“Then do you use no medicine at all?”
“None whatever. The nearest approach to medicine that I ever gave to a patient is a little magnetized ointment—that is, camphorated lard, and a little magnetized oil. But it is only occasionally that I use these. Neither do I use passes, although it was by the use of passes that I first discovered that I possessed this gift.”
“But how do you proceed?”
“Variously. Sometimes I lay my hand upon the part affected; at other times I breathe into the eye, ear, or mouth of the patient. Then, again, on other occasions I am able to banish the disease by a mere word or gesture.”
“Are you a mesmerist or a magnetic healer?”
“Mesmerist I am not; for mesmerism implies the throwing of the patient into a mesmeric sleep. Neither am I a magnetist, properly so called, for there is no outgoing of magnetism from my body when I am healing. The ordinary magnetist admits that he cannot cure more than four persons per diem; I have cured as many as thirty, and beyond the weariness caused by standing, I have been no worse at the end than at beginning.”
“How do you explain these miracles?”
“I don’t call them miracles. They are marvels, and I cannot explain them. All that I know is that I have gone through the Australian colonies, New Zealand, and many of the States in America, and that wherever I have gone the same effect followed. At my touch, diseases and defects declared incurable by the first physicians of the faculty, disappear. I remember well healing Sir James Martin, the chief justice of New South Wales. Six years ago he was given up by the doctors and declared to be dying, breathing with great difficulty, and hardly able to speak without pain. I laid my hand upon his chest, and in a few minutes all difficulty of breathing disappeared, he was able to speak freely, and in a short time he had completely recovered. He resumed his seat upon the bench, and remained a hale, active man till his death, which occurred just the other day. That is only one case out of many.”
“How many?”
“I think I have been the means of healing about 30,000 patients in the six and a half years during which I have devoted my time to the work. Of course many of those patients were suffering from diseases which might have been cured by ordinary means. Others were declared to be incurable.”