BODY AND MIND. 223 



Jacobites and Whigs alike criticised his determination unfavourably; 

 but in the era we speak of began the decline of the sovereign virtue 

 of the royal touch a virtue which is scarcely spoken of, much less 

 demanded, in these latter days, which, however, countenance and 

 support delusions of equally absurd kind. Dr. Tuke quotes a 

 passage from Aubray to the effect that " The curing of the King's 

 Evil, by the touch of the King, does much puzzle our philosophers, 

 for whether our kings were of the House of York or Lancaster, it did 

 the cure for the most part. In other words," adds Dr. Tuke, " the 

 imagination belongs to no party, guild, or creed." 



Within the domain of theology itself, the physiologist occasionally 

 finds it his duty to intrude ; since therefrom not a few illustrations 

 of very remarkable kind respecting the influence of mind upon body, 

 have been drawn. The more important do these instances become, 

 because, from a moral point of view, their influence tends often to 

 propagate as the " miracle " of the credulous, a condition or effect 

 readily explicable upon scientific grounds. In convents, not merely 

 have delusions resulting from diseased imagination been frequently 

 represented, but such delusions have affected in various remarkable 

 ways the bodies of the subjects in question, and have in turn 

 extended their influence to others. Thus, for instance, a tendency 

 to mew like a cat, seen in one inmate, has passed through an entire 

 convent. One of the best known instances of a disordered imagina- 

 tion tending to propagate a delusion, is that given by Boerhaave, 

 who was consulted with reference to an epidemic occurring in a 

 convent, and which was characterised by a succession of severe fits. 

 On the principle similia similibus curantur Boerhaave determined to 

 repress the disordered and, for the time, " dominant idea," by another 

 of practical kind, and accordingly announced his intention to use grave 

 medical measures in the shape of a red-hot iron on the first patient 

 who presented herself. Needless to remark, the dominant idea of 

 the physician replaced that arising from the abnormal action of mind, 

 and the peace of the convent was duly restored by this simple 

 expedient. 



One of the most familiar cases which occurred within recent 

 times was that of Louise Lateau, a young Belgian peasant, whose 

 mental aberrations, aided by some very singular bodily defects, 

 gained for her the reputation of sanctity of a high order and un- 

 common origin. To begin with, Louise Lateau suffered from a 

 protracted illness from which she recovered after receiving the 

 Sacrament. Naturally enough, this circumstance alone affected 

 her mind, and stamped her recovery as a somewhat supernatural, 

 or at any rate as a highly extraordinary, occurrence. Soon there- 

 after blood began to flow from a particular spot on her side every 

 Friday. A few months later, bleeding points, or stigmata, began 



