others for both data and inferences concerning many things of great practical value. In the pressure of numerous and tremendous demands it has been thought wise by investigators to study phenomena mainly from the materialistic point of view. It is only within the past decade or two that true scientific inquiry has been attempted, save by the few, in the realm of the immaterial. Yet all the time investigators have recognized the vast importance of phenomena about which little can be learned through an exclusive study of matter in its varied manifestations. Matter and Mind. Matter is known to be nothing more than matter, and, at best, but a medium of expression of a hidden Something. This unknown Something we find variously wrought and are lost in astonishment and admiration at its manifestations. In general, modern science has rested contented with what can be demonstrated to the five senses, and in practice has reckoned it the all. The vast unknown has been reckoned as unknowable, and men have been willing to leave it unexplored. Even hypotheses concerning it have been, by many, discouraged. The UNITY OF ALL PHENOMENA, however, has forced its way into our convictions. They are all ONE. "The power that manifests throughout the universe distinguished as material," says Spencer, "is the same power which in ourselves wells up under the form of consciousness." Emerson says: DISEASE ORIGIN IN MIND. 27 "It is a secret which every intellectual man quickly learns, that beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect he is capable of a new energy (as of an intellect doubled on itself), by abandonment to the nature of things; that besides his privacy of power as an individual man there is a great public power on which he can draw, by unlocking, at all hazards, his human doors and suffering the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him; then he is caught up into the life of the universe, his speech is thunder, his thought is law, and his words are universally intelligible as the plants and the animals." The Origin of Disease in Mind. Into this great unknown it is only recently that the scientist has dared to enter. That he is following the footsteps of the philosopher into a region of exact law and uniform phenomena is very clear. Many facts have already been collated and some of the controlling laws have been uncovered. But these new thoughts and discoveries stand in great need of classification and definition. Progress is being made, hypotheses are forming, and exact experiments are developing truths. The opinion long held, and often set forth in precise terms by those whose intuitions were allowed to anticipate their reason, that the essential etiology of disease lies in the psychic realm, is being accepted by scientific observers. There is not now a shadow of doubt that the origin of disease is in perverted mental concepts, logical enough in form, but built on wrong preThese pernicious thoughts, however, are not necessarily of the conscious type. mises. "Introspective states," says Prof. Elmer Gates, in Monist, "affect metabolism, circulation, respiration, digestion, assimilation, excretion, secretion, growth, sleep, wakefulness, strength, health, hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, temperature, the pressure senses, dreams, movements, complexion, voice, gesture and environment." A few months ago I had a patient of neurotic temperament whose heat centers, from emotional causes, became so overwrought that her temperature for several hours, on two consecutive days, promptly sent the mercury in my thermometer to the top of the tube, registering 112° F. How much higher her temperature really was I am unable to say; but, from the rapidity with which the mercury mounted to the 112° mark, I was led to believe that it would have gone much higher had the tube been longer. She was not relieved by drugs, freely given, but was quickly put into a normal state by means of suggestion. The evil effect on the physical organism of pernicious thought is admitted by every practitioner. He will some day learn that the good effect of wholesome thought is equally pronounced. The average man or woman is a prey to unregulated and uneducated thought. Is it any wonder, then, that his body suffers from the fear, the anger, the malice, and the worry which his lack of discipline encourages and engenders? Inquiry Should Extend Now what I want to ask is this: Why should we, as scientific physicians, allow prejudice to debar us from therapeutic resources that are apt to prove far more effective, ADVANCED THOUGHT WINS SLOWLY. 29 it may be, than any now at our command? Why not enter and cultivate a field now running to weeds but capable of developing the richest fruits? We should strenuously avoid the state of mind of the good Scotch woman, who, when charged with not being open to conviction, replied: "Not open to conviction? I scorn the imputation. But," she added, after a moment's hesitation, "show me the man who can convince me." We have but to add the psychic realm to the scope of our inquiry. There is no occasion, and there would be no rational excuse, for lessening in the slightest the ardor of our investigation in the realm of matter. Then why so circumscribe the breadth of our inquiry as to make conclusions one-sided and incomplete? Why not scrutinize every set of phenomena and make our knowledge all-embracing? Is it becoming to ignore phenomena, as clear and impressive as any, because the unscientific have ventured theories concerning them and have built fantastic beliefs upon them? Advanced Thought Wins Its It is said that every advanced thought of a revolutionary character goes through three stages. It is first spurned, then declared to be nothing new, and ultimately accepted with the comment that it was always believed. Suggestive therapy has passed the first stage and is now merging from the second into the third. There are many physicians and surgeons of good standing who systematically utilize psychic forces in their practice; but when compared with the host of doctors who attend suffering humanity the world over, they are scarcely discernible. Why Are These Things So? They are so because mental therapeutics has been for so long the real modus operandi of the vast army of charlatans, and the whole subject has thus acquired so bad a name that most men fear for their reputation if they touch it. But the time to claim what is rightly ours has arrived. The world wants men-large-hearted, manly men- The psalm of labor and of love. The age wants heroes-heroes who shall dare To struggle in the solid ranks of truth; To clutch the monster, Error, by the throat; To bear opinion to a loftier seat; To blot the error of oppression out, And lead a universal freedom in. |