‘In the story of the man with the withered hand it is probable that we have to do with another case of paralysis; and if so, we may assume with considerable confidence that the case was one of “infantile paralysis.” This is the affection to which at the present day nearly all the instances of “withered hand” or of “withered leg” are owing. A child who has been in good health, or has suffered perhaps from a few days of feverishness, is found to have lost power in an arm or leg. The limb hangs flaccid and motionless. The muscles are found to be wasting when the limb is examined a week or two later, and the limb to be cold. For a month or two there may be a little recovery of movement. This soon stops, and the arm or leg remains ever after more or less powerless and shrunken and cold. Normal growth is largely checked, and, in addition to the actual atrophy and arrest of development, various contractions and deformities become established as time goes on. After death the muscles are found to have become much diminished and shrunken, and throughout a certain portion of the spinal cord, corresponding with the affected limb, destructive changes are found to have occurred where the normal structure of ganglion cells and nerve fibres is replaced by the remains of the inflammatory process which has been the cause of the palsy. Such is the ordinary history of a withered hand. Here the very word “withered,” which aptly describes the condition of the limb, is the most appropriate description of the result of the process which has taken place. If such was the pathology of the case described in Mark iii. 1, it is needless to say that, although it belongs to the group of the nervous diseases, it does not belong to that class of nervous disease which admits of treatment by moral impression or emotional shock.’ If this is accepted in the case of what may truly be described as ‘nervous diseases,’ then _à fortiori_ the improbability of the view taken by ‘progressive criticism’ is enormously enhanced when we come to consider the healing of the blind, the ‘woman with an issue of blood,’ and others where the nervous system was not primarily, if at all, affected. The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be this. Medical science has at her command a vast accumulation of clinical material on which she is able to form a clearly reasoned judgment. There is no such thing in Medicine as a ‘chose jugée.’ No single verdict ever found but is open to revision if the evidence is satisfactory. But we do claim that it should be recognised, by all who have the interests of truth at heart, that the limits of ‘psychotherapeutics,’ ‘spiritual’ or otherwise, are, according to our present knowledge, sufficiently well defined, and that nothing has yet been brought forward to warrant anyone in making an exception in favour of any one society or method. V. _Clergy and Doctors_ So much may be said on the critical side.