Mind and Body; or, Mental States and Physical Conditions

by William Walker Atkinson

At the same time, as we shall now see, Mental Healing has been attracting much attention along other lines, outside of the medical profession, and often allied with religious and metaphysical movements. To understand the subject, we must study it in all of its phases.

In the early part of the nineteenth century Elijah Perkins, an ignorant blacksmith living in Connecticut conceived a queer idea of curing disease by means of a peculiar pair of tongs manufactured by himself, one prong being of brass and the other of steel. These tongs were called “tractors,” and were applied to the body of the patient in the region affected by disease, the body being stroked in a downward direction for a period of about ten minutes. The tractors were used to treat all manner of complaints, ailments and diseases, internal and external, with a wonderful degree of success. Almost miraculous cures of all manner of complaints were reported, and people flocked to Perkins from far and near in order to receive the benefit of his wonderful treatments.

Soon this system of healing came to be called “Perkinsism,” as a tribute to the inventor. The popularity of the system spread rapidly in the United States, particularly in New England, every city and many towns patronizing Perkins’ practitioners and healers. From this country the craze spread to Great Britain, and even to the Continent. Centers of treatment, and even hospitals, were established by the “Perkinsites,” and the fame of the tractors increased daily in ever widening circles. In Europe alone it is reported that over 1,500,000 cures were performed, and the medical fraternity were at their wit’s ends to explain the phenomenon. Finally, Dr. Haygarth, of London, conceived the idea that the real virtue of the cures was vested in the minds, belief and imagination of the patients rather than in the tractors, and that the cures were the result of the induced mental states of the patients instead of by the metallic qualities of the apparatus. He determined to investigate the matter under this hypothesis, and accordingly constructed a pair of tractors of wood, painted to resemble the genuine ones. The following account by Bostock describes the result: “He accordingly formed pieces of wood into the shape of tractors and with much assumed pomp and ceremony applied them to a number of sick persons who had been previously prepared to expect something extraordinary. The effects were found to be astonishing. Obstinate pains in the limbs were suddenly cured; joints that had long been immovable were restored to motion, and, in short, except the renewal of lost parts or the change in mechanical structure, nothing seemed beyond their power to accomplish.” The exposure of this experiment, and the general acceptance of the explanation of the phenomena, caused “Perkinsism” to die out rapidly, and at the present time it is heard of only in connection with the history of medicine and in the pages of works devoted to the subject of the effect of the mind over the body.

The success of “Perkinsism” is but a typical instance which is duplicated every twenty years or so by the rapid rise, spread and then rapid decline of some new “craze” in healing, all of which, when investigated are seen to be but new examples of the power of the mental states of faith and imagination upon the physical organism. The well-known “blue glass” craze of about thirty-five years ago gives us another interesting example. General Pleasanton, a well-known and prominent citizen of Philadelphia, announced his discovery that the rays of the sun passing through the medium of blue glass possessed a wonderful therapeutic value. The idea fired the public imagination at once, and the General’s book met with a large sale. Everyone, seemingly, began to experiment with the blue glass rays. Windows were fitted with blue glass panes, and the patients sat so that the sun’s rays might fall upon them after passing through the blue panes. Wonderful cures were reported from all directions, the results of “Perkinsism” being duplicated in almost every detail. Even cripples reported cures, and many chronic and “incurable” cases were healed almost instantaneously. Bedridden people threw aside their blankets and walked again, after a brief treatment. The interest developed into a veritable “craze,” and the glass factories were operated overtime in order to meet the overwhelming demand for blue glass, the price of which rapidly advanced to fifty cents and even a dollar for a small pane, because of the scarcity. It was freely predicted that the days of physicians were over, and that the blue glass was the long-sought-for panacea for all human ills. Suddenly, however, and from no apparent cause, the interest in the matter dropped, and now all that is left of the blue glass craze is the occasional sight of an old blue pane in some window, the owner of which evidently felt disinclined to pay the price of replacing it with a clear pane. Only a few days ago, in an old-fashioned quarter of a large city, the writer saw several panes of the old blue glass in the frame of the window of an old house which had seen better days but which was now used as a cheap tenement house.

The history of medicine is filled with records of similar “crazes” following the announcement of some new method of “cure.” The striking peculiarity of these cures is that they all occur during the height of the excitement and notoriety of the early days of the announcement, while they decline in proportion to the decline in public faith and interest, the explanation being that in every instance the cure is effected by the action of the mental states of expectancy, faith, and the imagination of the patient, irrespective of any virtue in the method or system itself. In short, all these cures belong to the category of faith-cures—they are merely duplicates of the world-old cures resulting from faith in sacred relics, shrines, bones of holy people, sacred places, etc., of which nearly every religion has given us many examples. The history of medicine gives us many instances of the efficacy of the therapeutic power of Faith.

Sir Humphrey Davy relates a case in which a man seriously ill manifested immediate improvement after the placing of a clinical thermometer in his mouth, he supposing that it was some new and powerful healing instrument. The grotesque remedies of the ancient physicians, and the bizarre decoctions of the quacks of the present, all work cures. The “bread-pills” and other placebos of the “regulars” have cured many a case when other remedies have failed.

It is related that several hundred years ago, a young English law-student while on a lark with several of his boon companions found themselves in a rural inn, without money with which to pay their reckoning. Finally, after much thought, the young man called the inn-keeper and told him that he, the student, was a great physician, and that he would prepare for him a magic amulet which would cure all diseases, in return for the receipted account of himself and friends. The landlord gladly consented, and the young man wrote some gibberish on a bit of parchment, which together with sundry articles of rubbish he inserted in a silk cover. With a wise and dignified air he then departed. Many years rolled by, and the young man rose to the position of a High Justice of the realm. One day before him was brought a woman accused of magic and witchcraft. The evidence showed that she had cured many people by applying to their bodies a little magic amulet, which the church authorities considered to be the work of the devil. The woman, on the stand, admitted the use of the amulet and the many cures resulting therefrom, but defended herself by saying that the instrument of cure had been given to her father, now deceased, many years ago, by a great physician who had stopped at her father’s inn. She held that the cures were genuine medical cures resulting from the medicinal virtues of the amulet, and not the result of magic or witchcraft. The Justice asked to be handed the wonderful amulet. Ripping it open with his pen-knife, he found enclosed the identical scrawl inserted by himself many years before. He announced the circumstances from the bench, and discharged the woman—but the healing virtues of the amulet had disappeared, never to return. The cures were the result of the faith and imagination of the patients.

The modern instances of the several great “Divine Healers,” such as John Alexander Dowie of Chicago, and Francis Schlatter of Denver, give us additional evidence of the efficacy of Faith as a therapeutic agent. John Alexander Dowie, a Scotch preacher, came to America some twenty years ago, and instituted a new religion in which healing was an important feature. He claimed that all disease was the result of the devil, and that belief in God and the prayers of Dowie and his assistants would work the cure of the devil’s evil operations. Great numbers flocked to Dowie’s standard, and thousands of wonderful cures were reported. His “Tabernacle” was filled with testimonials and trophies from cured people. Back of Dowie’s pulpit were displayed many crutches, plaster-casts, braces, and other spoils wrested from the devil by Dowie and his aids. His experience meetings were thronged with persons willing and anxious to testify that whereas they had been afflicted they were now whole again. Dowie succeeded in building up a great following all over the world, and had he not overreached himself and allowed his colossal vanity to overshadow his original ideas, the probability is that he would have founded a church which would have endured for centuries. As it is, he was discredited and disowned by his followers, and his church is now but little more than a memory.

Francis Schlatter, the German shoemaker of Denver, with his Divine Healing, was a well known figure in the west several years ago. He was undoubtedly a half-insane fanatic, believing himself inspired by God to heal the nations. Persons flocked to him from afar, and he is reported to have healed thousands, many of whom were suffering from serious ailments. He afterward disappeared, and is believed to have died in the desert of the far west. Students of Mental Suggestion and Psychic Therapeutics find in the instances of Dowie and Schlatter merely the same underlying principle of Mental Healing resulting from faith, which is operative in all of the other cases mentioned. The theology, creed, theories of methods have but little to do with the cures, so long as the proper degree of faith is induced in the mind of the patient. Faith in anything will work cures, providing it is sufficiently intense and active.