New Britain herald., 1930-12-24
CALLS M|NDCRAD
 0F IMAGINARY ILLS
Dr. J. J. Walsh Declares Most
 "AlmentS" N0n.EXiStent

symptoms the mind produces, said
 Dr. James J. Walsh, physician, au- thor and professor at Fordham Uni versity at a meeting of the Mems club of the First Congregational church last night. He spoke on Funny things that cure people," He was introduced by Senator Ernest w, Christ, president of the club.
 Opening with reference to nostrums people have at one time or another accepted as cures for ills of the body. Dr. Walsh told of the , widespread belief in a brand of sar- saparilla a few years ago. He said it was advertised as being able to puri- fy the blood and that hundreds Of thousands of testimonials from peo- pie said it did just that.
 Becoming mildly sarcastic at the gullibility of people, Dr. Walsh said. The idea of pouring something into your system as a blood purifier is funny. You might just as well put some antiseptic in the Hudson River at Yonkers and then tell the people : of New York it is perfectly all right | to go ahead and drink the water.
 Sure we use sarsaparilla. We use it | to kill the nasty taste of bitter medi- cine, that's all. Yet in those days people were using ten million dollars worth of sarsaparilla every year."
 Cures By Electricity Dr. Walsh referred to the so-call- [ aI1 o+rip haDir nj n fr with the invention of the Leyden | jar He scoffed at the belief that 1 disease can be pulled from the hu- man body by the use of magnets, and this idea was dropped after 10 | years,
 He caused one outburst of laugh 1 ter after another in his references to the sparks people were given by physicians in the days of the battery and electric machine treatment. He | explained how various electric points were made to conform to the sup posed shape of the human organs, l and these were expected to draw pain and disease out of the organs so treated.
 ] Tie SdIU pIN SlCidIlo hlC ilON iltui l| so much interested in the actual all- ment as they are in the individual in the present days Of modern scl- ence. We don't treat diseases, We treat patients. To me it is more 1ln- portant to know what kind of pa 1 tjent has the disease than to know what kind of a disease the patient has," he said.
 Boy Eats Poultice pr. Walsh discussed the poulnc9 era. describing how people used 6 mustard plaster for stomach ache, linseed or flaxseed for the chest. bread and milk for swollen jaw and something else for the back of the neck. He told how he was called to the home of a boy whose face was badly swollen. The mother met , him at the door and stated that she had placed a bread and milk poul- tice on the boys face. '1 hope you don't mind" she said. He said he didn't mind. but when he got to the boys bedside he found the patient had eaten the poultice. Its all right" he assured the startled mother, Tit will do him more good inside than out
 "People have the idea you can draw things out like magnet, ana they put on poultices for that pur- nose" he said. He referred to an old Pennsylvania rural custom ot making cranberry poultices for cry sipelas patients on the ground that like seeks like" and the poultlce was red like the disease. 'Ihe treatment is all right" he said amid laughter. "Erysipelas is not rccog- nized as such until the thlrd day; on the fourth day it begins to get better and on the fifth day It 's pretty well, so anything you put on will help it get better on the fourth or fifth day"
 Charms" Against Disease
 He referred to other charms sometimes carried by people to ward off diseases mentioning several in- cluding horse chestnuts. laugh vas created when a prominent busi- ressman sheepishly dug into his own pocket and produced pair of horse chestnuts.
 Dr. Walsh referred to the perlod Of nesmerism and how hundreds or people were "cured' of diseases they never had through the aid Of improvised magnets, flowing robes, i Du1 soft I0NElC
 Although investigation showed there was absolutely nothing to It, SO thoroughly fooled were people in France that a protest was made by the public when the government 1 denounced if.
 | IL vas a Connecticut Yankee, pr. { Elisha Perkins of Norwich, who de veloped the galvanic treatment by using two pieces of steel the size of pencils. which, he claimed would draw the electric current through the body and thus cure disease. He said Dr. Perkins went through two yellow fever sieges and 1 a smallpox epidemic, but that the ! system couldn't have worked, be- cause pr. Perkins finally died Of smallpox.
 Then. he said, Dr. Perkins son took the tractors, as they were call ed, to Denmark, where the Danes
 fell heavily for it. But 'hen the Danes 100 years later fell for Dr, 1 Cook when he vas bringing back | 1orfb pnla t
 Young Perkins announced that he had touched and cured at least one million, two hundred thousand
 persons. There was no doubt tha, | he touched them, all right
 Now we have the tractors in the Smithsonian institution. There isn't
 a thing in them. The proverbial
 dead mackerel is very much alive