380 Human Physiology. 



send a healing galvanic current through his body, has faith 

 enough to be cured without one atom of galvanic action. 



What is it then that cures? What restores the wearied 

 limbs and wearied brain? What heals the bruise or cut? 

 What unites the broken bone? What fills up the abscess 

 with new flesh, nerves, and blood vessels ? Not medicines of 

 any kind. Nature heals nature cures in all cases. The 

 highest science can do no more than to give favourable con- 

 ditions, remove obstructions, modify action, and in some cases 

 assist nature and hasten her beneficent operations. A doctor 

 may relieve an oppressed stomach by giving an emetic ; he may 

 relieve clogged and torpid bowels with a laxative medicine, or 

 injections. He may cleanse the skin, and promote the unload- 

 ing of the blood vessels by perspiration. He may relieve dis- 

 tressing pain, and help the sufferer to rest and sleep. Better 

 than all, perhaps, he can give sympathy, and inspire confidence 

 and hope. And every physician, whatever his system of treat- 

 ment, if it is not absolutely mischievous and murderous, does 

 good; but does more with diet and regimen, and far more by 

 .sympathy and moral aid, than by all the other resources of the 

 materia medica. 



There is a gift of healing. Certain men and women have a 

 natural vocation for the care and cure of the sick. They are 

 clairvoyant of diseased conditions sympathetic to such a 

 degree often, that they are conscious of the aches and pains of 

 people, and enter into a communion of suffering. Generally 

 such persons are magnetic, or possess the power of giving relief 

 by their presence, by the laying on of hands, by mesmeric 

 passes over the seat of disease. Many have no knowledge or 

 distinct consciousness of this power, but they are impelled to 

 take hold of the sick, and stroke or rub them more or less vigour- 

 Ously. The hand of such a person laid on an aching head 

 relieves it, as sympathy softens the pain of an aching heart. 

 Their presence is comfort, their touch is strength. When a 



