‘A man with some slight symptoms of bladder trouble consulted an eminent specialist, who discovered a small growth which could easily have been removed. It was arranged that the patient should undergo an operation. In the meantime he fell among Christian Scientists, who persuaded him that he was quite well. And, indeed, for a time the symptoms almost ceased. But the insidious disease remorselessly went its way, till the unfortunate patient was past all surgery.’
If it be said that the societies I have mentioned repudiate all connexion with Christian Science, I reply that by their fruits must they be judged. Both Christian Science and the various associations for spiritual healing profess to heal any and every disease, and offer proofs of their claim, which, whenever they have been tested, have been shown to be utterly without foundation.
III. Spiritual Healing on a Scientific Basis
In a book which has recently appeared, ‘Body and Soul,’ by the Rev. Percy Dearmer, we have a serious and able attempt to put ‘spiritual healing’ on a scientific basis. Considerations of space do not permit me to deal as fully as I should wish with this really interesting book, but, if I may try to put the general argument into a single paragraph, Mr. Dearmer’s contention is as follows:
Bodily functions and bodily health are regulated and sustained by what may be called the lower nerve centres in the medulla of the brain. It is by the exercise of these centres, which in turn control the circulation, the secretion of various glands, &c., that the body combats disease. This work is continually going on and we are for the most part quite unconscious of it. But, says Mr. Dearmer, ‘we now know that these centres are in direct connexion with the higher centres of the cortex of the brain.’ I should think we do. So did our ancestors a hundred years ago. Their knowledge of the work of such centres as the vasomotor, the respiratory, the heat-regulating, &c., was fragmentary and imperfect to the last degree, but not one of them had any doubt that myriads of nerve fibres connected the cortex with the medulla. Let us, therefore, know how to stimulate the cortex, and all disease (organic as well as functional) can be cured. Hence, when our Lord cured Bartimæus’s blindness, and when a ‘healer’ cures locomotor ataxy, they are performing a function quite as natural as in the case of a doctor who cures malaria with quinine or restores the use of muscles in musculo-spiral paralysis by the use of the interrupted current.
This sounds plausible enough. There is nothing very new in it; indeed, when we come to analyse it, we shall see that, so far as general principles go, there is nothing which was not perfectly familiar in Sydenham’s day, or which the most materialistic practitioner of our own time would not admit without a moment’s hesitation. But, of the limitations of his process, Mr. Dearmer only seems to have a confused idea. Let us take one of the instances which he adduces in illustration of his argument. He is speaking (p. 33) of the familiar phenomenon of blushing. ‘When a person blushes,’ says our author, ‘the small arteries are relaxed and dilate, the amount of blood in them is increased, and this hot red fluid flows in such quantities through the capillaries of the skin that the skin itself becomes hot and red. It is strange that the thought “He says I am a pretty girl” should cause the small arteries to behave in this way; but the physiological explanation is simple enough. These arteries are supplied with muscles which regulate them, and all muscles are worked by nerves. The thought in the higher conscious centres has somehow seen fit to hitch itself on to the arterial muscles, just as when we telephone to a friend in the City the exchange connects us on to his office. Now, supposing it to be possible to cure a man, say of indigestion by thought, the process would be the same.’
‘Supposing it to be possible to cure a man of indigestion by thought,’ this is a statement which no one would wish to dispute. But I expect Mr. Dearmer would be surprised to hear that the analogy of the excitation of the vaso-dilator centre, which causes blushing, can be applied to only a few varieties of indigestion. Roughly, the commonest causes of indigestion might be said to be: (a) anæmia, or an insufficient supply of blood to the mucous membrane of the stomach; (b) an imperfect secretion of hydrochloric acid and the digestive fluids owing to structural defects in the glands of the stomach, usually a hereditary condition; (c) a dilated organ; (d) some pathological condition of the accessory large glands, e.g. liver and pancreas; (e) dyspepsia, owing to faulty balance of the nervous system. Any one of these five is fairly common, but only in the last is there a shred of evidence for supposing that suggestion or any other factor which would cause the higher, and through them the lower, nervous centres to show a healthy activity, would bring about amelioration or a cure, while there is much evidence against any supposition of the kind.
Mr. Dearmer elsewhere lays it down that healing by excitation of the ‘undermind’ is only possible where the case is ‘curable.’ If, he says in effect, the case is incurable, then anything like spiritual or faith healing or suggestion will fail to bring about a cure [will the faith-healers kindly take note of this admission?], but so will any other more material means. To this one may be permitted to reply:
(i) In many acute infections, e.g. scarlet fever, typhoid fever, cholera, where complete recovery may be expected if (a) the infection is not too virulent, (b) the resisting power of the tissues is vigorous and unimpaired, suggestion in any form—hope, the desire to live, the unexpected arrival of a much-loved friend, &c.—will most certainly assist the patient to battle with the disease. But these factors will always operate without the elaboration of a psychotherapeutic philosophy, and really I do not like the idea of encouraging the adoption of a solemn form of prayer, unction, and the laying on of hands, when all the evidence to hand points to this ‘treatment’ having in acute infections just as much value as (but no more than) the realisation on the part of the patient that, if he dies at that particular time, his business will be left in an unsatisfactory condition and perhaps in incompetent hands.
(ii) In the case of what are usually termed chronic ‘organic’ conditions, honours are no longer even. Let us take four crucial examples.