The Wanganui Chronicle "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 1910. CALIMITOUS CREDULITY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12585, 15 August 1910, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle "NULLA DIES SINE LINEA." MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 1910. CALIMITOUS CREDULITY.

Occasionally, though fortunately at raro intervals, we hear of a case in which somo precious life has been sacrificed to tho folly of superstition. In Sydney, for instance, the spectacle wi:j> recently afforded of a parent allowing his child to die of diphtheria without proper medical- treatment. Thi3 parent was not guilty of cruel intention or of callous indifference., He was simply credulous to the point of criminality, in, that, while helpful scientific aid was easily"- obtainable, ho preferred to assume that his child would be supernaturally healed, or that, in the alternative, her death was predestined and inevitable. It is not a matter of much moment that' portentous influence is still attached to certain days as influencing personal fortune, or that' certain seats at a card-table are considered lucky or unlucky, or that good or ill chance will follow some trivial action, or that thirteen at table bodes death to one of the number before a year is out. 'Such suporstitiona, so far as they have any restraining" power over human action, are fast disappearing; but there remains in many Quarters an antagonism to tho methods of scientific medicine, and a preference to rely wholly upon tho intercession for a supernatural healing of the sick, whether the appeal bo made directly or through the agency of some second person considered' to hiiva a gra&ter influence in making such an interference manifest. Such a belief is often very genuine, and even very touching, to the outside world, but as'an Australian contemporary remarks in commenting on the Sydney case, the difficulty of differentiation of motive m refusing medical aid properly places every death under these- circumstances in the province of police inquiry. The whole question of faith-healing is very adequately treated from the medical point of view in n recent number of the "British Medical Journal." Twenty years ago tinder tlip strong mental .stimulus of Huxley and Tyndall, medical opinion would have given scant hearing to such happenings as the miracles at Lourdi's and the claims of Christian Scientists. To-day leaders <>1 the profession are speaking guardedly about tho influence of "suggestion" as a factor in healing, and are prepared to admit that under strong states of mental conviction certain physical ills may be benefited,, or possibly disappear. The doctrine of Christian Science has no real or lasting connection with true faith-healing. It is an unnatural excrescence upon an abiding truth, and it is already perishing of its own pretentious over-growth. As Sir Henry Morris points o\it in an anticie on "Suggestion "in the Treatment of Disease," Christian Science "suggests" that disease has no existence. It "masquerades in. senseless and meaningless, metaphysics.? Its sacred book is a volume said to have been written by an American woman, 1 jio general effect of which is admirably described in the following sentence,: — "She expresses indistinct ideas in meaningless phrases, which are, however, calculated to give an impression of wisdom and knowledge to those

who read without thinking, or who, being imperfectly educated, accept sound for sense." The' Sydney case is itself sufficient to. show how absurd is tho negation of disease when we are able to demonstrate the cause of the ■ malady as a living organism. There can, however, be no denial that true faith-healing—i.e., healing by means of faith in the intervention of some higher powerJ —has been a constant belief of mankind, and that to this, day instances of recovery under certain circumstances occur, unexpected of medicine and unexplained by science, as, for example, the miracle cures of Lourdes. As to these latter, Sir Henry Morris points out that most well-attest-led cures can be parallelled in any experiences of tho private practice of medicine. There exist numerous instances in which the) nervous function is impaired without loss of structure, and in which tho use- of limbs is lost through stiffness niter injury, or in which disea&o is self-induced or altogether imaginary. Th&s© are the conditions that may and do recover suddenly under the^ stimulus of a strong mental suggestion I from without or tinder the influence of a, powerful emotion from within. As to the exact mode of their recovery, I modern medical opinion prefers not to bo dogmatic. But it is positive and unreserved in its condemnation of the quackery which thrives on credulity, and it would have even such so-called faith-healing as comes within the scope of scientific "suggestion" properly safeguarded by professional and legislative restrictions.