PLAN OF FORT NONSENSE.
FROM PEN AND INK SKETCH BY MAJOR J. P. FARLEY, U. S. A.
As a philanthropist, Dr. Buckley is widely interested in all questions concerning humanity, and he responds continually with his time and thought to the appeals made to him from one direction and another. Our own State Charities Aid Association of New Jersey owes much to Dr. Buckley for his warm and earnest co-operation in its early struggles in Morristown for existence, and in its work, since then.
As an orator, all who have heard Dr. Buckley feel that he has what is called the magnetic power of controlling and carrying with him his audience, and a remarkable capacity for mastering widely different subjects. The beautiful spring day (April 27, 1888), will long be remembered, when the people of Morristown had the opportunity of hearing his eloquent address at the unveiling of the Soldiers Monument on Fort Nonsense.
In Dr. Buckley's last book on "Faith Healing; Christian Science and Kindred Phenomena," published by the Century Company, quite lately, (October, 1892), the subjects of Astrology, Coincidences, Divinations, Dreams, Nightmares and Somnambulism, Presentiments, Visions, Apparitions and Witchcraft are treated. Papers have been contributed by him on these subjects at intervals for six years with reference to this book, but the contents of the latter are not identical, i. e. they have been improved and added to. From this we give the following extract:
EXTRACT FROM "FAITH HEALING, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE AND KINDRED PHENOMENA."
The relation of the Mind Cure movement to ordinary medical practice is important. It emphasizes what the most philosophical physicians of all schools have always deemed of the first importance, though many have neglected it. It teaches that medicine is but occasionally necessary. It hastens the time when patients of discrimination will rather pay more for advice how to live and for frank declarations that they do not need medicine, than for drugs. It promotes general reliance upon those processes which go on equally in health and disease.
But these ethereal practitioners have no new force to offer; there is no causal connection between their cures and their theories.
What they believe has practically nothing to do with their success. If a new school were to arise claiming to heal diseases without drugs or hygiene or prayer, by the hypothetical odylic force invented by Baron Reichenbach, the effect would be the same, if the practice were the same.