THE " CORNHILL " ON MENTAL CURES OF PHYSICAL DISEASE.
THE Cornhil/ for August contains a very interesting, and indeed very amusing, paper on " The Influence of the Mind on the Body," wherein are collected typical specimens of the various very remarkable cures wrought through what is called by the writer " the influence of the imagination." But whether anything is explained by speaking specially of the imagination when so little is known of the actual mode in which the cure takes effect, except that it is due to the mind in some way or other, we are by no means sure. Even the writer in the Corn- hill has to observe that the cures effected by mental causes arc by no moans exclusively due to credulity,—to the expectation of cure. He quotes one case in which the patient was very un- willing to try the proposed mode of cure, and had no faith in it at all, and yet was cured completely. Clearly, in a case like this, it is quite inappropriate to talk of the imagination as the special medium of cure. And in discussing this case accordingly, the reviewer asserts that to attract powerfully the " attention " of the patient to the part diseased will probably have as beneficial an effect, as to stimulate the hope of the patient by persuading him that ho will he cured. And his ex- planation,—if it can be so called,—of these cures in this part of his article, is, that this fixing of the atten- tion on the diseased part causes a new flow of nervous energy into channels from which it had been, by the course of the disease, diverted. But evidently this is but a lame bit of guesswork. For there are at least as many cases of disease caused or enhanced by the fixing of the attention on special parts, as of cures caused or promoted by the same pro- cess. And apparently something does certainly depend on the point of view from which the attention is fixed. If, for instance, the attention of the patient be fixed on something which is supposed to cause disease in the part affected, the fixing of the attention accelerates the disease, in- stead of the cure. The American young lady who believed that she had got a bristle of her tooth-brush fixed in her throat, got worse and worse, though there was no bristle there, till she was persuaded by her doctor's ruse that he had extracted it, after which she recovered as rapidly. In all probability, the atten- tion of the patient was fixed much more vividly on her throat while the bristle was supposed to be there, than after the bristle had been, as she thought, removed ; but anxious attention of the despondent kind coursed the mischief, which less anxious attention of the hopeful kind, removed. On the other hand, there are very well attested cases, though none is quoted by this writer, in which mere fright, directed to the expected suffering of a diseased part, has caused a powerful but salutary revolution in the condition of the diseased organ. Dr. Carpenter—if we mistake not—in his " Mental Physiology," gives a case of the complete absorption of some very dangerous tumour in a very few hours, under the influence of more terror at the prospect of the pain of the surgical operation—it was before the days of chloroform—which had been determined onto remove
it. Here was a case where attention—and attention of no hope- ful kind—produced the very opposite effect to that which, in the American young lady's case, attention of the despondent kind had produced,—the very same effect, iudeed, which a remission of attention, when accompanied by the hope of cure, had in that case produced. Perhaps the Conant reviewer might suggest that the cases in which attention to the diseased part produces a good effect, are those where there has been previously a fail- ure of nervous energy in certain specific channels, but that where the disease has been produced by an excess of attention already, as in the throat disease engendered by belief in the imaginary bristle,—then, it is a remission of attention which is needed for the cure. But neither will this guess,—and it is nothing but a guess, cover the facts of the case. One of the most curious cases here quoted is that of a Naval officer, who, after suffering from dysentery, showed symptoms of a dangerous organic injury to the intestine, of which there was subsequently the most ample proof, but who was twice cured, and cured to all intents and purposes, his recovery of health being for a con- siderable time complete, by bread-pills, administered under the illusion that they were a very potent remedy indeed, the effect of which might be very dangerous, if not carefully watched. Now, here clearly it was not mere attention to the diseased part which was the means of cure. For his attention had been drawn to it before, in the most forcible and disagreeable form, in the shape of violent counter-irritants, which had almost flayed the poor fellow alive ; and no doubt this had been done with every encouragement to hope for a good effect which the clever medical officer concerned could impart. But attention so directed had availed nothing for the cure. It was only when the hope of cure was raised to a high point by the assurances of the efficacy of the imaginary medicine, that the mental stimulus took effect. The same may be said of the cures effected by imaginary medicines iu scores of cases of scurvy in the Prince of Orange's army at Breda, in 1625. It was the hope of cure so powerfully excited, and that alone, as it appears, which worked the cure. It appears, then, that in some cases it is profound hope or faith which works the cure ; in others, vivid attention, without either hope or faith ; in others, pure fright ; while in others, again, despondent expectation and alarm produce the disease, instead of curing it. So far as we can see, the guess that it is the direction of new nervous energy to the diseased part which effects the cure, is a very random guess indeed, which does not cover the majority of the facts. For what is the part upon which the nervous energy should be directed, in the case of scurvy, or paralysis, or dysentery, or cholera,—of all of which diseases the reviewer gives us instances of very remarkable mental cures P Why, the physician himself does not know,—mnch less the patient. Which of our various doctors could tell us clearly what the diseased part is, in cholera, or how to direct nervous energy to that part ? In the curious case of Edward Irving's cure of cholera in 1832 from an act of faith,—or hope,—or call it what you will,—does the reviewer seriously mean to assert that Irving knew the source of cholera disease, and that by fixing his attention on it, he was able to direct a new flow of nervous energy to the de- ficient centre P Such an hypothesis seems to us wilder than any other. Whatthe doctors themselves do not know,—the secret source of disease,—it would be difficult indeed for the patient to direct his attention upon. All we can say in such eases with the least certainty is, that there is a great mental effort or emotion of some kind—of will, or faith, or hope, or fear, or imagination, or some strong feeling—and that the cure follows, and there our knowledge of the matter begins and ends.
The Cornhill reviewer, however, is so anxious to show that there is nothing mysterious about the matter, that he oven declares the problem to be purely physical. " A problem apparently physical, and physical only, is submitted to our investigation." " In reality, it amounts simply to the question how or why certain changes in one part of the body lead to changes in other parts of the body." But nothing can be less like instances of such a problem as this, than the cases in illustration which the article contains. Take one ease. A man bitten by a rabid cat, which died in hydrophobia, has, three months afterwards, all the symptoms of hydrophobia. By a powerful mental effort he controls his physical sensations, gets his gun, takes violent exorcise for a whole afternoon, in which every step involves a separate and powerful mental effort,—the arm affected aching terribly all the time,—and returns mu ch better to dinner. The spasms which indicated inability to drink have then passed off. The next morning, the pain in his arm has sunk from the shoulder to the elbow ; the following day, it has sunk to the wrist ; and the third, it has left him altogether.
His doctor believed that the tetanus of hydrophobia had been imminent, and had been controlled by the violent effort of his will. Well, suppose that to be a true rationale of the case. How is one to explain it as a mere problem as to " how or why certain changes in one part of the body lead to changes in other parts of the body ?" The first datum, the first step, in the process of cure was the effort of will to compel the body to violent exercise. It was a long series of such efforts which set going the physical series of changes supposed to have led to the cure. The problem is not how and why the muscular changes so effected led to the subsiding of the disease, but how and why the mind of the patient, which lied no knowledge whatever of tho root of the disease or the conditions of cure, was led, in the first instance, to wrestle blindly, as it were, against a power of the true nature of which it had no perception,—au obscure poison in the blood,—and yet to hit by what would, at first sight, seem like pure accident, on the right cure. What is the meaning of willing not to be ill P You do not know what it is you will. You do not know what the illness itself consists in. You do not know what physical changes you are resisting,—what physical changes you are causing,—by this blind act of will. For anything we really know, this blind and vehement resistance to illness might be the very way to ensure that the illness should prove fatal. This fight of the soul against the body is like the fight of a creature who can live only in the sea against a creature who can live only in the air. The one knows nothing by intuition of the laws of the other's life. Unless will, and faith, and fear and imagination, and the rest, have some direct and mysterious control over the body which the subject of these emotions inhabits,—the mere proposal to resist disease by an act of the mind would be irrational. That it often succeeds, proves, we suppose, that it is not irrational ; but it does not prove that it is not in a very high degree mysterious. A man wills that the spasms of tetanus shall be resisted, and goes trailing his painful and reluctant body about in the violence of his resolve not to yield to them, Could any- thing be less justified as a method of cure by any experience in the patient's possession P Could anything,—apart from some deep-seated belief of the power of mind over the body, —be much more like the leap of a madman in the dark 1' And yet we are told that the problem as to why this and other equally wild ventures succeed, is a mere problem as to "how and why certain changes in one part of the body lead to changes in other parts of the body." Surely a more extraordinary attempt to minimise the nature of the real problem can hardly be imagined. This Cornhill article seems to us to be full of the most curious proof that in a great number of cases,—relatively, indeed, very rare, but absolutely numerous enough to establish the fact beyond doubt, —a mind, sometimes the mind of the patient himself,though more often perhaps the mind of the physician, or the mind of other healers who, by the way, need have no medical knowledge at all, produces a direct effect on the body of the patient, without any knowledge of the laws of cause and effect, or any idea of the way in which the influence operates,—and yet produces the effect intended to be produced, and by means of the nature of which it has no guess, however faint. If that be not a mysteri- ous problem,—and a problem the very essence of which is spiritual as much as physical, we really are at a loss to under- stand what the distinction between a physical and a spiritual problem is.
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