A Last Word About Christian Science. 181 



in Homoeopathy ostensible, in the different forms of mind-cnre, 

 including Chrisian Science, blank faith. 



Countless are the cases of physical disorder and disease both caused 

 and cured by mental influence. Thus, some years ago, a medical 

 student in Paris, on being initiated into the mysterious rites of a 

 masonic society, was subjected to a sham operation of blood-letting. 

 His eyes were bandaged, a ligature bound round his arm, and the 

 usual preparations made to bleed him. When a pretense of opening 

 a vein was made, a stream of water was spurted into a bowl, the sound 

 of which resembled that of a flow of blood which the student was 

 anticipating. The consequence was that in a few minutes he became 

 pale, and before long fainted away. 



A case is recorded of a man who was sentenced to be bled to death. 

 He was blindfolded, the sham operation was performed, and warm 

 water allowed to run down his arm in order to convey the impression 

 of blood. Thinking he was about to die, he did actually die. 



A. condemned man lay with his head on the block waiting the drop 

 of the executioner's ax. A reprieve suddenly came, but it was too 

 late, as the anticipation of death had arrested the action of the heart, 

 and when the bandage was removed from his eyes that he might read 

 his reprieve he was dead. 



The case of Louise Lateau, the sfigmatisee, of Belgium, illustrates 

 the power of concentrated attention — in this instance the intense 

 contemplation of Christ's passion by a very religious and emotional 

 girl — in producing marks on the skin and perhaps the exudation of 

 blood. 



Familiar to all is the retarded or interrupted digestion in persons 

 of mobile nerve temperament, caused by emotions of almost any sort. 

 The appetite is often made to disappear, or an actual loathing of food 

 brought on. One hundred patients in a hospital were made the sub- 

 jects of an experiment, and given some inert liquid. A little later, 

 full of alarm, the house physician rushed into the wards and pretended 

 that he had by mistake given them an emetic. At once no fewer than 

 eighty of the hundred were unmistakably taken sick. 



Dr. Tuke says he has seen the hair change color from brown to 

 P»y, and gray to brown, corresponding to alternations of sanity and 

 insanity. 



Powerful emotions not only interfere with but often entirely prevent 

 tbe perception of impressions made on the senses. The battle-field 

 affords many examples of the influence of engrossing emotion in blunt- 

 ln g sensation, and many a soldier has got his first information of 

 8ev ere and fatal wounds only by seeing his own blood. 



