Robert Collier - The Greatest Works of Robert Collier

That would seem to be the most that should be expected of any drug—kill the germs of sickness or disease, cleanse so that Nature can the more easily do its rebuilding. And that is where the use of drugs should stop. Mind works best when it is interfered with least—when we throw ourselves entirely upon it for support, rather than share the responsibility with some outside agency.

Dr. Burnett Rae, a well-known English specialist, addressing a large audience on the subject of "Spiritual Healing and Medical Science," said the term "spiritual healing" was sometimes used in a manner which seemed to imply that there was a form of healing which was of a non-spiritual character, and that spiritual healing was incompatible with, or opposed to, medical practice. Healing could never be regarded as a purely physical process. He would go so far as to say that healing was always effected through the control of the mind, and medicinal remedies only set the machinery of the mind in motion. We are too apt to think of medical science as concerned with drugs or appliances and operations. These might completely pass away during the next twenty or fifty years .

It is not through drugs that the medical profession has done so much of good for the world. It is not through drugs that they have improved the general health, cleaned up plague spots, cut down infant mortality, lengthened the average life expectancy of mankind by fifteen years.

It is by scotching disease at its very source. It is by getting rid of artificially created unwholesome conditions, getting back to natural wholesome conditions.

What is it causes typhus? Filth—an entirely unwholesome condition, man-made. And how do doctors prevent the spread of typhus? By cleaning up—by getting back to natural wholesome conditions.

What is it causes typhoid? Impure water. And its prevention is simply the purifying of the water—getting back to Nature's perfect, wholesome supply.

Yellow fever has been practically stamped out of existence. Typhus is almost a forgotten plague, except in such backward places as parts of Russia and Asia.

Malaria has been conquered. And doctors predict that in another generation tuberculosis will be an almost forgotten malady.

How were these wonderful results brought about? Not through drugs— but by cleaning up! Cleaning out swamps and filth. Purifying water. Building drainage systems. Making everything round about as clean and wholesome as Nature herself.

Cleanliness—Purity—Sunshine!

God gave us in abundance all that is necessary for perfect health—clean air, pure water, clear sunshine. All we need to do is to keep these pure and clean, and to use all we possibly can of them. The greatest good the medical profession has done mankind is in discovering the value of these gifts of God and showing us how to use them.

The Chinese have long had the right idea—they pay their physicians to keep them well, not to cure them of sickness. And the thing that made the reputation of such men as Gorgas, Reed, Flexner, Carrel, was not their cure of disease—but their prevention of it.

That way lies the future of medicine—bringing our surroundings back to the natural wholesome conditions for which we were created. That way lies health and happiness for all—cleanliness inside and out, clean air, pure water, plenty of sunshine— and right thinking!

In the next Chapter, I shall try to show you how you can apply the illimitable power of Mind hopefully towards the successful treatment of disease.

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"Sweep up the debris of decaying faiths;

Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out beliefs,

And throw your soul wide open to the light

Of Reason and of Knowledge. Be not afraid

To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole."

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

All over the world, sick, weak and devitalized men and women are searching for health and strength. By the hundreds of thousands, they drag their weary and aching boxes around, or languish on sick beds, waiting for someone to bring health to them corked up in a bottle.

But real, lasting health was never found in pill boxes or medicine bottles. There is one method—and only one—by which it can be gained and kept. That method is by using the power of the Subconscious, Mind.

For a long time the doctors pooh-poohed any such idea. Then as the evidence piled up, they grudgingly admitted that nervous troubles and even functional disorders might be cured by mind.

Even now there are some who, as Bernard Shaw put it, "Had rather bury a whole hillside ethically than see a single patient cured unethically. They will give credit to no method of healing outside the tenets of their own school."

Yet, as Warren Hilton has it in "Applied Psychology":

"All the literature of medicine, whether of ancient or modern times, abounds in illustrations of the power of the mind over the body in health and in disease. And medical science has always based much of its practice on this principle. No reputable school of medicine ever failed to instruct its students in practical applications of the principle of mental influence at the bedside of their patients. A brisk and cheery manner, a hopeful countenance, a supremely assured and confident demeanor—these things have always been regarded by the medical profession as but second in importance to sanitation and material remedies; while the value of the sugarcoated bread pill when the diagnosis was uncertain, has long been recognized .

"The properly trained nurse has always been expected to supplement the efforts of the attending physician by summoning the mental forces of the patient to his aid. She, therefore, surrounds the patient with an atmosphere of comfortable assurance. And by constantly advising him of his satisfactory progress toward speedy recovery she seeks to instil hope, confidence and mental effort.

"To quote Dr. Didama: 'The ideal physician irradiates the sick chamber with the light of his cheerful presence. He may not be hilarious—he is not indifferent—but he has an irrepressible good-nature which lifts the patient out of the slough of despond and places his feet on the firm land of health. In desperate cases, even a little harmless levity may be beneficial. A well-timed jest may break up a congestion; a pun may add pungency to the sharpest stimulant.' Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes reduced this principle to its cash equivalent when he said that a cheerful smile might be worth five thousand dollars a year to a physician.

"Today, psychotherapy, or the healing of bodily disease by mental influence, has the unqualified endorsement of the American Therapeutic Society, the only national organization in America devoted exclusively to therapeutics. It has the enthusiastic support of men of such recognized international leadership in the scientific world and in the medical profession as Freud, Jung, Bleuler, Breuer, Prince, Janet, Babinski, Putnam, Gerrish, Sidis, Dubois, Munsterberg, Jones, Brill, Donley, Waterman and Taylor.

"The present attitude of reputable science toward the principle that the mind controls all bodily operations is, then, one of positive conviction. The world's foremost thinkers accept its truth. The interest of enlightened men and women everywhere is directed toward the mind as a powerful curative force and as a regenerative influence of hitherto undreamed-of resource."

The more progressive physicians everywhere now admit that there is practically no limit to how far mind can go in the cure of disease. As Dr. Walsh of Fordham University puts it: "Analysis of the statistics of diseases cured by mental influence shows that its results have been more strikingly manifest in organic than in the so-called nervous or functional diseases."