‘Having recently had to look over a large literature on the subject of mental healing, ancient and modern, I have tried to put the matter as succinctly as possible. In all ages and in all climes the prayer of faith has saved a certain number of the sick. The essentials are, first, a strong and hopeful belief in a dominant personality, which has varied naturally in different countries and in different ages: Buddha in India and in Japan, where there are cults to match every recent vagary; Æsculapius in ancient Greece and Rome; our Saviour and a host of Saints in Christian communities; and, lastly, an ordinary doctor has served the purpose of common necessity very well. Faith is the most precious asset in our stock-in-trade. Once lost, how long does a doctor keep his clientele? Secondly, certain accessories--a shrine, a grotto, a church, a temple, a hospital, a sanatorium [Osler might have added the admirably devised entourage in such places as ‘Physical Culture’ Institutes and ‘light cure’ establishments], surroundings that will impress favourably the imagination of the patient. Thirdly, suggestion in one of its varied forms--whether the negation of disease and pain [as among the ‘Eddyites’], the simple trust in Christ of the Peculiar People, or the sweet reasonableness of the psychotherapeutist. But there must be the will-to-believe attitude of mind, the mental receptiveness--in a word, the faith which has made bread-pills famous in the history of medicine.’ We must, however, recognise the limitations of ‘mental healing.’ ‘Potent as is the influence of the mind on the body, and many as are the miracle-like cures which may be worked, all are in functional disorders, and we know only too well that nowadays the prayer of faith neither sets a broken thigh nor checks an epidemic of typhoid fever.’ The following extract is from an article in the _British Medical Journal_ of March 13, 1909. The article begins by quoting from a paper by Dr. Allan Hamilton (U.S.A.) to the following effect: ‘In all this agitation, it would almost seem as if the intelligent physician had never made use of psychotherapy, but that he was a mechanical giver of drugs and took little or no interest in his patients. If the new critics of the medical profession, who have been so active of late, would take the trouble to investigate, they would often find, among the great and successful men of all times and of to-day, that the human side is very strongly developed, and that their patients are studied from every point of view, and treated accordingly.’