The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-09
Vernon Murray in St Louis Gobe-Dem

Vernon Murray in St. Louis Globe -Dem-
 ocrat
 If mental therapeutics, suggestion and will power play the vital part modern science teaches in all the affairs of life and death, then a majority of the teach CTS, preachers, doctors and professional brethren of the country need reconstruct ing. From the teacher who sets the Gull pupil down in his mind as a dunce to the physician who carries despair of his patients recovery in his learned brain, the strong are destroying the chances of the weak in the mental atmos- phere quite as truly as the abler ones In .he physical world who are covertly get ting lands and goods away from them.
 The Emmanuel movement and the larger hope is doing much to remedy this in the religious world. where the minis terial mind once carried about ideas of total depravty in the human being, fixed and fierce enough to destroy the chance of any weaker intellect, according to the laws of mentalism now promulgated. The lawyer too, was seldom equal to the poor sinners case,'' because. despite his loud protestations of his clients inno- cence, he carried about in his mind the full conviction that he was a double-dyed rascal, for whom hanging was too good, and all the members of the honorable
  atmosphere.
 Compact Is Not Near
 From all appearance, however. 1t is safe to say that the time of such com pact with the mental scientists is not close at hand. While profound students of the situation declare it "ominous' for Americans that the principle of dem ocracy Is virtue as Montesquieu discerned, regulating the mental cur rents to the requirements of justice may not be an easy matter. Regulating them to the requirements of life itself Is more than has yet been accomplish ed so far as an ordinary observer of theory and practice In medical lines can make out. Though the doctors and the dominies have joined forces in the Emmanuel movement and thorough ly agreed upon the wonder as power found in bringing the patient into con- tact with those mighty healing forces with which the universe is charged '' IS Dr. McComb expresses it. there are precious few physicians who will not interpose their own strong mental con- victions between the weak patient and those healing forces with which the un- iverse is charged. and the utmost faith is the happy connection
 It has been an old question in other than medical circles whether a patient
 
 clan should or should not be made ac- quatnted with his condition. If the in culcated theories and laws of mental ism are correct, and the power of mind over matter is what 1t Is declared to be, there could be but one answer to that question. but 1t is not many phy- sfcians who find It. Even those who spare their patients the direct an- nouncement of the fatal end do not hesitate to fill the minds of relatives and nurses and friends with the mental currents of despair which the sensitive condition of the patient must inevitably respond to. In a recent case, where a prominent man died suddenly of heart disease known to his family and phy- sfcian, but carefully hidden from him, the old question revives itself and even the newspapers take up the query, Is 1t right or wrong to keep such a pa tient in ignorance of his condition"
 Usual Arguments
 The usual arguments for and against the action taken in this case come up again In the discussion, with the wise enough conclusion from the old stand point that the nature of the individual and the state of his affairs could best