As a rule, modern healers have been founders of new religions, or at least they have broken away from old-established sects, and have formed congregations for themselves. They have sprung up in every part of the country. East, North, South, West, and among all the differing nationalities of our population. We cannot console ourselves with the idea that they affect especially the foreigners, for the native-born people have proved to be quite as susceptible to them. These healers have, as a rule, abused the medical profession and the use of drugs, and have taught that disease, if it really existed at all, was from the devil: that what one needed, in order to secure relief from pains and ills, was faith in God—but always through them. Many of these men and women have probably been serious and earnest and have deceived themselves first. Most of them have undoubtedly been more or less disequilibrated, though they have practically all exhibited the power to accumulate large amounts of money from their followers. The people who have gone to them have not been the ignorant among our population, but particularly those who read the newspapers, and who look upon themselves as well informed. The intelligence of the disciples of these healers, as we ordinarily estimate intelligence, has been a little above the average, rather than below it.
Schlatter and Dowie.—Probably the most disillusioning phenomena with regard to the complacent idea that the diffusion of information prevents manifestations of superstition are stories of the healers Schlatter and Dowie. At the end of the nineteenth century both of them attracted widespread attention. Schlatter was probably not quite sane. He wandered through the deserted portions of the Southwest, hatless, unkempt, with clothing torn and without shoes. In July, 1895, he first attracted attention as a public healer in New Mexico. After a reputed forty-day fast he went to Denver, where people flocked from all parts of the country to him. Files of people formed—sometimes five or six thousand—to be touched, and healed, by him. His reputation was due to the cures that were reported. Dowie was another of these healers. Just at the beginning of the twentieth century he organized a great new church of his own, and announced himself as Elijah, the prophet, returned to life. [{83}] Nearly 20,000 persons are claimed to have been healed during the first ten years of his healing career. Toward the end of his life he declared that he treated, and cured, over 50,000 a year. An abundance of crutches, canes and every form of surgical appliance for the ailing hung on the walls of his church at Zion City, Chicago, left by people who, having been healed, had no further use for them.
GENERAL PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS
SECTION II
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
CHAPTER I
INFLUENCE OF MIND ON BODY
The power of mind over body for the relief of symptoms has been recognized, not only by physicians, but by the generality of men at all times. Every one has had experiences of aches, or actual pains, or discomfort quite annoying while one is alone, but that disappear while in pleasant company or occupied in some absorbing occupation. Many a headache that was painful enough to disturb us seriously while we tried to apply ourselves to something of little interest, and became almost unbearable if we tried to do something disagreeable, and actually intolerable if the occupation of the moment was a drudgery, disappeared, at least for the time, when we turned to a pleasant game of cards or indulged in some other favorite pastime. Our relief was not, however, from an imaginary ill, for the symptoms usually reasserted themselves when we got through with the pleasant occupation, showing that they have been there all the time and that we have only turned our mind away from them, and hence have ceased to feel them. This is so familiar it seems almost too commonplace to repeat, yet it constitutes the special phenomenon that lies at the base of psychotherapeutics, or the mental healing of physical ills.
It is not alone the slighter, more or less negligible aches or pains, nor the vague discomforts that thus disappear when our attention is occupied, but even quite severe and otherwise unbearable pain may be modified to a great extent. A toothache that is bearable, though it nags at us constantly and never lets us forget its presence while we are occupied with many other things during the evening, may become a positive torture when we get to bed. This is not only because of physical conditions modifying the pain, for there seems no doubt that the warmth induced by the preliminaries for sleep and the bed-covering have a tendency to increase congestion, but it is mainly because as we doze off we are able, less and less, to inhibit our attention, or divert it from the pain that is present, and so this is emphasized until we have to do something for it or lose hours of sleep. This lack of inhibition, which characterizes the dozing hours, represents the state of mind in which people are who have no interest in their occupations, and who have ceased to find recreation in the ordinary pleasures of life, when pain of any kind comes to them.
Cabanis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the title of [{85}] "The Influence of the Moral on the Physical," discusses what we would now call mental influence on the body. He says:
The great influence of what one may call the moral or mental on what may be called the physical is an incontestible fact. Examples without end confirm it every day. Every man capable of making observations finds proofs of it thousands of times in himself. Many physiologists and psychologists as well as moralists, have collected the evidence that brings out clearly this power of the intellectual operations and emotions on the different organs and the diverse functions of the living body. All of us could add new illustrations to these collections. Men who are rude and credulous talk of the effect of the imagination, and if they are not themselves its playthings and its victims, at least they know how to observe its effects In others.
As a matter of fact, the action of our organs can be in turn excited, suspended, or totally inhibited, according to the state of mind, the change of ideas, the affections and the emotions.
A vigorous, healthy man has just made a good meal. In the midst of the feeling of satisfaction which diffuses itself over all his body, his food is digested with energy and without any bother. The digestive juices perform their work steadily and without causing any annoyance. But let such a man receive some bad news; let some sudden emotion come to excite him, and especially to shock him into profound sadness, and at once his stomach and intestines cease to act upon the food which they inclose, or they at best perform their functions badly. The digestive juices, by which the food materials were gradually being dissolved, are suddenly stricken with inactivity. What might seem to be a stupor comes over the digestive tract, and while the nervous influence which determines digestion ceases entirely, that which tends to bring about the expulsion of material from the digestive tract may become more active and all the material contained in the digestive viscera may, in a short time, be expelled.
Relief in Severe Injuries.—Even extremely severe injuries, which inflict serious organic lesions that ordinarily would produce shock and collapse, quite apart from the pain induced, may at moments of excitement pass unnoticed. A soldier often does not know that he is wounded until the flow of blood calls his attention to it, or perhaps a friend points it out to him, or loss of blood causes him to faint. The prostrating effects of even fatal wounds may thus be overcome for a considerable time in the excitement of battle, or because of a supreme occupation by a surpassing sense of duty. There is the well-known story of the young corporal detailed to make a report to Napoleon at a very important crisis of one of his great battles, who made the report with such minute accuracy that it called forth a compliment from Bonaparte, for it involved a very special exercise of memory for details, yet who was actually on the verge of death when he delivered the message. As his duty was accomplished the Emperor, noticing his extreme pallor, said: "But you are wounded, my lad." The young soldier replied, as if, now that duty was done, the consciousness of his wound had just come to him, "No, Sire, I am killed," dropping dead at the Emperor's feet as he uttered the words.
In all of the great theater fires examples of this kind are recorded. A woman who barely escaped with her life from a theater fire some years ago had an ear torn off, very probably by some one grasping it in the crowd. She knew nothing of this until it was called to her attention after she got out of the theater, and then she promptly fainted from the pain and shock. Under such circumstances men walk with broken legs or limp even with dislocations, utterly unconscious that anything serious has happened to them. Men have been known to be unaware of a broken bone or even more serious conditions, [{86}] ordinarily quite painful and disabling, while laboring to help others in an accident.