SCIENCE AND ''CHRISTIAN SCIENCES 807 



to relax Ms mental hold on the limb. Dr. Taylor caused the 

 young man to take certain exercises with his arms, of so violent a 

 character that they absorbed all his attention, leaving none for 

 his lower limbs. Within three days he gave up restraining the 

 injured leg, and he began to walk involuntarily. In this case it 

 was the mind which needed treatment. A young lady was sent 

 to Dr. Taylor from Albany for a supposed partial paralysis of the 

 left foot and ankle, which caused her to drop her toes in walking. 

 Her trouble proved to be entirely mental, and she was cured with- 

 in ten days by restoring consciousness of power in the affected 

 foot. He gives other cases to show that mental influence over 

 bodily function causes not only loss of muscular power, but also 

 increased muscular action simulating muscular spasm, increased 

 or diminished bodily sensations, and disorders in the involuntary 

 processes of life. His experience indicates that in such cases 

 treatment directed toward the mind is the only sort that can be 

 effective. He only alludes to " the important subject of mental 

 influence on actual disease " in this article. " Suflfice it here to 

 say," he remarks, " that, as must be inferred from the facts and 

 arguments already adduced, no system of therapeutics can be com- 

 plete which does not embrace the design of controlling psycho- 

 biological relations in general, and with reference to chronic dis- 

 eases especially." 



Prof. G. Buchanan, of Glasgow, has placed on record cases of 

 the same nature as these described by Dr. Taylor. Still others 

 are related by Walter Moxon (" Contemporary Review," vol. xlviii, 

 p. 707) and by other writers. Animal magnetism, first brought 

 forward as a healing agency by Mesmer a century ago, has 

 since been studied scientifically under the name of hypnotism. 

 The work of these later investigators has established the fact 

 that a large number of functional diseases are benefited, and 

 even permanently cured, through the mind by hypnotic sug- 

 gestion. 



Now, in view of what has been done in curing disease by the 

 aid of mental influence, the public has a right to demand that our 

 physicians shall give us the benefit of this healing agency. Men- 

 tal influence is a pleasant and inexpensive medicine ; it cures in 

 some cases where drugs fail, and it shortens the term of sickness 

 and lightens its pains in many other cases ; furthermore, it has no 

 injurious incidental effects. But the mind-cure should be taken 

 out of the hands of the untrained and irresponsible visionaries and 

 the impostors who now practice it, or it will add a terrible amount 

 of suffering and death to what it has already caused. These 

 enthusiasts, carried away by their seeming successes in a few 

 cases, insist that the mind-cure is the only treatment that is worth 

 anything in all diseases and for all persons. They know too little 



