THE INFLUENCE OF MIND OVER BODY.
By David Paulson, M.D.
THERE is something strikingly real in mind-cure. I had a patient last summer who was doing well—he was recovering rapidly—when a man in a joke said to him, 'How bad you look; you had better speak for your coffin!' That remark put that patient's case back three weeks. So I believe in mind-cure, for a thing that will have a bad influence when used in a wrong way, may have a good influence when used in the right way. But there must be a reality,—something in which we can have faith. We, therefore, seek to inspire patients to have faith in right principles and methods of treatment; to have faith in the bath-room treatments, in the clean, pure food, in vigorous exercise, and in all those measures and principles upon which they are based, if they wish to be cured. That is true mind-cure. There is all the difference in the world between a lack of confidence in these things and faith in them. When I see a patient full of enthusiasm, staying day after day and conscientiously following directions to the very letter, and saying to other patients, 'I tell you this treatment is doing me good,' I know the battle is already more than half won for him. But when I find a patient who simply has a sort of confidence in the shadow of the institution or in the physicians and the manner in which they look at his tongue or feel his pulse, imagining that there is some healing influence about that, I know that man will be doomed to disappointment. Above all things we must have faith in a divine healing power which operates in everybody. An abrasion of the skin of the hand is healed by the same power that brings out the flowers and the grass and the bark of the tree; it is the same power that keeps our hearts going and that produces gastric juice. It is that power which cures us, if we are cured. Dr. Potter says that there is no more clearly established dogma in science than that nature is of itself adequate to cure all curable disorders. Herbert Spencer says of this power, that back of all that we know and back of all that science has been able to discover, there is an unknowable intelligence at work—this is the power that heals us, and not the shadow of a medical institution nor the wisdom and skill of physicians. Great stress should be laid upon these facts. There is a divine law which says, 'By beholding we become changed.' So if a patient fixes his attention upon this or that symptom, he will soon be quickly rewarded by having it intensified. Some time ago I saw an article in a paper in which it was stated that if we fixed our thoughts upon some imaginary feeling on the top of our heads, we would feel it after a while. I tried the experiment on a class of thirty students, and one-half succeeded in finding the feeling there within a minute. Sometimes one patient will say to another, 'Haven't you a pain in such and such a locality?' And he at once begins to try to find it, and finally succeeds. Physicians have sometimes done harm by asking questions in reference to symptoms; a patient is asked if he hasn't a certain symptom. He says he has not. After thinking the matter over, the next day he tells the physician that he has that identical symptom. He says, 'I didn't know I had it when you asked me about it, but now I find that I have actually got it.' In this manner, and without intending it, we sometimes create feelings. We once had a patient whose doctor wrote us that there wasn't much of anything the matter with him, but that he dwelt upon his symptoms all the time. In this manner, by beholding he was becoming changed; he was largely sick because he was thinking of disease when he should have been thinking of health. I saw from his physician's intelligent description of his case in a letter that all the patient needed was a simple diet, accompanied with appropriate treatment, and that he should be kept from talking disease. So I refused to talk to him in reference to his case at all. In a day or two he said to me, 'I am amazingly better.' I said, 'I knew you would be; you were not very sick in the first place.' The most wonderful thing that can be done for some people is to keep them from talking disease. Such need to be encouraged to talk health, and have faith in the principles and the treatment that they are receiving. I remember when a prominent judge first came to us a broken-down man; he was a nervous wreck, and greatly depressed; he admitted it, and said, 'What shall I do?' I suggested to him to go into the waiting-room and cheer up some of the patients. He was naturally a very jovial man when well. He took my advice, and went to entertaining the patients, and he did it beautifully. The next day when he came down to my office he said, 'I am in big business now; I don't know as I will take treatment any more, I am feeling so much better.' I assured him that he was taking treatment all the time, while making others cheerful. He kept on improving, and all the while making others feel well. So if there is anything encouraging about your case, think of that and tell others about it; but if there is anything discouraging about your symptoms, don't say anything about it—except to the proper person who should know. Talk health, and encourage others. Nature is kind, and, so far as is proper and right, and as we co-operate by using her means, she will cure; and, even tho we are sick for a time, there are some valuable lessons to be learned even through sickness, and by and by, if we are true to our principles, we will see that even amid these broken hopes and disappointments, nature desired to teach us some lessons which we could not well afford to lose.