CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 221 



jaundice, while many public speakers and soldiers know that fright 

 causes perspiration and stimulates the action of the kidneys. In 

 short, there are instances too numerous to mention of the effect of 

 mental states upon the organs of the body, and the facts may be 

 considered as established. 



While the proper mental states tend to stimulate the nervous sys- 

 tem, and restore normal conditions, anger, worry, fear and doubt tend 

 to lower the tone of the nervous system and check the functions. It 

 has been conclusively established by observation that favorable results 

 from mental methods are practically impossible unless the patient has 

 confidence; he must believe that the desired effects will be produced; 

 in short, he must have faith. There are countless instances outside 

 the realms of mental healing to prove this, notably the cases where 

 people have taken astringent pills by mistake, and have yet been purged 

 because they expected to be. In one particularly amusing incident, 

 a doctor gave a man a prescription for an affection of the stomach, 

 saying, " Here, take this ! " Later, when the patient returned to render 

 thanks for his recovery, the physician had forgotten the remedy he had 

 used, and asked to see the prescription. He was naturally somewhat 

 surprised to hear that the man had swallowed the paper, and had 

 taken no other medicine. In this category, also, belong the cures from 

 amulets, charms and incantations. Every doctor of experience will 

 admit that confidence on the part of the patient, and expectation of 

 recovery are half the cure. 



If now, these ideas are well founded, and mental states will cure 

 functional disorders as well as those of the circulation and nervous 

 system, why not abandon medical treatment altogether, and adopt some 

 form of mental therapeutics — accept the beliefs of the christian scien- 

 tists? Well, in the first place, mental healing will not work on all 

 people; some can not accept the requisite theories; others do not seem 

 able to produce the essential mental states; and others are so violently 

 opposed to the whole system that exactly contrary results appear. Next, 

 the methods are unreliable; they will work at one time, and later fail 

 on the same person under apparently identical conditions, while the 

 healers generally are not skilled enough to bring about satisfactory 

 effects, for the whole system is in the hands of unscientific persons, 

 whose methods outrage common sense and arouse hostility toward the 

 many excellent features of their philosophy. 



Most important of all, mental healing is powerless in very many 

 kinds of illness, including most of those which are fatal or even dan- 

 gerous. If mental healing is resorted to, the disease may become 

 established before its nature is recognized, and the patient may die, 

 when if he had been treated by regular practitioners he would have 

 recovered. In all contagious and infectious maladies the patient be- 



