Now it so happens that the best illustration {244} of the power of the will to "cure" people, that is, to relieve them completely of their affections and start them afresh in life with the feeling that they are no longer handicapped by disease, is to be found exactly in the group of cases that have almost from time immemorial been called chronic rheumatisms. We have had more "cures" of various kinds announced for these--chemical, electrical, physical, hydriatic, movement therapy and so forth--than for almost any other group of diseases. More irregular practitioners of medicine all down the ages have made a reputation by curing these affections than have won renown by treating any other set of ills to which humanity is heir. Like the poor, these ills are still with us, in spite of all the "cures" and probably nowhere is the expression of the old French physician that "the therapeutics of any generation is always absurd to the second succeeding generation" better illustrated than in regard to them. These cases serve to emphasize very clearly, however, the fact that the pains and aches of mankind are largely under the control of the will. The more one studies these cases of so-called chronic rheumatism the easier it is to {245} understand how they become the signal "cures" which attract attention to the quacks and charlatans who promise much, but do nothing in particular, though they may give medicines or treatment of some kind or another. They only arouse the patient's will to be better and the determination to use his will with confidence, now that the much praised treatment is doing something which will surely make him better. Cases of this kind have constituted a goodly part of the clientele of the great historic impostors who succeeded in making large sums of money out of curing people by methods that in themselves had no curative power. A review of some of the chapters of that very interesting department of human history, the history of quackery, is extremely suggestive in that regard. The only way to get a good idea of the basic significance of these cases is to realize by what they were cured and by whom they were cured. One of the most interesting illustrations of that phase of human credulity is the story of Greatrakes, the Irish adventurer who had been a soldier in Flanders, and who when his campaigns were over set up to be a healer of mankind. He chose his opportunity during {246} the time while Cromwell, as Lord Protector of Great Britain, had refused to continue the practice of touching the ailing which the Kings of England had pursued for hundreds of years since the Confessor's time. Cromwell did not impugn the efficacy of the Royal Touch but he refused to have anything to do with it himself. Greatrakes found it an opportune moment to announce that for three nights in succession he had been told in a dream by the Holy Spirit that in the absence of the King he was to touch people and cure them.