Influence Of Mind On Body
The power of mind over body for the relief of symptoms has been
recognized, not only by physicians, but by the generality of men at
all times. Every one has had experiences of aches, or actual pains, or
discomfort quite annoying while one is alone, but that disappear while
in pleasant company or occupied in some absorbing occupation. Many a
headache that was painful enough to disturb us seriously while we
tried to appl
ourselves to something of little interest, and became
almost unbearable if we tried to do something disagreeable, and
actually intolerable if the occupation of the moment was a drudgery,
disappeared, at least for the time, when we turned to a pleasant game
of cards or indulged in some other favorite pastime. Our relief was
not, however, from an imaginary ill, for the symptoms usually
reasserted themselves when we got through with the pleasant
occupation, showing that they have been there all the time and that we
have only turned our mind away from them, and hence have ceased to
feel them. This is so familiar it seems almost too commonplace to
repeat, yet it constitutes the special phenomenon that lies at the
base of psychotherapeutics, or the mental healing of physical ills.
It is not alone the slighter, more or less negligible aches or pains,
nor the vague discomforts that thus disappear when our attention is
occupied, but even quite severe and otherwise unbearable pain may be
modified to a great extent. A toothache that is bearable, though it
nags at us constantly and never lets us forget its presence while we
are occupied with many other things during the evening, may become a
positive torture when we get to bed. This is not only because of
physical conditions modifying the pain, for there seems no doubt that
the warmth induced by the preliminaries for sleep and the bed-covering
have a tendency to increase congestion, but it is mainly because as we
doze off we are able, less and less, to inhibit our attention, or
divert it from the pain that is present, and so this is emphasized
until we have to do something for it or lose hours of sleep. This lack
of inhibition, which characterizes the dozing hours, represents the
state of mind in which people are who have no interest in their
occupations, and who have ceased to find recreation in the ordinary
pleasures of life, when pain of any kind comes to them.
Cabanis, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, under the title
of "The Influence of the Moral on the Physical," discusses what
we would now call mental influence on the body. He says:
The great influence of what one may call the moral or mental on what
may be called the physical is an incontestible fact. Examples
without end confirm it every day. Every man capable of making
observations finds proofs of it thousands of times in himself. Many
physiologists and psychologists as well as moralists, have collected
the evidence that brings out clearly this power of the intellectual
operations and emotions on the different organs and the diverse
functions of the living body. All of us could add new illustrations
to these collections. Men who are rude and credulous talk of the
effect of the imagination, and if they are not themselves its
playthings and its victims, at least they know how to observe its
effects In others.
As a matter of fact, the action of our organs can be in turn
excited, suspended, or totally inhibited, according to the state of
mind, the change of ideas, the affections and the emotions.
A vigorous, healthy man has just made a good meal. In the midst of
the feeling of satisfaction which diffuses itself over all his body,
his food is digested with energy and without any bother. The
digestive juices perform their work steadily and without causing any
annoyance. But let such a man receive some bad news; let some sudden
emotion come to excite him, and especially to shock him into
profound sadness, and at once his stomach and intestines cease to
act upon the food which they inclose, or they at best perform their
functions badly. The digestive juices, by which the food materials
were gradually being dissolved, are suddenly stricken with
inactivity. What might seem to be a stupor comes over the digestive
tract, and while the nervous influence which determines digestion
ceases entirely, that which tends to bring about the expulsion of
material from the digestive tract may become more active and all the
material contained in the digestive viscera may, in a short time, be
expelled.
Relief in Severe Injuries.--Even extremely severe injuries, which
inflict serious organic lesions that ordinarily would produce shock
and collapse, quite apart from the pain induced, may at moments of
excitement pass unnoticed. A soldier often does not know that he is
wounded until the flow of blood calls his attention to it, or perhaps
a friend points it out to him, or loss of blood causes him to faint.
The prostrating effects of even fatal wounds may thus be overcome for
a considerable time in the excitement of battle, or because of a
supreme occupation by a surpassing sense of duty. There is the
well-known story of the young corporal detailed to make a report to
Napoleon at a very important crisis of one of his great battles, who
made the report with such minute accuracy that it called forth a
compliment from Bonaparte, for it involved a very special exercise of
memory for details, yet who was actually on the verge of death when he
delivered the message. As his duty was accomplished the Emperor,
noticing his extreme pallor, said: "But you are wounded, my lad." The
young soldier replied, as if, now that duty was done, the
consciousness of his wound had just come to him, "No, Sire, I am
killed," dropping dead at the Emperor's feet as he uttered the words.
In all of the great theater fires examples of this kind are recorded.
A woman who barely escaped with her life from a theater fire some
years ago had an ear torn off, very probably by some one grasping it
in the crowd. She knew nothing of this until it was called to her
attention after she got out of the theater, and then she promptly
fainted from the pain and shock. Under such circumstances men walk
with broken legs or limp even with dislocations, utterly unconscious
that anything serious has happened to them. Men have been known to be
unaware of a broken bone or even more serious conditions,
ordinarily quite painful and disabling, while laboring to help others
in an accident.
Suppression of Reaction.--This side of the influence of the mind on
the body is so interesting that its effects have often been noted and
studied. While we do not quite understand the mechanism by which it
accomplishes its marvels of anesthesia and even of motility under
apparently impossible conditions, there is no doubt that severe pain
may utterly fail to reach the consciousness, though the nervous system
is uninterruptedly carrying the messages just as it did before. The
lack of attention suppresses the ordinary effect upon the personality.
Evidently the messages originate and are carried to the nerve centers,
but find no attention available for them, and so pass unnoticed. The
study of phases of this phenomenon of suppression of reaction forms a
good basis for the use of mental influence, and shows its marvelous
power to overcome disturbing physical factors.
Amputation Stump Aches.--An interesting example of the influence of
mind over body, when circumstances favor its exercise or emphasize it,
and at the same time a striking illustration of the potency of
suggestion in the cure of discomfort, is found in the stories that are
so common of cases of pains in amputation stumps. Any number of weird
tales are told of men who complain of feeling cramps in the toes of an
amputated limb after this portion of their body had been buried. The
discomfort is common enough. In the special stories, however, the
limbs have been dug up, the toes straightened out--according to the
story, they were always found cramped in some way--and then the
patient is at once restored to ease. In the good old times they
probably believed in some direct connection between the straightening
out of the toes of the amputated member and subsequent relief of pain.
For us it is but an example of the power of suggestion. It is not the
sort of suggestion that one likes to think of employing, though it has
a certain dramatic quality which adds efficiency to suggestion.
The Mind and Motility.--We have spoken thus far almost exclusively of
painful conditions as relieved by suggestion or mental influence, but
disturbance of motor function may also be favorably affected. There
are any number of cases on record in which patients who had been
utterly unable to walk were restored to motility by a shock. Many such
patients have, in the midst of the excitement of a fire, or the scare
caused by the presence of a burglar, got up and walked quite as well
as ever, though sometimes they have been for years previously confined
to bed. The San Francisco earthquake is said to have exerted such an
effect on a number of patients, and, while such unusual disturbances
cannot often be provided for the cure of these ailments, there can be
no doubt at all of the power of a shock to the mind to overcome
functional incapacity that has resisted every possible form of
treatment.
Ailments of this kind, which involve inability of the will to control,
or rather to initiate, movements of the body, receive their best
explanation on the neuron or neuroglia theory. (See the chapter on the
Mechanism of Suggestion.) The central neurons become either quite
separated from certain of the peripheral neurons, or at least the
connections are not made with that nice adjustment necessary for the
proper passage of nerve impulses. The shock communicated to the
nervous system by fright is sufficient, however, to restore these
connections, and consequently to enable the patient once more to
exercise motor functions that have been in abeyance for some time.
Astasia-abasia.--Any one who has had to deal with the cases for
which the French have invented the rather impressive Greek name of
astasia-abasia--how much better it would be to call the condition
simply what we know it to be, nervous inability to stand or
walk!--appreciates how almost a miracle is needed to improve them. The
incapacity for station or movement to which the disease owes its name
is so complete in many cases, and the patients' lack of confidence in
self so absolute, that no ordinary remedial measure is capable of
doing any good. These cases are usually a severe trial to the
patients' friends. Indeed, the patients themselves maintain their
nutrition so well and, as a rule, enjoy such good health, or, as has
been said, enjoy their bad health so well, that it is for their
attendants the physician feels most commiseration. Yet generally he is
quite unable to do anything. It is certain, however, that with care
and authoritative suggestion there would not need to be an earthquake,
or a fire, or even a burglary, as a therapeutic measure in these
cases. As a matter of fact, their cure when it occurs is always
brought about by some strong mental influence.
Mental Influence on Organs.--The Heart.--The influence of mind can
be noted on practically every organ of the body in a concrete way. It
might be thought that the heart, the first living thing in the animal
being, the pulsations of which begin before there is any sign of the
nervous system, might be free from this influence. On the contrary,
the heart is so readily affected by mental states that, taking effect
for cause, the old popular, and even scientific idea with regard to
it, was that it was the organ of the emotions. The heart is stimulated
more by favoring circumstances, and suffers more from depression, than
almost any other organ. In the melancholic states it usually beats
less frequently and is sluggish. When individuals are tired out and
the heart has become weakened in its action, new courage will first be
noted as having its effect upon the heart action. As the whole
muscular system is much influenced by the mental state and, as the
control of the arterial system depends on the muscles in the arteries,
it is easy to understand how much the general bodily condition may by
mental influence be modified for good and ill.
Digestive Tract.--The stomach and intestines, though their functions
might be presumed to be dependent entirely on physical conditions, are
almost completely under the control of the mental state. At moments of
depression, just after bad news has been received, the appetite is
absent, or is very slight and digestion itself proceeds slowly and
unsatisfactorily. On the other hand, when there is mental good feeling
appetite is vigorous and digestion is usually quite capable of
disposing of all that is eaten. If after a period of rejoicing in the
midst of which food is taken abundantly bad news is brought, the
mental influence on digestion can be seen very well. It is not alone
that depression interferes with digestive processes, but apparently
some favorable factors for digestion consequent upon the previous
state of mind are withdrawn, and now what would have been a proper
amount of food proves to be an excess and the digestive organs find it
difficult to deal with it..
Nervous Inhibition.--The mind can actually inhibit certain of the
involuntary processes of the body by thinking about them, and, above
all, by dwelling on the thought that they are going wrong. This
becomes easier to understand when we recall how, in the same way, we
may disturb many habitual and more or less unconscious actions that we
have grown accustomed to. There are any number of actions
requiring careful attention to details which become so habitual that
we do not have to think of them at all. Not infrequently it happens
when we try to explain to others how we do them, we disturb the
facility of performance and have to repeat the acts several times
before we succeed in performing successfully what a moment before we
did without any thought. The story of the centipede who was asked how
he walked with all his hundred legs, and who tried to describe how
easy it was and got so mixed up that he was unable to move at all, is
a whimsical symbol of conscious attention disturbing actions which go
on quite well of themselves if only we do not allow ourselves to think
consciously of each and every phase of them.
How much the mind may influence the body under certain conditions when
trance-like states either assert themselves or are brought on, has
often been noted. Lombroso in his book "After Death What?" [Footnote
11] says of Eusapia Paladino the "medium," that "when she is about to
enter the trance state the frequency of the respiratory movements is
lessened just as is the case with the Indian fakirs. Before the trance
she will have been breathing eighteen to twenty times a minute; as the
trance begins the number of respirations is gradually reduced to
fifteen; when the trance is fully developed she breathes twelve times
a minute or less. On the other hand, at the same time the heart beats
increase. Normally her pulse is about seventy, but during the early
trance stage it rises to ninety, while during the course of a deep
trance, it may go as high even as one hundred and twenty. The passing
from a more or less rigid state to that of active somnambulism is
marked by yawns and sobs and spontaneous perspiration on the
forehead." The observation of these phenomena is, of course, entirely
apart from any theory one may hold with regard to mediumistic
manifestations, and it provides evidence of mental influence that is
very striking.
[Footnote 11: Small, Maynard & Co.. Boston, 1909.]
Imaginary Drug Effects.--Drug effects may be produced through the
imagination. Physicians know that when patients are persuaded that
certain effects are to be expected from a particular medicine, the
effects may follow all the same in sensitive, imaginative people, if
that medicine is replaced by some inert compound. Many a physician who
has used bread pills or other placebos to replace a drug that he did
not want the patient to acquire a habit for, has thus been able to
allow good effects to go on without interruption, where the stoppage
of medicine had previously interfered with the continuance of the good
habit that had been formed. Very few physicians have not seen the
effect of a hypodermic of pure water when a hypodermic of morphine is
demanded, and when the patient would not sleep without having the
hypodermic injection. Sleeping powders of various kinds can sometimes
with distinct advantage be replaced by inert materials, because the
patient's mind is fixed upon the idea of sleep coming after a certain
time and they, in consequence, compose themselves to rest.
The Nerves and Tissues.--Cases occur where disturbances of vitality
are noted as a consequence of nervous affections, though no gross
lesion of the nervous system is demonstrated. Certain nervous people
suffer from ulcerative conditions of their hands, and it is evident
that in some the nervous impulses that would ordinarily keep the
skin surface in good, healthy condition are insufficient. Some people
who use a typewriter have no difficulty at all with the ends of their
fingers, while others are subject even to loss of skin or ulcerative
conditions that make it almost impossible for them to go on with their
work. In some this is true in the winter, in others in the summer.
There are a number of skin conditions which are due to nervous factors
and these evidently point to the influence of the central nervous
system in keeping the forces of our body in such health, and resistive
vitality, as will enable us to carry on whatever work we may wish to.
This is, of course, a very individual matter. Some people chap very
easily, some suffer from chilblains, or are frost-bitten even on
slight exposure, and these peculiarities are evidently dependent on
the intensity of the nervous impulses as well as the tone of the
circulation, which itself depends on the nerves to a great extent.
It is evident that some of these disturbances are not enduring, but
are only temporary and therefore are due to functional disturbances of
the nervous system. Physicians often see hysterical patients suffering
from intense pain that requires an injection of morphine, yet after a
series of such incidents, the physician is able to give an injection
of plain water and produce just as good an anodyne effect. In these
cases some influence of the will is enough to correct the painful
disturbances. Occasionally a single member loses sensation, or motion,
or both, yet the fact that its nutrition does not suffer shows that
there is only disturbance in the motor connections between it and the
central nervous system and not in the sensory nor trophic tracts, and
that this functional defect may be restored by some favorable
influence.
Nerve Supply and Health.--We know now that when a part of the body
is cut off from its connections with the central nervous system, it
begins at once to be lowered in vitality and gradually tends to
dissolution. This will be true in spite of the fact that the
circulation continues as actively as before. It is not necessary,
indeed, that the nerve trunk to a part should be cut, if it is
sufficiently compressed its function is stopped and various
disturbances begin to appear in the vitality of the part which it
supplies. A typical example is to be seen in certain fractures of the
clavicle, where a fragment presses on one of the nerves leading to the
arm. After a time pains develop in the arm, a burning feeling is
noticed in the skin, which becomes shiny and cold and of distinctly
lowered vitality. Even a slight injury to the arm will now produce a
serious ulcerative condition. There are evidently important influences
for life that flow down through the nerves from the central nervous
system, quite as important in their way as the nutritional elements
which flow through the blood.
How these influences of the mind on the body are accomplished is a
portion of that larger mystery of the influence of mind, or soul, or
principle of life, on the material elements of which our body is
composed. Why a man receives a shock of lightning or a charge of
electricity at high voltage, and without a mark on his body or a
change in any cell that we can make out, be dead, though he was living
an instant before, is another of these mysteries too familiar for
discussion. There is no change in the weight of the body, nothing
physical has happened, but what was living matter with the power to
accomplish the functions of living things is now simply dead material,
unable to resist the invasion of saprophytic micro-organisms which
will at once, unhampered, proceed to tear it down, though the
preceding moment resistive vitality was completely victorious. The
mystery remains, but the mechanism of the influence can now at least
be studied with much more satisfaction than was the case a few years
ago.
Death and the Mind.--The extent to which the mind can be made to
influence the body is apparently without limit. While the doctor is
frequently disturbed by the fact that death occurs when there is no
adequate physical reason for it, just because the patient has looked
forward to it with complete preoccupation of mind, there is no doubt
that occasionally death may be put off in the same way. We talk about
people living on their wills. This is a literal expression of what
actually occurs in certain cases. On the other hand, without the will
to live, it is sometimes extremely difficult to keep alive patients
who are in a run down condition. If one of an old married couple dies
when the other is ill, we conceal the sad news very carefully from the
survivor. This is done not alone to put off the shock and sorrow for a
time, but because often, under such circumstances, there will be no
will to live.
When the vital forces have run down to such a degree that it seems
impossible, so far as ordinary medical reason goes, to look for
anything but dissolution, patients still cling to life if there is
some reason why they want to live until a definite time. It does not
happen so much with the acute diseases but is quite common in chronic
cases. Patients will live on expectant of seeing a friend who is known
to be hurrying to them, or for some other purpose on which they very
strongly set their minds. In the life of Professor William Stokes, the
Irish physician, to whom we owe the introduction of the stethoscope to
the English medical world, and many other important contributions to
medicine, there is a striking story that illustrates this power of the
will to maintain life until a definite moment.
An old pensioner, a patient of Stokes' in the Meath Hospital whose
life was despaired of, and whose death was hourly expected, was one
morning distressed and disappointed at observing that Stokes, who
believing that the man was unconscious at the time, and that it was
useless to attempt anything further as his condition was hopeless,
was passing by his bed. The patient cried out: "Don't pass me by,
your honor, you must keep me alive for four days." "We will keep you
as long as we can, my poor fellow," answered Stokes; "but why for
four days particularly?" "Because," said the other, "my pension will
be due then, and I want the money for my wife and children; don't
give me anything to sleep for if I sleep I'll die." On the third day
after this, to the amazement of Stokes and all the class, the
patient was still breathing. On the morning of the fourth day he was
found still breathing and quite conscious, and on Stokes' coming
into the ward, he saw the patient holding the certificate which
required the physician's signature in his hand. On Stokes
approaching him, the dying man gasped out. "Sign, sign!" This was
done, the man sank back exhausted, and in a few minutes after
crossed both hands over his breast and said, "The Lord have mercy on
my soul," and then passed quietly away.
Dread and Death.--Dr. Laurent in his little book, "La Medecine des
Ames," [Footnote 12] has a story of similar kind but from a very
different motive:
[Footnote 12: Paris, Maloine, 1804.]
They brought to the prison infirmary one day an old burglar, an
incorrigible offender, who was undergoing a long sentence. He was
suffering from cancer of the stomach, and was already in a very
advanced stage of the affection. The poor devil seemed to realize
his condition very well, and felt that it was only a question of a
short time until he should die. He had made up his mind to that with
the resignation which so often characterizes people of this
kind. Only one thing put him out very much, and that was the fear of
dying in prison.
"I know well that I have to pass in my checks," he said over and
over again; "but I do not want to die here. I do not want to be cut
up after I am dead."
He still had two months of his sentence to undergo. Every day the
disease made notable progress. His cachexia became more profound.
Life was passing from him drop by drop. At the end of five weeks he
was scarcely more than a living skeleton. Every morning we expected
to find him dead, or at least in his last agony. Nevertheless, every
morning, by an effort, he was able to recognize me and a little life
shone out of his sharp, small eyes that seemed like those of a bird
of prey.
One morning he said to me: "Oh! you need not watch me. You shall not
have my carcass. I do not want to die in prison. I shall not die
here." He lived on till the end of his sentence. The morning of his
freedom he said to me, "I told you that I did not want to die here,
and that I would not die here."
By an effort of his will he aroused himself enough so that his
friends were able to take him out of the prison. It was the last bit
of energy he had, however. His will power was at an end. A few hours
after his arrival in the house of his son he went off into a
profound depression, and would not talk even to his own. Then his
death agony came on, and he died that same evening. The strange and
surprising struggle of this man against death, the marvelous force
of physiological resistance which the fear of autopsy, if he died,
gave him, struck me vividly at the time. What intimate and
mysterious bond connects mind and matter that the one is able to
react in so much energy upon the other. How wonderful to think that
the fear, lest his abandoned body should be cut up, should actually
keep body and mind together until after the danger of that dreaded
event was passed.
Suggestion and Death.--On the other hand, there are many stories
that show us how the giving up of hope of life seems to even hasten
death. We have many stories of the death on the same day of husband
and wife, or of brothers and sisters who thought very much of each
other. Some of these are mere coincidences, but there are too many to
be all explained on the score of coincidence. It seems clear that the
living one, on hearing of the death of the other, feels that now there
is nothing more to live for, and gives up the struggle. Hence the
important rule in medical practice that a seriously ill patient should
not be told of an accident, and, above all, of the death of a near
relative.
On the other hand, strong expectation of death at a definite time,
especially if accompanied by suggestions with some physical signs, may
bring about actual dissolution. We have a number of well authenticated
stories to illustrate this.
Renewal of Hope.--How much energy even the slightest hope may
furnish, when apparently all power of effort is exhausted, is well
illustrated by what happens to men who are lost at sea or in a desert.
After the lapse of a certain length of time human nature seems utterly
incapable of further effort and they sink down exhausted. The
appearance of a light at a distance, a hail, any communication that
gives them even the slightest hope will renew their energy and enable
them to draw on unsuspected stores of vitality after the end seemed
inevitable. It may be said that the exhaustion in these cases is more
apparent than real, that discouragement prevents the release of even
the energy that is present, and might be used under more favorable
circumstances, but that is exactly the argument which favors the
deliberate employment of psychotherapeutic motives to enable patients
to use the energies which they possess. In the midst of disease, or
the struggle for life, when vitality is being sapped, hope is
lost or obscured, just as it is when a man is alone in the desert or
struggling far from help on the ocean. If we can prevent this
discouragement from sapping his powers there will always be a
prolongation of life, and often this will be sufficient to enable
vital resistance to overcome exhausting disease.
Law of Reserve Energy.--Prof. William James [Footnote 13] called
particular attention to the law of reserve energy which recent studies
in psychology have emphasized. This law of reserve energy is a
conclusion from certain facts which are very familiar to men and have
been observed as long as the memory of man runs, yet the full
significance of which has never been read quite aright. Applied to a
very limited range of actions, it has been applied only half-heartedly
in ordinary life, and to its full extent only under the pressure of
absolute necessity. This law holds out the best promise to
psychotherapy. It shows that there are reservoirs of surplus energy in
man which, if they can be successfully tapped, present possibilities
of resistance to fatigue--and fatigue in many more ways than we used
to think resembles disease. Besides, this law represents a very
wonderful capacity for withstanding pains and aches and conquering
disinclination that would otherwise seem impossible. If it can be made
to apply to ordinary life as well as it does to extraordinary events,
then the conscious deliberate use of psychotherapy or mental
suggestion should prove to have wonderful remedial power. Prof. James
said:
[Footnote 13: American Magazine, Sept., 1908.]
Everyone knows what it is to start a piece of work, either
intellectual or muscular, feeling stale--or "cold," as an Adirondack
guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to warm up
to his job. The process of warming up gets particularly striking in
the phenomena known as second wind. On usual occasions we make a
practice of stopping an occupation as soon as we meet the first
effective layer (so to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked,
played, or worked enough, so we desist. That amount of fatigue is an
efficacious obstruction on this side of which our usual life is
cast.
But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising
thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point,
when gradually it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We
have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by
the fatigue obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer
of this experience. A third and fourth wind may supervene. Mental
activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in
exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue
distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves
to own--sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because
habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those
early critical points.
He then states what has come to be called the law of reserve energy.
It is evident that our organism has stored up reserves of energy
that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon;
deeper and deeper strata of combustion or explosible material,
discontinuously arranged, but ready for use for any one who probes
so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the
superficial strata.
There is, then, a marvelous reserve power in men and women which can
be used in emergencies and in times of severe strain, to enable men
and women to accomplish what looks impossible and which has often
contradicted the prognosis of the physician. History is full of
applications of this law which, however, does not come into action,
unless especially called. Men and women may die simply because
they give up the struggle. Men and women who will not give up seem
able to overcome severe illness that would take away ordinary people.
It has often been said that tuberculosis takes only the quitters and
that men of character constitute the typically favorable patients for
tuberculosis sanatoria. Psychology is now getting at the explanation
of many events that were formerly quite inexplicable. The science has
come to recognize the reservoir of reserve energy in human nature
which may be tapped under special favoring circumstances. The
physicians of the past have often succeeded in tapping it deliberately
as well as unconsciously. There is large room, however, for the
further development of medicine along this line, to the great
advantage of therapeutics and probably the most promising field at the
present time in view in therapy lies in this direction. Hence the
necessity for more deliberate conscious use of it in every possible
suitable form.