Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing

Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing, by

George Barton Cutten
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Title: Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing
Author: George Barton Cutten

Release Date: October 22, 2007 [eBook #23101]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF MENTAL HEALING
by
GEORGE BARTON CUTTEN, Ph.D. (Yale) President Of Acadia University
Illustrated

New York Charles Scribner's Sons 1911
[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF REPRESENTING THE GALLIC ?SCULAPIUS DISPATCHING A DEMON]
Copyright, 1911, by Charles Scribner's Sons Published February, 1911

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY
OF
Artemus Wyman Sawyer, D.D., LL.D.
PRESIDENT OF ACADIA UNIVERSITY
1869-1896
HE HID FROM US HIS HEART WHILE WE THOUGHT THAT HE LOVED ONLY HIS STUDIES; WE LATER LEARNED THAT HE LAID EMPHASIS ON THAT WHICH HE LOVED ONLY LESS--TRUE KNOWLEDGE, IN ORDER THAT HE MIGHT INTRODUCE IT TO THOSE THAT HE LOVED MOST--HIS PUPILS. HE TAUGHT AS NONE OTHER

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introduction--Mental Healing 3
II. Early Civilizations 19
III. The Influence of Christianity 35
IV. Relics and Shrines 61
V. Healers 110
VI. Talismans 138
VII. Amulets 158
VIII. Charms 189
IX. Royal Touch 224
X. Mesmer and After 249
XI. The Healers of the Nineteenth Century 273
Index 309
PREFACE
The present decade has experienced an intense interest in mental healing. This has come as a culmination of the development along these lines during the past half century. It has shown itself in the beginning of new religious sects with this as a, or the, fundamental tenet, in more wide-spread general movements, and in the scientific study and application of the principles underlying this form of therapeutics.
Many have been led astray because, being ignorant of the mental healing movements and vagaries of the past, the late applications, veiled in metaphysical or religious verbiage, have seemed to them to be new in origin and principle. No one could consider an historical survey of the subject and reasonably hold this opinion. It is on account of the ignorance of similar movements, millenniums old, that so much, if any, originality can be credited to the founders.
The object of this volume is to present a general view of mental healing, dealing more especially with the historical side of the subject. While this is divided topically, the topics are presented in a comparatively chronological order, and thereby trace the development of the subject to the present century.
The term "mental healing" is given the broadest possible use, and comprehends any cures which may be brought about by the effect of the mind over the body, regardless of whether the power back of the cure is supposed to be deity, demons, other human beings, or the individual mind of the patient.
It is hoped that this may contribute to the knowledge of a subject which is of such wide-spread popular interest.
George Barton Cutten.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, December 1, 1910.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Bas-relief representing the Gallic ?sculapius dispatching a demon Frontispiece
FACING PAGE
Cure through the Intercession of a Healing Saint 72
Valentine Greatrakes 134
Sir Kenelm Digby 152
King's Touch-pieces 226
F. A. Mesmer 252
John Alexander Dowie 276
George O. Barnes 290
Mary Baker Eddy 302

THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF MENTAL HEALING
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--MENTAL HEALING
"'Tis painful thinking that corrodes our clay."--ARMSTRONG.
"Oh, if I could once make a resolution, and determine to be well!"--WALDERSTEIN.
"The body and the mind are like a jerkin and a jerkin's lining, rumple the one and you rumple the other."--STERNE.
"I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when the one suffers, the other sympathizes."--CHESTERFIELD.
"Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that for a time can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty."--STOWE.
"The surest road to health, say what they will, Is never to suppose we shall be ill; Most of those evils we poor mortals know From doctors and imagination flow."--CHURCHILL.
The fact that there is a reciprocal relation between mental states and bodily conditions, acting both for good and ill, is nothing new in human experience. Even among the most crude and unobserving, traditions and incidents have given witness to this knowledge. For centuries stories of the hair turning white during the night on account of fright or sorrow, the cause and cure of diseases through emotional disturbances, and death, usually directly by apoplexy, caused by anger, grief, or joy, have been current and generally accepted. On the other hand, irritability and moroseness