Matters were soon brought to a focus. She overheard repeated remarks about patients who had been healed simply by receiving new mental impressions easily obtained, generally by correspondence, fixed charge, five dollars for epistolary impression. Some one who had been victimized had told her of a bushel-basket full of impressions shipped by mail each day from a single office.
“There must be some good ones in the lot,” thought Mrs. Cultus. “We must investigate a little.”
Then she heard of others cured by thought-transference, either with or without faith,—and finally of cures which tax credulity to extreme limits of sanity, namely, by the persuasive efficacy of belief, even in spite of the Creator Father’s natural laws to the contrary, as if natural laws were inadequate to suit the Creator’s purpose. Surely enough this to excite Mrs. Cultus’ curiosity. “What’s the use of travelling unless you take things in, without being taken in yourself?”—and she determined to caution her daughter. “Adele, my dear, when your father and I first crossed the ocean together, some time since, before you appeared, the ship’s company contained many pilgrims from a sacred shrine, very sacred and very profitable. We then heard much about cures. If I mistake not I have yet a bottle of the sacred water from that European shrine, stowed away in our medicine closet, warranted to be very efficacious to the faithful.”
“Did you ever test its efficacy?” asked Adele.
“Well, to be frank, I never saw it used except just previous to funerals, which struck me as rather late in the day. It certainly acted like a sedative upon those who administered it, but that’s another matter. What I was going to remark is, that to-day the tide of curative waters seems to flow all the other way. America does the quick-cure business whether the patient is faithful or not.”
“Well, that’s certainly great gain for the medicine,” remarked Miss Winchester. Mrs. Cultus continued:
“Yes, indeed; one might have guessed Americans would introduce improvements in the system. I always did believe in practical science, practical metaphysics they call it now, and all that sort of thing, specially when the thing looks a little mysterious to begin with,—it clears out the system.”
“Whose system? What system?” wondered Miss Winchester, “the medicine’s or the patient’s?” but she said nothing, and smiled inwardly as Mrs. Cultus continued her drolling.
“But tell me, are the new medicines proprietary, patented, or merely bottles for sale, duly authenticated like the old bottles? I wonder if it would be safe to put some of this new wine, beg pardon, curative water, into the old bottles?”
“Oh, dear no!” exclaimed Miss Winchester, promptly. “All medicines are quite out of date. All you have to do is to think you think, pay the price, and there you are—cured. I was cured myself.”