the consumptives under treatment.

This was done, and soon it seemed evident that a powerful and
highly beneficent medicine was at work. Under the influence of
this new remedy, the patients' fever subsided and their weight
increased. Some gained a kilogramme and a half, some two, and
some even three kilogrammes. Meanwhile the cough ceased, and
those who had been unable to touch food began to eat; those
who had been unable to sleep now slept all night. And if, to
complete the test, the injections of antiphymose were stopped,
the fever returned and all the old symptoms reasserted
themselves. The victims grew thin.

Now this famous antiphymose, this marvellous drug procured
from Germany, was nothing but water, ordinary water, but
sterilized in Dr. Mathieu's laboratory! All that talk before
the patients about the discovery and therapeutic virtue of
antiphymose, all those little bluffs involved in the
house-physician's taking the temperature and the weight of the
patients, were simply a _mise-en-scene_ designed to create a
sort of suggestion and to reenforce it as much as possible.
And it was manifestly suggestion, and not the injections of
pure water, that checked the fever, arrested the cough,
diminished the expectoration, revived the appetite, and
increased the weight.[72:1]

A simple experiment, with a view to proving that a patient is accessible
to auto-suggestion, is described by Professor Muensterberg. Some
interesting-looking apparatus, with a few metal rings, is fastened upon
his fingers, and connected with a battery and electric keys. The key is
then pushed down in view of the patient, who is instructed to indicate
the exact time when he begins to feel the electric current. The
sensation will probably shortly be felt in one of his fingers; whereupon
the physician can demonstrate to him that there was no connection in the
wires, and that the whole galvanic sensation was the result of
suggestion.[72:2]

Joseph Jastrow, in "Fact and Fable in Psychology," remarks that the
modern forms of irregular healing present apt illustrations of occult
methods of treatment which were in vogue long ago. And chief among these
is the mental factor, whether utilized when the patient is awake or when
he is unconscious, as a curative principle. The legitimate recognition
of the importance of mental conditions and influence