eatment be handed over to the
clergyman? To begin at the beginning, the usefulness of psychical
treatment does not at all exclude the strong desirability of physical
treatment at the same time. The emphasis which is laid on religious
persuasion and inspiration, on prayer and spiritual uplift practically
excludes the use of baths and douches, of massage and electricity, of
tonics and sedatives. And yet it is not caprice or sham when every
well-schooled medical specialist applies such means in the treatment of
these so-called functional diseases of the nervous system. The minister
applies and can apply only one of many possible methods for cure and
yet, if we really want to make use of the resources of modern knowledge,
we have to adapt most carefully all possible means to the individual
case. If we take the strictly religious standpoint the situation is of
course different, but if we speak of psychophysiological effects, we may
acknowledge the healing influence of prayer and yet rely in the special
case still more on bromide or strychnine. Yet the religious
psychotherapists not only neglect the physical help but usually
emphasize the antagonism. Some of the strongest supporters proclaim it
as a non-drug healing, thus deciding adversely about a medical method
regarding which they have no means at all to judge.

Parallel to this neglect of physical theory goes, of course, the neglect
of the physical factors in the disease. The physician may have justly
diagnosed that the case is "merely" neurasthenia or hysteria and not a
brain tumor or paralysis of the brain. Yet that does not mean in the
least that a real treatment which remains in harmony with the progress
of modern medicine ought to ignore the hundred physical elements which
enter daily into the disease. There are the most complex digestive
problems involved which demand a thorough understanding of chemical
metabolism, there are still more complex problems of the sexual organs
which the minister certainly ought not to discuss with his female
parishioners, there are bacteriological questions, there are questions
of the peripheral nervous system and sense organs; in short, questions
which belong to a world into which the minister as minister has never
looked. Even if he believes he might gather in an amateurish way some
information as to those questions which lie so far from his experience
as student of divinity, how can his half-baked knowledge compare with
the experien