2 1 6 Medicine : 



body is, of course, pathological as well as physio- 

 logical. When the paralysed patient's power to 

 speak or walk is restored by a strong impression 

 made upon mind at a miracle-working shrine, or 

 by the suggestion of a skilled hypnotist, there 

 takes place a physical excitation of the suspended 

 function of the nervous tract or area in which the 

 belief and will to act were implicitly organized. 

 For the seeming miracle to come off there must, 

 naturally, be mutual sympathy and belief in its 

 success ; an interposed screen of doubt or dis- 

 belief prevents the excitation or inspiration of 

 the requisite faith. To ascribe the result to ima- 

 gination is one sort of provisional explanation. 

 Certainly, as imagination may kill, so also it may 

 cure. But that, after all, is to explain nothing — 

 is to do little more than to make a faculty of a 

 word. 



What is the nature of the subtile transfer of 

 energy between the active and the recipient mind 

 whereby the former excites the latent belief and 

 energy in the latter ? Without subscribing to 

 the strange stories of telepathy, of the solemn 

 apparition of a person somewhere at the moment 

 of his death a thousand miles away, of the unquiet 

 ghost haunting the scenes of its bygone hopes and 

 endeavours, one may ask whether two brains 

 cannot be so tuned in sympathy as to transmit 

 and receive a subtile transfusion of mind without 

 mediation of sense. Considering what is implied 

 by the human brain with its countless millions of 



