Clinch Valley News

MENTAL HEALING
(Article 1)

(By W. S. HENDRICKS)

"I find by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united. and "when the one suffers, the other sympathizes."-Chesterfield.

That there is a reciprocal relation between mental states and bodily conditions, acting both for good and ill, is generally accepted. For centuries stories of the hair turning white over night on account of fright or sorrow. the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, iritability and moroseness caused by disorded organs of digestion, change of acu-men or morals due to injury of the brain or nervous system, and insanity produced by bodily diseases, are also accepted proofs of the effects of the body on the mind.

In early times the priest, the magician, and the physician were combined in one person, and those primitive beliefs have not all been sloughed off. Not until about the sixteen century did healing begin in reality to separate itself from religion and superstitions, at which time therapeutics as a science began to free itself of superstition, magic, and charm, not to say witchcraft Paracelsus, who lived during the first half of the sixteenth century, wrote the shrewd words: "Whether the object of your faith is real or false, you will nevertheless obtain the same effects Thus, if I believe in St. Peter's statue as I would have believed in St. Peter himself, I will obtain the same effects that I would have obtained from St. Peter: but that is superstition. Faith, however, produces miracles, and whether it be true or false faith, it will always produce the same wonders."

The cures attributed to the influence of relics are the effect of this imagination and confidence. Quacks and philosophers know that if the bones of any skeleton were put in the place of the saint's bones, the sick would none the less experience beneficial effects, if they believed them to be veritable relics.

Not until the advent of Mesmer did mental healing succeed, in any appreciable degree, in liberating it self or separating itself from religion. While Mesmer and his followers emphasized non-religious mental healing it should not be thought that mental therapeutics has ever been entirely separated from the church. The Roman Catholics from earliest times have profited by mental and faith healings. Some sects of Protestantism thrive at this time on account of mental healing which they call divine healing. They, of course, as we all know, cure only such diseases as may be classified as mental diseases. They do not open the eyes of the blind, replace broken limbs, etc. In fact they are not real healers, and they prey only upon the ignorant and the superstitious. This is the virtue of Christian science, so called, which is not a science at all. The only power of Christian Science is mental power—power of the mind over the body. This power, we admit, is very great, but the thing we deny is that it is anything more than human.

There are many different forms of mental healing, religious and non-religious, pagan, heathen, savage. civilized and religious. In the area of purely mental healing the heathen has been quite as efficient as his rival in Christian lands. What is the difference or the explanation? Mohammed. Confucius, Zoroaster, and their followers have succeeded quite as well as the so-called religious healers! Christian Science thrives on mental healing! The Mormons have their healers! Russellism professes to heal! A large number of sects, cults, persuasions claim to heal. All claim the power comes from God, their respective gods.

Wherein is the truth, today? Is there such thing as "faith cure" now? If so in what faith? In what church?

The object of this series of articles is to make a study of the various forms of mental healing, religious and non-religious, as believed and practiced. The title of the next article will be. "Mental Healing in Early Civilizations."