The other story is even more familiar and dramatic. Again it is a group of morbidly curious and spiteful doctors who desire to see whether a human being can be killed by the power of his imagination. A condemned criminal is accordingly turned over to them. He is first allowed to see a dog bled to death, one of the physicians holding a watch and timing the process with, "Now he is growing weaker! Now his heart is failing! Now he dies!" Then, after having been informed that he is to be bled to death instead of guillotined, his eyes are bandaged and a small, insignificant vein in his arm is opened. A basin is held beneath his arm, into which is allowed to drip and gurgle water from a tube so as to imitate the sounds made by the departing life-blood. Again the death-watch is set and the stages of his decline are called off: "Now he weakens! Now his heart is failing!" until finally, with the solemn pronouncement, "Now he dies!" he falls over, gasps a few times and is dead, though the total amount of blood lost by him does not exceed a few teaspoonfuls. A variant of the story is that the trick was played for pure mischief in the initiation ceremonies of some lodge or college fraternity, with the horrifying result that death promptly resulted. The stories seem to be little more than pure creatures of the same force whose power they are supposed to illustrate, amusing and dramatic fairy-tales, handed down from generation to generation from Heaven knows what antiquity. Death under such circumstances as these _may_ have occurred, but the proofs are totally lacking. One of our leading neurologists, who had extensively experimented in hypnotism and suggestion, declared a short time ago: "I don't believe that death was ever caused solely by the imagination." Now as to the scope of this remedy, the extent of the field in which it can reasonably be expected to prove useful. This discussion is, of course, from a purely physical point of view. But it is, I think, now generally admitted, even by most believers in mental healing, that it is only, at best, in rarest instances that mental influence can be relied upon to cure organic disease, namely, disease attended by actual destruction of tissue or loss of organs, limbs, or other portions of the body. This limits its field of probable usefulness to the so-called "functional diseases," in which--to put it crudely--the body-machine is in apparently perfect or nearly perfect condition, but will not work; and particularly that group of functional diseases which is believed to be due largely to the influence of the imagination.