asked, "Is cancer an
organic disease, or is it some functional derangement of the
epithelium tissue which causes it to grow indefinitely until it
invades some vital organ?"

A further question arises due to further study. Some of the latest
investigators claim that most if not all persons have cancer at some
time in life, but that anti-toxin or some other remedy is supplied by
the body itself, and the growth is stopped and the tissue absorbed.
The question then seems to be pertinent, "If the body can produce the
cure within itself, and this would be functional, why cannot mental
means stimulate the body to produce it?" or "Does not mental influence
stimulate the body to produce it?" What the cancer experts tell us of
the wide-spread extension of the disease and its spontaneous cure, the
tuberculosis experts affirm of tuberculosis, and certainly of the
latter disease spontaneous cures are not uncommon. We also know that
mental influence may, in fact does, have an indirect but no less
beneficial influence in the cure of tuberculosis. From these examples
one seems to be forced to either one of two conclusions, either of
which is contrary to generally accepted ideas, viz., first, that these
are not organic diseases; or, second, organic diseases are aided or
cured by means of mental healing. In general, however, the distinction
holds good; the so-called functional cases are amenable to cure by
mental means, and the organic are much less so.

Coming back, then, to the common law which underlies all cases or
forms of mental healing, we find two general principles upon which it
is built--the power of the mind over the body, and the importance of
suggestion as a factor in the cure of the disease. The law may be
tersely stated in the first person as follows: My body tends to adjust
itself so as to be in harmony with my ideas concerning it. This law is
equally applicable to the cause or cure of disease by mental means. To
apply this law in a universal way as far as mental healing is
concerned, we should notice that however the thought of cure may come
into the mind, whether by external or auto-suggestion, if it is firmly
rooted so as to impress the subconsciousness, that part of the mind
which rules the bodily organs, a tendency toward cure is at once set
up and continues as long as that thought has the ascendancy.

Hack Tuke quotes Johannes Mueller, a physiologist who lived during the
first half of the last century, as follows