St. John Long, the English charlatan who has been mentioned in the chapter on tuberculosis, also succeeded in making a name for himself in connection with the chronic rheumatisms and the so-called rheumatic pains and aches of older people. Between consumption and these conditions, he caught both the young and the old, and thus rounded out his clientele. For consumption he provided an inhalant; for rheumatic conditions, a liniment. This liniment became very famous in that generation for its power to relieve the pains and aches, both acute and chronic, of mankind. So many people were cured by it and above all, so many of them were people of distinction--lords and ladies and the relatives of the nobility--that Parliament was finally petitioned in the interests of suffering humanity to buy the secret of the {256} liniment from its inventor and publish it for the benefit of the world. I believe that a substantial sum, representing many, many thousands of dollars in our time, was actually voted to St. John Long and the recipe for his liniment was published in the British pharmacopeia. In composition, it was, I believe, only a commonplace turpentine liniment made up with yolks of eggs instead of oil, as had been the custom before. Just as soon as this fact became known, the wonderful cures which had occurred in connection with its use ceased to a great extent, for distinguished members of the nobility and their relatives would not be cured by so common-place a medium as an ordinary turpentine liniment. St. John Long was even accused of not having sold his real secret to the Government, but there was no reason at all to think that. He had been producing his cures not by his liniment but by the strong effect of his prestige and reputation as a healer upon the minds of his patients and the consequent release of will power which enabled them to do things which they thought they could not do before. We have had many wonderful curative oils of various kinds since then, with all sorts of names from Alpha to Omega and {257} very often called after a saint,--though St. John Long was as far as possible from being a saint in the ordinary acceptance of that word. These modern curative oils and liniments have been merely counter-irritants, but at times, owing to a special reputation acquired, they have been counter-irritants for the mind and stimulants for the will which have enabled old people to persist through the periods of soreness and tiredness until they reacquired the proper use of their muscles. {258} CHAPTER XVIII PSYCHO-NEUROSES "Look, what I will not, that I cannot do." _Measure for Measure_.