave the clue to an exact knowledge, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to see how the clue could have been gained otherwise than by experiment; other experiments have enabled us to follow up the clue, so that it may with justice be said that all that part of the recent progress of physiology which is due to the introduction of a knowledge of inhibitory processes is the direct result of the experimental method. But the story of our knowledge of inhibition is only one of the innumerable instances of the value of this method. In almost every department of physiology, an experiment, or a series of experiments, has proved a turning-point at which vague, nebulous fancies were exchanged for clear, decided knowledge, or a starting-point for the introduction of wholly new and startling ideas.