The Part Thought Plays in the Efficacy of Medicines an thought cure? 1 put the question at a dinner-party the other night and in a moment everybody was discussing it, writes a correspondent to a home paper.
The company included a well-known K.C., a Harley Street phy-simian, and the head of a big firm of bankers. The men were all sympathetic, but I fancy I detected look of mockery on the faces of some of the women.
"Does anyone know what cures?" said the physician, "We call it Nature, but that is only to say we do not know. In the strict sense no doctor effects a cure. The utmost he cav do is to try to bring about conditions which will give 'Nature' a chance. Medicine does not cure. The knife does not cure. The ult mate source of our health is spirit rather than matter.
"Everybody knows cases which from the physician' 's point of view seem hopeless. The patient recovers. Why? Because, perhaps, he has the will to live. He refuses to die. In that sense you can truly say he has been cured by thought. Then there are+those numerous crises when the doctor has done all he can and nothing will avail but an effort on the part of the patient. Sometimes he seems too weak to make the necessary effort. Here outsiders may help.
Facts axp Qvacks.
"T have known a desperate case cured by a cheerful nurse, or the care of someone who loves him. It is not stretching language too far to say that in these instances it is the thought that Hungs about the cure. If only the subject could be dissent angled from cant and quackery there is a big trath at the bottom of it."" have been doing a little investigation on my own, and have been astonished at the number of people who claim to have been cured by thought treatment. The cases range from neuralgia, indigestion, and neurasthenia to pneumonia, bronchitis, consumption, and chronic rheumatism. Ju every instance the patient is quite convinced that the cure has been brought about by the thought healer.
The difficulty lies in proof. Tt is practically impossible to bring absolute proof of the cause of any cure. You take a bottle of medicine and later you feel better. You ascribe it to the physic. But you have no certain proof. You might have been better in any case medicine or no medicine.
May it not plausibly be argued that the thought that the medicine would do you good was the real curative agent rather than the mixture itself? It is known that with many people a highly coloured medicine is always more effective than a white decoction. The colour helps to the right thought.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.