A Modern Healer.—A typical instance of the really marvelous power of mental influence over the minds of sufferers from many kinds of ills, is found in the career of the well-known Father Kneipp. For more than twenty-five years he had attracted the attention of Europe, and had made the little town of Woerishofen well known all over the world because of the cures effected there by him. The exactly proper phrase is effected by him because it is clear to anyone who has studied the therapeutic methods he employed, that it was not these, or at least not these alone, that enabled him to cure so many ailments which had resisted the efforts of some of the best physicians in Europe. It was his magnetic personality which won patients to the persuasion that they must get better because he said so, and then to the following out of certain very simple natural rules of life, and certain quite as simple remedial measures, which acted as alteratives and enabled patients to tap reservoirs of vitality, of which they themselves were unconscious, but which, supplying energies to overcome tendencies to various symptomatic conditions, brought about cures.
Pfarrer Kneipp had himself suffered from consumption, had been practically given up and then, as is the case of many another, had taken himself in hand, had secured much more outdoor air than before, and more abundant nutrition, until gradually his ailment was overcome. It is true that he used various hydrotherapeutic measures, some of them, as he confessed afterwards, to an excess, both as regards the temperature of water and the length of the application of it, that might have seriously hurt him if he had been less robust, but it was not so much his hydrotherapy as his own determination to get better and to live a little closer to nature that led to his cure. Then he became the apostle of cold water and of many natural remedial measures, and as a consequence, healer of all forms of ills in the many thousands who flocked to consult him in the little South German town. He made his patients get up early in the morning, get out in the air shortly after rising, the excuse, or, as he declared it, the reason being that they were to walk with bare feet in the dewy grass. After this he had them eat heartily of simple food, of such variety and in such quantity as relieved them of constipation, made them use water, internally and externally, in abundance, and after a time, sent most of them on their way rejoicing that they had been cured from chronic ills.
Some of the highest in Europe came to him; the Empress of Austria was his patient, and he was asked to prescribe for the Pope; reigning princes and all the lesser order of the nobility were included among his patients. Several of the Rothschild family went to him and where they went, of course, others flocked. Very few failed to be benefited. People less educated, and less rich in the world's goods than these, came also, and went away relieved. After a time Kneipp societies were founded all over Europe and even spread through America. These consisted of organizations of men and women who encouraged each other to keep up the Kneipp practices. With his death there has come a decline in interest in Kneipp methods. He, himself, was sure that his remedies and recommendations were the important curative factors. Now it has become clear that it was mainly his forceful personality, his power to lift patients above their ills, and enable them to use mental resources or vital forces that they could not use until encouraged by him with the thought that they would surely get better. In the atmosphere he thus created, they seemed to borrow something of his overmastering personality. It can not be too often repeated that this is the secret of the success of the great world healers. They do not transfer force to others, but they enable others to use their own forces more successfully.
An Ancient Healer.—Let us compare some of the details of the career of Father Kneipp with the story we have of one Aristides, who, as the result of dreams that came to him while practicing the cult of AEsculapius and the injunctions contained in these dreams, was cured of many ills, and afterward delivered a series of sacred orations. Aristides is one of the first of the large group of literary men, much interested in their own health and their own ills, whose writings have been preserved for us. He was intensely proud of the number and variety of his ills, and he was perhaps conceited about the curious ways in which some of them had been cured. Traveling in the winter time he caught a chill; then he suffered from earache and in the midst of a storm developed fever, asthma and toothache. Arrived in Rome, he had severe internal sufferings, shivering fits and want of breath. Treatment by the Roman doctor only aggravated his sufferings. A stormy voyage home made him worse. When, at last, he arrived in Smyrna, the doctors gathered round him, and were astonished at the manifold nature of the disease. They could do nothing for him.
Suffering from all these ills (which remind one of a modern literary man who has got his mind on his stomach and his body on his mind), Aristides went to a number of the old temple hospitals and received suggestions in sleep from AEsculapius. These he has described in what are called his sacred orations. In them we have every phase of modern therapy that has the strong element of suggestion in it. Like Pfarrer Kneipp, he tried very cold baths and was benefited by them. Walking in the dewy grass in his bare feet was another recommendation that had come to him in a dream. Occasionally he would run rapidly for a considerable distance, and then when heated plunge into a cold bath. We have many complaints of his fever and stomach troubles. Mud-baths were also recommended to him and, of course, tried with benefit for a time. Sand baths later proved to be beneficial. For rheumatism a cold bath, after running almost naked in the cold north wind, proved successful when other remedies failed. Aristides wrote out his experiences, and his writings had great influence over generations of patients and maintained the influence of the old Greek temples as cure houses long after the general acceptance of Christianity. As the result of his writings, no matter how bizarre a dream might be, some interpretation of a therapeutic nature was found from it.
Constancy of the Law of Personal Influence.—Indeed, there has apparently never been a time when some strong character, full of religious enthusiasm and of high purpose, strong in the confidence of men, has not succeeded in accomplishing wonderful curative results by the reassurance that comes from a renewal of faith in the goodness of Providence. There are, for instance, a number of stories which show John Wesley's power to help men to tap the reservoir of surplus energy that all of us have within us, but that somehow we do not succeed in making use of, unless some strong mental influence is brought to bear on us. Practically every religious man who has had the love and the veneration and the respect of those around him has succeeded in accomplishing the cures that many people in recent years have been prone to regard as rather novel phenomena in the history of psychology. Men like St. Philip Neri, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Bernard, have many stories told of them which show how much they were able to help fellow mortals by enabling them to make use, even in a physical way, of their own highest and best powers. Their lives show how much more they did.
Nor is this power confined to men. In nearly every century we have the story, also, of wonderfully strong women, leaders of their time, who inspired the profound confidence and veneration of those around them, and who were enabled, by their own strength of character, to help people physically as well as morally. The Life of St. Catherine of Siena is full of such instances. She spent her life mainly in caring for the sick and the distressed at the hospital in Siena, and the beautiful hospital there was completed largely as a monument to her. During her lifetime marvelous cures occurred that in many cases were evidently due to her power over the minds of people. The life of St. Teresa has a number of similar examples, and Joan of Arc, in her lifetime, lifted many a dispirited man into vigorous strength because of her own abounding personality and the physical reaction which contact with her enthusiasm brought.
Modern Examples.—Nor did such occurrences come only in older and less sophisticated centuries than ours. John Wesley is close enough to our time to negative any such impression, but there are many other examples. There is Pastor Gassner, whose cures remind Prof. Münsterberg of the Emanuel movement at the present time, but there are also a number of strong, religious characters whose influence was exercised in the alleviation of physical ills during the nineteenth century. The name of Father Matthew, the Irish "Apostle of Temperance," as he was called, is mainly connected with wonderful cures of the worst forms of alcoholic addiction.