n at La Salette and at the holy spring at Lourdes.

We have another specific form of healing which should be noticed. It
was especially common in Eastern churches, and was found to some
extent in the West. I refer to Incubation, or "Temple-sleep." This
practice came down through early civilizations and was an adopted
practice among Christians. The patient went to some church well known
for its cures, which was provided with mattresses or low couches, and
attended by priests and assistants. Devotions being finished he lay
down to sleep. Sometimes he slept immediately, at other times sleep
must be wooed by fast and vigil. At any rate, during the sleep he
dreamed that the saint touched him, or prescribed some remedy, and in
the first case he awoke cured, and in the second the prescribed
medicine brought about the relief.

Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote about 640 as follows:
"Cyrus appeared to the sick man in the form of a monk, not in a dream,
as he appears to many; but in a waking vision, just as he was and is
represented. He told the patient to rise and to plunge into the warm
water. Zosimos said it was impossible for him to move, but when the
order was repeated, he slid like a snake into the bath. When he got
into the water, he saw the saint at his side, but when he came out,
the vision had vanished." Beside the cure of this paralytic at the
church of Cyrus and John, he mentions the cure of many other diseases
by this method of incubation. Among them are dumbness, blindness,
barrenness, possession, scrofula, dyspepsia, a broken leg, deformities
of limbs, lameness, gout, diseases of the eyes, cataract, ulcer, and
dropsy.

Among the churches of Greece and southern Italy incubation is still
common. The climate may have some effect in limiting the area of this
practice. Miss M. Hamilton furnishes us with some modern examples. In
speaking of a new picture of St. George in the church at Arachova, she
says: "It is a votive offering of a Russian, who came a paralytic to
Arachova in July, 1905. He spent several weeks praying and sleeping in
the church, and departed completely cured. The festival of St. George
is held on April 23rd. They have three days of dancing and feasting,
and at night all suppliants bring their rugs and sleep round the
shrines in the church. Every year many of the sick are found to be
cured when morning comes."

The Church of the Evangelestria, our Lady of the Annunciation, is
visited by