Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish.

  • Amariah Brigham
Date:
1836
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on the influence of mental cultivation and mental excitement upon health / With notes by R. Macnish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    137/160 (page 119)
    excitement of other portions of the same organ. How often are stomach affections cured by inert medicines, aided by the imagination, confidence, hope, &c. 96 What is it but the influence of the mind that gives efficacy to remedies that are secret, which they do not possess when known? 97 Who now goes to Mr. Hal- sted for the cure of disease of the stomach, or has recourse to kneading the bowels to cure it ? but who will deny, that before Mr. H. unfortunately published his method of cure, a vast many nervous people were relieved and cured by him ? By some, the relief which Mr. Halsted afforded, would be considered proof that dyspepsia is certainly a disease of the stomach: but to me, it is evidence that the stomach complaints he cures, w'ere affections of the organ of the mind, and which the influence of the imagination, hope, faith, &c., relieved. “ There is nothing new under the sun”—or certainly not in Mr. Halsted’s method of curing stomach complaints and nervous [9G I once cured a lady who fancied herself seriously ill of a stomach complaint, by administering three dozen of bread pills. She had laboured under this imaginary ailment for some months, and had consulted some of the first practitioners in England R. M.] [97 It is often highly injudicious in medical men to allow their patients to know the composition of the remedies which they pre- scribe for them. Whenever the imagination has any thing to do witli the case, let the patient remain in ignorance as to this point. Quacks show an admirable knowledge of human nature in concealing the composition of their medicines. Hence the influence of Solomon’s Balm of Gilead, Morrison’s Pills, and other panacese of the same description, in soothing the weak nerves of the credulous and the hypochondriac. The egregious humbugs of homoeopathy, metallic tractors, and animal magnetism, have their virtue, such as it is, in amusing the imaginations of people of this description.—R. M.]