Another strong man of this same kind was Prince Alexander of Hohenlohe. Though a prince he had become a clergyman and spent his life in the service of the poor. Shortly after he became a priest he went through a great epidemic, fearlessly caring for his poor people, and as a consequence inspired them with so much confidence that ever after they came to him with all their ills. He was able to help, not only the poor, but also many of the nobility. Some of the things reported as accomplished through his influence show extraordinary power. His usual method was to endeavor to inspire in the people who came to him a faith in their cure, and then after a time the cure was actually accomplished.
During the recent troubles in Russia, attention was called to the fact that the famous Father John of Cronstadt, the hero of Bloody Sunday, was looked up to with so much respect and veneration that many people found themselves helped physically by contact with him. There are a number of interesting stories of cures of ills of various kinds, some of them exclusively mental, but many of them fundamentally physical, which took place as a consequence of the new spirit of hope infused into people because of their confidence in Father John. His subsequent history seems to indicate that this was evidently due to the forceful personality of the man rather than to any special religious influence. His influence was not limited to the ignorant masses in Russia, for some of the cures reported occurred in families of the better class, thoroughly capable of judging the character of the man apart from his religion.
SUCCESS IN HEALING
We have any number of examples, then, of this power of the healer in history. Over and over again we find that it was the personality of the man and the suggestive value of the means that he employed that enabled patients to cure themselves, that is, to use all the vital force which they had for curative purposes. This force had hitherto been inhibited by their own doubts of themselves and their doubts of the value of all ordinary means of cure which had been previously employed in their cases. This is the secret of the success of the healer, and this secret is much more valuable for therapeusis than any remedy which has come down to us from the olden time. It has, unfortunately, been neglected, and thus an important benefit to humanity has been lost. Now that we are able to review frankly and deliberately the conditions that obtained in the past, it is time to set about making use of this oldest secret in medicine, now no longer a secret, as a strong factor in the treatment not of disease but of patients.
Healers are at all times strong characters who are helpful to others because of their own superabundant strength. The world is made up of two classes of people, lifters and leaners, and the leaners constitute by far the larger class. Most men and women are the subjects of doubts and dreads and difficulties with regard to their health, and the more time they have for introspection, the more are they likely to suffer. Unable to overcome them by themselves, they need the help of others. What they need, above all, is the reassurance that a trained strong mind can give them. The exercise of this mental influence over them, is only what corresponds to leadership in all the affairs of life. Most people need to be led and to be guided. The place of the physician is that of guide and director. The family physician of the olden time had a precious amount of influence that accrued to him from his character, and it was used to magnificent purpose. Most of his drug treatment would be looked upon as quite absurd at the present time, yet he did a great good work by lifting people up to their own highest possibilities of resistive vitality. That means more for the conquest of disease, even now, in most cases, than any remedies we possess.
Often men do not realize how much their personal influence counts for. They think it is their method of treatment, or some new discovery in drugs or remedial measures, or some new phase of psychology they have hit upon, that is producing results. This makes it difficult to determine, in given cases, just what are the actual influences at work. Many men supposing themselves to be discoverers of some novel force, are merely exploiting that old-time influence of one mind over another that can be observed all down the centuries.
It is interesting to study the careers of men who thought they were employing on their patients some new psychological method, when all they were exploiting was the old-fashioned influence of suggestion from a stronger personality to a weaker. A dozen times in history hypnotism has been announced as a wonderful curative agent. At present no one thinks it so, but, on the contrary, if used frequently, we think that it is much more likely to do harm than good. We went through a phase of interest in hypnotism a quarter of a century ago and there are now signs of the possibility of its return in another form. In recent years we have heard much of psycho-analysis, of dominant ideas, of the auto-suggestion that comes from this, and how much benefit can be conferred on the patient by removing such ideas or revealing their unfavorable influence and so neutralizing them.
The patients that come for treatment and to whom psychotherapy is of special benefit, are not, as a rule, those suffering from acute diseases or injuries, though even in these cases the attitude of mind is always an important therapeutic factor. The patients are mainly those suffering from chronic ailments, and from minor affections which, while they do not confine them to bed, often prove the source of such serious disturbance as makes them very miserable. The suffering in the world is out of all proportion to the actual disease. Many people who have little disease suffer a great deal, partly from over-sensitiveness, partly from concentration of mind on their ailments, and partly from such ignorance of whatever pathological condition is present that they grow discouraged and morbid over it. The rôle of psychotherapy is particularly to help patients of this kind. This does not mean that its main purpose is to treat imaginary disease, or disease which exists only in the mind of patients, for in nearly all of these cases there is a definite physical element in the affection. Even where the disease is quite imaginary, though that term has been so sadly abused that it is perhaps better to speak of affections as purely mental in origin, psychotherapy is important. As has been well said, a patient not having something physical the matter who thinks that there is something the matter, is in a worse state than one who really has something the matter. There are a great many such cases. If the principles of psychotherapy can relieve them and cure many of them, then it has a large place in human life.
In order that the individual patient may be benefited, a thorough understanding must be established between physician and patient. This must take on the character of a personal relationship. The patient must feel that the physician has a personal interest in him—that there are certain individual features in his ailment which make his case mean something much more than ordinary to his physician. Some physicians have the power to make their patients feel this personal relationship to a marked degree. They are the eminently successful practitioners of medicine. Their patients sound their praises, and even though they may not be distinguished scientists, they acquire a large practice. Some of them are thoroughly scientific men. All of us know them and, while we may not be able to understand just how it is done, we recognize their power.
CHAPTER XI
FAITH CURES
The series of phenomena that may be grouped under the term "faith cures" represent the oldest, the most frequent, universal, and constantly recurring examples of the influence of the mind over the body for the healing of ills. Whenever men have believed deeply and with conviction that some other being was able to help them, many of their ills, or at least the conditions from which they suffered severely, have dropped from them and their complaints, real or imaginary have disappeared. This was true whether it was the touch of another human being supposed to have some wonderful power that was the agent, or some persuasion of the interference