The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-08-03
Imaginary Ailments.
(Hartford Courant. J

AL dTulClo III Un6 independent on the
subject of Medical Delusions" throws
much light on the subject of ''Mind Heal
ing, touching on the kings evil and in
cidentally on many of the miraculous
cures by means of relics, bathing in mag
lcal waters and the like. 1t is evident
that the mind has far deeper action on
the body than making US blush or turn
pale or shiver. If a man thinks he is
sick, he is sick in certain sense; but it
does not follow that, if he can be made to
think that he is well, he will always be
made WELL Hamlet was wrong when he
said, "there is nothing good nor bad, but
thinking makes it so, for many things
are very bad materially, as for instance
broken bone. If a man imagines that
his arm is broken, when it is not, it can
be set and healed by working on his i'm
agination; but if he is suffering from
real, bona-fide fracture, he cannot get
sound arm except by the slow process of
natural restoration. But the physician
cannot entirely disregard imaginary all
ments. "Multitudes of people fancy that
they are lame or helpless or sick, who are
really well and need only to have their at
tention fastened on something besides
their fancied disablements. The annals of
medicine are full of cases of this class,
who have been startled into action by fire
or an accident to a child or other sudden
shock
Several years ago DIR. Charles f. Taylor
read paper before the New York Acade-
my of Sciences on this subject, which
showed that in some cases the mind goes
in its unconscious influence on the body
far beyond the ordinary action of hope,
JOY alarm, despair and the like. He in
stanced the case of a young man brought
to him, who was entirely unable to use
one of his legs because he supposed the
bone had been broken and not properly
united. Two years before he had broken
the bone of his thigh, which had been set
and grown together. In DR.. Taylors
| words:
ening of the limb, and walked with per-
feet facility for one year, when in cross
ing the street he fell and broke the same
bone again-so they told me-below the
seat of the former fracture. Neither of
the physicians who had attended him on
the previous occasion being in the city, a
third medical man, a surgeon of national
apply the proper bandages for fracture.
After that, the three attended the case
conformity, but no union of the fracture
could be obtained-they said-though
every usual means had been exhausted to
secure it. A careful examination revealed
two facts: The first was that there was
no unlimited fracture, the second was that
the bone had not been broken at the
second accident"
The young man was, however, deprived
of the use of his limb and walked with
| the use of a crutch, his left limb swing
ing limp and wholly useless. He was
person of intelligence and will-power,
but on that very account the deception
was the more effectual. He thought that
he had broken leg and the belief caused
him instinctively and quite unconsciously
to withhold all muscular action in the
muscles of the thigh and cause the re-
Taxed and powerless condition which the
surgeons mistook for a fracture. The
treatment consisted in making him take
certain violent exercises with his arms.
This drew the unconscious attention of
his mind to his arms and caused it to
forget the leg. When the mind was not
noticing he used the leg normally and in
three days was able to walk and in
short time recovered perfect use of the
affected limb.
People in perfect health have been
known to die from believing that their
time had come, though there are no ex-
amples of the contrary; people whose time
had come being enabled to keep on living
by thinking that the hour had not ar
rived That good many people are cured
of imaginary troubles is evident from the
fact that a f'healer'' in Vermont made
twenty-five thousand dollars last year and
from the fact that celebrated healer''
in New York advertises to ''teach heal
ing"
Perhaps, however, the most striking
evidence of the power OF imagination in
DR.. Taylor's paper is that three regular
physicians imagined that bone was bro
ken which was solid and only crooked
from former fracture.