234 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



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But we must go a step farther. We must admit not qnly that 

 regular medical practitioners have been making use of the principles of 

 suggestion, but that the people at large, the common people, the ignorant 

 and the superstitious, have had an intuition into their nature and have 

 been practising psychotherapeutics, with more or less of success, from 

 the dawn of history down to our own day. The practise of medicine is, 

 even to-day, an art largely based upon empirical rules learned from 

 the experience of the common people. Scientific medicine has in the 

 past adopted into its pharmacopoeia a great many of the "simples" 

 cherished by the people, but has discarded their innumerable hints as 

 to the value of psychotherapy. It is now beginning to turn to this 

 neglected wisdom, to make use of the spiritual " simples," to learn what 

 curative powers reside in the soul. 



