828 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXX. No. 780 



that by the same method broken bones have 

 been instantaneously healed and the lost 

 substance of disintegrated lungs has been 

 restored. These wonders have been ac- 

 complished largely by the simple reading 

 of Mrs. Eddy's book. But, however in- 

 credible may appear many of these so- 

 called cures, what of the failures, what of 

 the suffering and miseiy and death that 

 might have been prevented? If scientific 

 medicine, with all the skill which it can 

 command and the hope which it can give to 

 suffering humanity, often fails to justify 

 its promises, what can be said of a would- 

 be healing system which employs only the 

 grotesque fantasies of a shallow mind ? If 

 Christian Science occasionally confers upon 

 its believers a certain degree of cheerful- 

 ness of spirit and obliviousness to the 

 petty annoyances of daily life, it numbs 

 the senses and the courage and does not 

 make the world's fighters. It is a lament- 

 able fate for a child to be educated to a 

 belief in such a debilitating panacea. 



The same criticism can be made, in even 

 stronger terms, of various minor kinds of 

 mental or psychic healers, though here 

 charlatanry is even more blatant. Many 

 of these healers employ successfully the 

 method of absent treatment. Even Mrs. 

 Eddy says : ' ' Science can heal the sick who 

 are absent from their healers, . . . since 

 space is no obstacle to Mind." The em- 

 ployment of absent treatment has received 

 a considerable impetus with the advent of 

 the telephone. How simple a matter it 

 now is to ring up the healer in the depths 

 of the night and request him to treat one's 

 crying child from the recesses of his office 

 a mile away! The credulous mother feels 

 that something is being done for her suf- 

 fering babe, even though the healer at his 

 end of the wire merely turns over in his 

 bed for another nap, having made a mental 

 note of a fresh charge to be entered in his 



account book on the morrow. This picture 

 is not overdrawn — its like may be seen any 

 day in our cities. 



It is a long step from such healers to the 

 psychotherapist of the better class of the 

 present day. In turning to psychotherapy 

 I would have it understood that I speak of 

 this subject in its broader applications. 

 There is a notion, wide-spread in this coun- 

 try, which limits the term to the particular 

 healing movement that was initiated at 

 Emmanuel Church in Boston and has since 

 extended to a few other churches. How- 

 ever instrumental this church movement 

 may have been in arousing popular inter- 

 est, the psychic method of dealing with 

 disease is no new method, either in this 

 country or abroad. The psychotherapist 

 is an enlightened man, who recognizes and 

 respects the achievements of scientific 

 medicine, and if he is not a doctor of 

 medicine himself he works hand in hand 

 with the doctor of medicine. He makes 

 no pretence that psychotherapy is a pana- 

 cea, he simply claims that it is a valuable 

 supplement to the physical agencies com- 

 monly employed by the physician, and is 

 useful in certain so-called functional dis- 

 eases of the nervous system. It is a mis- 

 take, I believe, to draw, as he does, a sharp 

 distinction between organic and functional 

 nerve diseases, the former being accom- 

 panied by morphological changes in nerve 

 structures, the latter not being so accom- 

 panied : for I can not conceive the existence 

 of a disease involving function without 

 some physical abnormality. It is a mistake 

 too, I believe, to assume the existence of a 

 subconscious mind through which the 

 psychic influence is mediated: for the phe- 

 nomena which are now often relegated to 

 the subconscious are capable of explana- 

 tion without going beyond the sphere of 

 physiology. The psychotherapist does not 

 rely upon supernatural forces, he employs 



