ts--certainly not I--that the mind exercises a powerful
influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the
interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack,
the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the
hypnotist have made use of the client's imagination to help them in
their work. They have all recognised the potency and availability of
that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know
that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient's confidence in the
doctor will make the bread pill effective.

Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look
like it. In old times the King cured the king's evil by the touch of the
royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman
have done it? No--not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could
he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure
that it was not the King's touch that made the cure in any instance,
but the patient's faith in the efficacy of a King's touch. Genuine and
remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a
saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if
the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy,
a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as
a faith-doctor--that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to
her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, 'Have
faith--it is all that is necessary,' and they went away well of their
ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult
powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several
times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was
the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in
this sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients.
He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma,
but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work
is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria
there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire
from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand
of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year
to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no
religious helps, no supernatural