MEDICAL NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 17, 21 January 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

MEDICAL NOTES.

DOCTORS DISCUSS FAITH.

RECOGNITION OF VALUE.

APPROVAL AND RESERVATIONS.

(By PERITUS.)

The Hunterian Society, of England has seriously considered the effects of faith-healing, and the Christian Scientists, the Roman Catholic Church and individual faith-healers all came in for medical comment. Tito doctors who denied the effect of faith upon organic disease were corrected by „ those who recognised the fact that functional and ( organic diseases were so dovetailed into each other that the case of the former j might lead to reduction of, or, in some cases, partial, if not entire, cure of the latter. Wonderful things had.been re-! ported, ample evidence given, and the wonder was that scientific men did not give full attention to these things. A well-known surgeon, claiming to approach the subject from a rational and common-sense point of view, said faith might have either good or bad effects. "The patient's faith in hie doctor or his bottle of medicine did much to cure him; indeed, the patient who knew the chemical constituents of his medicine was far less likely to be cured. It did not matter what the faith was in; if there was enough of it, it cured, whether it was in the bone of a saint or Purkeinje's tract. The greater the object of the faith, the greater its power. The modus operandi of all faith-healing was auto-suggestion, acting through the 'mind' via the sympathetic nervous system and the endocrine glands. Father Woodloek believed in something from outside acting on the patient's tissues and effecting an instantaneous change; there ordinary physicians joined issue with him. There were simple explanations of the Lourdes cases; a mistake of diagnosis, or failure of the disease to 'play the game.' The entirely exceptional thing happened every now and again in disease. The limitations of the healing powers of faith were not set entirely within functional diseases. The pain and the early tissue changes of organic disease might be affected. Doctors were as justified in co-operating with a faith-healer as with a masseuse, provided the case had been properly diagnosed. There doctors should put their foot down, for only by careful diagnosis could disaster be avoided. Faith might have a bad effect if the patient believed in the wrong th'ngs; there was something in the evil eye. People who believed in witches were damaged by witches. If the patient believed that a certain article of food would give him dyspepsia, that food would cause dyspepsia. A large part of the work of a doctor was to dispel bad heliefs and free his. patients from their influence." Spiritual and Material. Another doctor objected to the separation of the spiritual from the material. They were interwoven. We were living all the time in a/part of eternal life, and mind and body acted together. The physician was a faith-healer, if he knew

liis work. Faith-healing of destroyed tissues (he was speaking of nerves) was not possible, however. People became ill because they lacked faith. The mental factor "was fear. People were unsure of themselves. Anxiety about self was at the hack of fear. Children should be taught to live boldly, and this would lessen the total of diseases. Death is natural, diseases an accident, a mistake. This man seemed to soar above the heads of his audience, for he was apparently as assured of the spiritual as of the material world, and this is not a common attitude of mind .amongt the doctors I have met,tand lived with, and worked with.

A third doctor, who had been, he said, on three faith-healing committees, had never known a surgical case to be cured by faith, and he had never seen photographs of the same case, taken both before and after an alleged cure. This man was a sceptical fellow to be in such a meeting. Dr. T.B. was humorous, ho said, "If a dog had worms, God hated neither the dog nor the worms; it is our business to free ourselves from harmful parasites." This doctor's ideal was "not faith, but wisdom applying useful knowledge." "Disease," said he, "is as natural as health," and he expressed an opinion that faith was a home of lost causes, and some people preferred fables to effort. A fourth doctor said he kept "an open mind," and a fifth eaid that was "not the saine thing as an empty mind," and the meeting ended. Instructing the Public. In November a lecture was delivered in London to a medical audience, respecting the public and "health education." The learned lecturer deplored the cocksureness of the layman, who, without claiming any more knowledge of medicine than of, say, engineering or architecture, was always so ready with criticism and advice, and also objected to untrained medical writers giving such definite directions to readers in cases where the best of doctors might hesitate.

He said, "There could be few laymen who did not feel entitled to pronounce a confident opinion on the cause, the diagnosis, or the treatment of any ailment, and who did not regard a single experience of a disease, whether at first or second hand, sufficient to justify generalisations such as no wise doctor would venture upon after years devoted to its study. The layman's curiosity was easily satisfied by a name. For example, the announcement, 'I have got blood pressure' was made on every side with such satisfaction and finality that one was apt to forget that without such a necessary physiological concomitant of life the speaker would not be in a position to supply the information. The unfortunate layman could glean little from the Press, for hardly a day passed without his having the opportunity of reading in a newspaper the views of a journalist as ignorant as himself on some medical topic expressed with that sublime assurance which was so easily accepted as the proxy of knowledge."

He did not object to teaching about food and exercise, "but to lectures on cancer, on maternal mortality, or the dangers of middle age. Superficial smatterings of medical learning were already a powerful and prevalent factor in promoting mental ill-health throughout the community. Phobias in relation to cancer and syphillis were already responsible for too many unhappy and useless lives. It was necessary to be careful lest we bring up a generation to map out a regime of daily life in terms of exercise and sunlight, and to replace its natural appetite by a craving .for i calories and vitamins." .

It is obvious that one. cannot rely upon everything seen in print, for not every editor has encyclopaedic knowledge, nor does every editor question every word of every article, and much the lecturer said was right and just, but he condemned common sense" in relation to disease. Now, there, are thousands of old people in New Zealand whose health and whose children's health, depend upon common sense, for in remote districts beyond reach of scientific medical help it was upon common sense that they invariably relied. i

Note.—ln "Medical Notes" on this page of the supplement of January 7, for "wash" read "wave" throughout. The missing line before "reserved" can bo easily imagined by the reader.