NATURE OF DISEASE AND OF ITS CURE 65 



the mind works is closely connected with every other organ of the body 

 and so influences digestion, circulation and all other functions. Like- 

 wise the mind is affected by the bodily states. The ill working of 

 damaged organs may produce a mental state of pain or depression. 

 These feelings may be heightened or diminished by mental effort, or 

 may be more or less forgotten, for the time at least, by directing con- 

 sciousness into some other channel of activity. Disease is, in every 

 case, modified more or less by the mind, and the mental state may some- 

 times help to determine the success or failure of bodily fight against 

 destructive agencies. If appeal to the mind seems to cure the bodily 

 ill, it does not indicate that the patient would not have recovered any- 

 how, and does not signify that the mind itself effected the return to 

 health. ISTo amount of faith or other mental state can take the place 

 of insufficient body-resources — can restore a damaged lung or a miss- 

 ing limb. 



Disease being thus the attempt of the body to restore itself to its 

 usual condition by ridding itself of destructive agents, the treatment 

 of disease must be directed toward helping the body to this end, by 

 putting the mental and muscular forces at rest, by proper nourishment 

 and by such antitoxins or drugs as aid it in its natural efforts to rid 

 itself of harmful conditions. Better still are the efforts toward pre- 

 vention of infectious and other injuries by the avoidance of intem- 

 perance in eating and drinking, by breathing fresh air, by cleanliness, 

 and by such other means as the body demands to keep it at its best 

 working power. Lastly, the mind should be trained not to meddle too 

 much with bodily affairs, save as it observes the laws of hygiene, and 

 it should be educated to deal readily with the trials and vexations of 

 life in a way that will not affect the general health through depressing 

 emotional discharges. 



It will be seen that our modern faith healers make no difference 

 between diseases as regards their cause. In their ignorance, comparable 

 only to that of the primitive medicine man, they deal with all sickness 

 alike. While the condition of the mind has much to do with some 

 diseases, with others it has little or no part in the cure, and the body 

 itself must work out its salvation through that wise inner body-directing 

 intelligence which the higher mind can not know nor — but to a slight 

 extent — influence. The faith curist in the conceit of his ignorance 

 takes the credit for the cures which, through good fortune plus a grain 

 of mental stimulus, often come to pass under his administrations, while 

 he who has studied into the physical nature of disease is perfectly aware 

 that when his patient recovers he has only assisted nature more or less 

 in what she would probably have accomplished without his help though 

 usually not so easily and completely and sometimes not at all. It is 

 this humble knowledge of the limitations of his art that makes the 



VOL. X.XXVII. — 5. 



