CHAPTER VI
FAITH CURES
Following the scientific study of the phenomena of cures of physical illness by means of the power of mental states, and the recognition of the fact that there is a common principle operative under the various guises and forms, there sprang into scientific usage the term “Faith Cures” which was used to designate all instances and forms of cures coming under the general classification of mental healing. Prof. Goddard defines the term as follows: “A term applied to the practice of curing disease by an appeal to the hope, belief, or expectation of the patient, and without the use of drugs or other material means. Formerly it was confined to methods requiring the exercise of religious faith, such as the ‘prayer cure’ and ‘divine healing,’ but has now come to be used in the broader sense, and includes the cures of ‘Mental Science,’ and hypnotism; also a large part of the cures effected by patent medicines and nostrums, as well as many folk-practices and home remedies. By some it is used to include also Christian Science, but the believers in the latter regard it as entirely distinct.”
The term “Suggestion,” used in the same sense as “Faith Cure” in relation to the healing of disease, has also come into popular usage, but inasmuch as Suggestion has a much larger meaning outside of its therapeutic phases, it may be said the best authorities to-day use the term “Faith Cure” as representing simply one phase of Suggestion.
Prof. Goddard, in his article on “Faith Cure,” in the New International Encyclopaedia (Dodd, Mead & Co., New York), says: “Besides these recognized forms (divine healing, mental science, etc.), faith cure is an important element in cures wrought by patent medicines and nostrums, home remedies and folk practices. The advertisement, testimonial of friend, or family tradition arouses the faith of the sick man, and he comes to believe that he needs only to follow directions to be fully cured. The actual value of faith cure as a therapeutic method has been the subject of much discussion. It can no longer be denied that it has value. From divine healing to patent medicine and Father Kneipp’s water cure, all cure disease. Each appeals to a particular type of mind, but the results are practically the same in all—same diseases cured, same successes, same failures. Many faith-curists claim that all diseases in all persons can be cured by their method; others hold that the principle is of limited application. Of them all, the hypnotists are the only ones who do not make sweeping claims.”
After stating “the tendency to exaggeration and the infrequency of impartial judgment” in connection with many instances of claimed cures, the above mentioned authority proceeds as follows: “The actual cures, however, are sufficiently numerous and sufficiently striking to need an explanation. These different forms agree in only one point—viz., the mental state of the patient is one of hope and expectation. Can states of mind cause or cure disease? Some familiar occurrences seem to justify an affirmative answer. It is well known that certain glands and secretions are markedly affected by emotions. Fright causes the saliva to cease to flow and the perspiration to start. Sorrow causes the lachrymal glands to secrete tears. Happiness favors digestion, unhappiness retards it. Mosso has demonstrated that the bladder is especially sensitive to emotional states. In general, the pleasant emotions produce an opposite physical effect from the unpleasant ones. There are many glands within the body whose action under emotion we cannot observe; but we may reasonably assume that they also are affected by emotional states. Hence, if unpleasant emotions so act upon the glands as to derange the system and cause disease, the pleasant emotions may reasonably be assumed to tend to restore the normal functions. The various forms of faith cure tend strongly to put the patient in a happy frame of mind—a condition favorable to health. However, there are all degrees of faith and wide differences in the way the system responds to the emotional state. One person is slightly affected by a strong emotion; another is strongly affected by a weak emotion. Hence, there must always be a wide difference in the results of faith-cure methods. The diseases most amenable to faith cure are nervous—including many not recognized as nervous, but having a neural condition as their basis—and functional derangements. Organic diseases are not usually cured, though the symptoms are frequently ameliorated. Chronic diseases due to neuro-muscular habit often yield to hypnotic treatment.”
Prof. R. P. Halleck says: “Were it not for this power of the imagination, the majority of quack nostrums would disappear. In most cases bread pills, properly labeled, with positive assurances of certain cures accompanying them, would answer the purpose far better than these nostrums, or even much better than a great deal of the medicine administered by regular physicians. Warts have been charmed away by medicines which could have had only a mental effect. Dr. Tuke gives many cases of patients cured of rheumatism by rubbing them with a certain substance declared to possess magic power. The material in some cases was metal; in others wood; in still others, wax. He also recites the case of a very intelligent officer who had vainly taken powerful remedies to cure cramp in the stomach. Then ‘he was told that on the next attack he would be put under a medicine which was generally believed to be most effective, but which was rarely used.’ When the cramps came on again, ‘a powder containing four grains of ground biscuit was administered every seven minutes, while the greatest anxiety was expressed (within the hearing of the party) lest too much be given. Half-drachm doses of bismuth had never procured the same relief in less than three hours. For four successive times did the same kind of attack recur, and four times was it met by the same remedy, and with like success.’ A house surgeon in a French hospital experimented with one hundred patients, giving them sugared water. Then, with a great show of fear, he pretended that he had made a mistake and given them an emetic instead of the proper medicine. Dr. Tuke says: ‘The result may easily be anticipated by those who can estimate the influence of the imagination. No fewer than eighty—four-fifths—were unmistakably sick.’
“We have a well authenticated case of a butcher, who, while trying to hang up a heavy piece of meat, slipped and was himself caught by the arm upon the hook. When he was taken to a surgeon, the butcher said he was suffering so much that he could not endure the removal of his coat; the sleeve must be cut off. When this was done, it was found that the hook had passed through his clothing close to the skin, but had not even scratched it. A man sentenced to be bled to death was blindfolded. A harmless incision was then made in his arm and tepid water fixed so as to run down it and drop with considerable noise into a basin. The attendants frequently commented on the flow of blood and the weakening pulse. The criminal’s false idea of what was taking place was as powerful in its effects as the reality, and he soon died.... There is perhaps not a person living who would not at times be benefited by a bread pill, administered by some one in whom great confidence was reposed.”
The same authority also says: “It has been known for a long time that if the attention is directed toward any bodily organ, abnormal sensations may be caused in it, and disease may be developed. The renowned Dr. John Hunter said: ‘I am confident that I can fix my attention to any part, until I have a sensation in that part.’” Dr. Tuke says that these “are words which ought to be inscribed in letters of gold over the entrance of a hospital for the Cure of Disease by Psychopathy.” Hunter’s confident assertion is the more interesting because, drawn from his own experience, it shows that the principle is not confined in its operation to the susceptible and nervous, but operates even on men of the highest mental endowment. We have examples from the literature of the seventeenth century, showing how the expectation of a complaint will produce it. In 1607 an ignorant English physician told a clergyman’s wife that she had sciatica, although there was, in reality, nothing the matter with her sciatic nerve. Her attention was thereby directed to it and a severe attack of sciatica was the result. When a person inexperienced in medicine reads carefully the symptoms of some disease, he is apt to begin an attentive search for those symptoms and to end by fancying he has them. Seasick persons have been relieved of their nausea by being made to bail a leaking boat from the fear that it would sink. All their attention was thereby diverted from themselves. Many can recall how children, and grown persons, too, have forgotten all about their alleged intense thirst, as soon as their attention was diverted. Some persons, after eating something which they fancy is a trifle indigestible, center their attention upon the stomach, expecting symptoms of indigestion, and are often not disappointed. A man who had good reason to fear hydrophobia, determined that he would not have it. The pain in the bitten arm became intense, and he saw that he must have something to divert his attention from the wound and his danger. He therefore went hunting, but found no game. To make amends, he summoned a more inflexible will and exerted at every step ‘a strong mental effort against the disease.’ He kept on hunting until he felt better, and he mastered himself so perfectly that he probably thereby warded off an attack of hydrophobia. Accordingly as we center our attention upon one thing or another, we largely determine our mental happiness and hence our bodily health. One person, in walking through a noble forest, may search only for spiders, and venomous creatures, while another confines his attention to the singing birds in the branches above. One reason why travel is such a cure for diseases of body and mind is because so many new things thereby come in to claim the attention and divert it from its former objects. The following expression from Dr. Tuke should be remembered: ‘Thought strongly directed to any part tends to increase its vascularity, and consequently its sensibility.’”
Dr. C. F. Winbigler says: “The practitioner secures the same effects from a placebo or powdered pop-corn as from some drugs by using suggestion with the former. Every successful physician has used this method at one time or another, and sometimes when he was utterly puzzled as to what he should prescribe, he thus secured a marvellous result, and a cure of the patient was effected.... Every believer in Psycho-therapeutics knows that there is a psychical as well as a physical effect from the use of drugs. The psychical value is based on the expectation of their special action, and that which is in the physician’s mind may be subtly and powerfully carried over into the patient’s mind. The physician’s personality, attitude and interest in the patient accomplishes vastly more than the drugs he prescribes or administers. If he is cheerful and hopeful, he gives potency to their action; if he is gloomy, pessimistic and hopeless, he nullifies their effects. The cure of the patient is effected through the subconscious mind, and the attitude and bearings of the physician, attendants, the surroundings and the medicines employed, become powerful suggestions.”