IMAGINARY CURES FOR IMAGINARY DISEASES.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLI, Issue 226, 24 September 1907, Page 3

IMAGINARY CURES FOR IMAGINARY DISEASES.

A medical man, Dr Charles Mercier, supports in the British Medical Journal ttie opinion as to €tie danger! of deception in removing delusions. He knows of no authenticated record of a case, in which it has been successful He quotes a case. No amount of reasoning, no authoritative assertion of its impossibility, no pungency, of ridicule, made any impression on the delusion of the patient that she had a, frog in her stomach. At length her doctor gave her an emetic, adroitly introduced a frog into the basin, and, holding the animal up triumphantly, he called her to witness the removal of the parasite. What was the result? Was she convinced? Not a bit of it. "Now," she said, "perhaps you will believe that I was right and you were wrong": How many times have you not told me that 1 was mistaken and poured ridicule on my belief, which you now find was true? That frog has bred, and I am new infested by a nest of tadpoles, which will grow into frogs in time. You may not believe it, but neither would you believe the frog was there. I knew the frog was there and I was right, I know the tapoles are there, and in that also I am right, though 1 daresay you will tell me that also is a delusion."