suffices to say this: that in the first place most of such cures
relate to hysteria, a disease we shall discuss later but which is
characterized by symptoms that appear and disappear like magic. I
have seen "cured" (and have "cured") such patients, affected with
paralysis, deafness, dumbness, blindness, etc., with reasoning,
electricity, bitter tonics, fake electrodes, hypnotism, and in
one case by a forcible slap upon a prominent and naked part of
the body. Hysteria has been the basis of many a saint's
reputation and likewise has aided many a physician into
affluence.

Nor is the effect of coincidence taken into account in estimating
cures, whether by faith or by drugs. Many a physician has owed
his start to the fact that he was called in on some obscure case
just when the patient was on the turn towards recovery. He then
receives the credit that belonged to Nature. Medical men
understand this,--that many diseases are "self-limited" and pass
through a cycle influenced but little by treatment. But faith
curists do not so understand, and neither does the mass of
people, so that neither one nor the other separates "post hoc"
from "propter hoc." If the truth were told, most of the miracle
and faith cures that are not of hysterical origin are due to
coincidence. Faith curists report in detail their successes, but
we have no statistics whatever of their failures.

If thought is a product of the brain activated by the rest of the
organism, it would be perfectly natural to expect that thought
would influence the organism. That thought is intimately
associated with impulses to action is well known. This action
largely takes place in the speech muscles but also it irradiates