The dangers of a belief in, and of practising _consciously_, Spiritual Healing are great, as far as doctors are concerned. It simply puts a premium on ignorance and laziness, and is disastrous to exact knowledge and scientific investigation. Spiritual healers assert that to dwell on the abnormal and pathological prevents their work on the normal. But who is to say what is the normal, till abnormalities have been weighed and considered? No, to people like myself who practise medicine, it is a dangerous and uncertain weapon to employ. Far be it from me to say that the spiritual side of medicine should be ignored altogether. We know that our prayers, rightly offered, are a help to our patients--we _know_ that the ordained Sacraments of the Church are a help to them. Moreover, we know very well that there is no royal road to the treatment of disease. We know well how many cases there are in our various hospitals and infirmaries, that have baffled all the skill of diagnosis and treatment that has been vouched to the world up to the present time. Is it rational to believe that such cases will be healed by a glance, or a touch, or a word of any merely human person, however holy, who is manifestly ignorant of any ordinary scientific knowledge? No, Spiritual Healing as a cult, as a part of the sacramental life of the Church, will cease to exist, but all that has come out of it will be quickened and strengthened. We shall feel greater need of prayer and intercession, and we shall feel more and more the real value of meditation. That the medical profession is fully alive to the importance of the question, in spite of its difficulties, may be inferred from the following extract from the _British Medical Journal_, November 6, 1909: