8o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a century ago, " There is not a natural action in the body, whether 

 involuntary or voluntary, that may not be influenced by the 

 peculiar state of the mind at the time." The chief store-house of 

 facts of this class is Dr. D. Hack Tuke's work on " The Influence 

 of the Mind upon the Body in Health and Disease " (London, 1872), 

 his attention having been called to the subject in 18G9 by a news- 

 paper article on " The Curative Effects of a Railway Collision." 

 The evidence furnished by Tuke and other writers leaves no room 

 to doubt that mental action is a powerful agency which can be 

 applied in the cure of disease. 



Dr. Tuke says, in the preface to his classic work : " There are 

 two classes of readers to whom I wish more especially to address 

 myself. The medical reader who, I hope, may be induced to 

 employ psycho-therapeutics in a more methodical way than here- 

 tofore, and thus copy nature in those interesting instances, occa- 

 sionally occurring, of sudden recovery from the spontaneous 

 action of some powerful moral cause, by employing the same 

 force designedly, instead of leaving it to mere chance. The force 

 is there, acting irregularly and capriciously. The question is, 

 whether it can not be applied and guided with skill and wisdom 

 by the physician. . . . ' Remember,' said Dr. Rush, in addressing 

 medical students, ' how many of our most useful remedies have 

 been discovered by quacks. Do not be afraid, therefore, of con- 

 versing with them, and of profiting by their ignorance and temer- 

 ity.'" Not only when disguised under some pretentious and 

 illogical quackery has the mental force been employed, but it has 

 already been utilized, with a full appreciation of its nature, by 

 physicians of high standing. Sir Humphry Davy's cure of a 

 case of paralysis by repeated applications of a thermometer is a 

 much-quoted instance. 



In a paper entitled " Bodily Conditions as related to Mental 

 States" ("Popular Science Monthly," vol. xv, page 40), Dr. C. F. 

 Taylor, of New York, reports the case of a young man sent to 

 him from a Western city. Dr. Taylor was informed that the 

 patient had broken his thigh-bone two years before, that this 

 fracture had united, but that a year later the same bone had been 

 broken in another place. The regular treatment had failed to 

 secure a union of the second fracture. On examination. Dr. Tay- 

 lor found the muscles of the leg wasted and soft, with a large out- 

 ward bending in the middle of the bone, but he could not find 

 the slightest evidence that any second fracture had occurred. The 

 patient thought he had refractured his thigh-bone, and this im- 

 pression caused him quite unconsciously to withhold muscular 

 action in the limb so completely that a relaxed and powerless 

 condition was caused, which was mistaken for a broken bone. A 

 mere explanation of his condition was not sufiScient to enable him 



