to the extent to which we can relegate this resource to the
background and avoid resorting to it. Instead of mental influence being
the newest method of treatment it is the oldest. Two-thirds of the
methods of the shaman, the witch-doctor, the medicine-man, were psychic.
Instead of being an untried remedy, it is the most thoroughly tested,
most universal, most ubiquitous remedy listed anywhere upon the pages of
history, and, it may be frankly stated, in civilized countries, as
widely discredited as tested. The proportion to which it survives in the
medicine of any race is the measure of that race's barbarism and
backwardness. To-day two of the most significant criteria of the measure
of enlightenment and of control over disease of either the medical
profession of a nation or of an individual physician are the extent to
which they resort to and rely upon mental influence and opium.
Psychotherapy and narcotics are, and ever have been, the sheet-anchors
of the charlatan and the miracle-worker.

The attitude of the medical profession toward mental influence in the
treatment of disease is neither friendly nor hostile. It simply regards
it as it would any other remedial agency, a given drug, for instance, a
bath, or a form of electricity or light. It is opposed to it, if at all,
only in so far as it has tested it and found it inferior to other
remedies. Its distrust of it, so far as this exists, is simply the
feeling that it has toward half a hundred ancient drugs and remedial
agencies which it has dropped from its list of working remedies as
obsolete, many of which still survive in household and folk medicine. My
purpose is neither to champion it nor to discredit it, and least of all
to antagonize or throw doubt upon any of the systems of philosophy or of
religion with which it has been frequently associated, but merely to
attempt to present a brief outline of its advantages, its character, and
its limitations, exactly as one might of, say, calomel, quinine, or
belladonna.

As in the study of a drug, the chief points to be considered are: What
are its actual powers? What effects can be produced with it, both in
health and sickness? What are the diseases in which such effects may be
useful, and how frequent are they? In what way does it produce its
effects, directly or indirectly?

The first and most striking claim that is made for mental influence in
disease is based upon the allegation that it has the power of producing