In "Folk-Lore," for September, 1900, there is an interesting article, giving an account of popular beliefs current in a remote village of Wiltshire, England, where medicines are usually regarded as charms. A man who had pleurisy was told by his doctor to apply a plaster to his chest. On the doctor's next visit, he was informed that his patient was much better and that the plaster had given great relief. Failing, however, on examination of the man's chest, to find any sign of counter-irritation of the skin, he was somewhat puzzled; but he soon learned from the mistress of the house, that having no _chest_ at hand, she had clapped the plaster on a large box in the corner of the sick-chamber. Dr. Edward Jorden (1569-1632), an English physician, wrote regarding the oftentimes successful results of treatment by means of incantations, and leechdoms or medical formulas, that these measures have no inherent supernatural virtue; but in the words of Avicenna, "the confidence of the patient in the means used is oftentimes more available to cure diseases than all other remedies whatsoever." From the beginning of time, the fortune-teller, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the charlatan, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist, have made use of the patient's imagination, to help them in their work. They have all recognized the potency and availability of that force.[63:1] Modern psychology explains the healing force of verbal charms as being due to the power of suggestion. For these suggest the idea of a cure to the subjective mind, which controls the bodily functions and conditions. Robert Burton, in the "Anatomy of Melancholy," said in reference to this subject: All the world knows there is no vertue in charms; but a strong conceit and opinion alone, which forceth a motion of the humours, spirits and blood, which takes away the cause of the malady from the parts affected. The like we may say of the magical effects, superstitious cures, and such as are done by mountebanks and wizards. . . . Imagination is the _medium deferens_ of Passions, by whose means they work and produce many times prodigious effects. To give joy to the sick, said the Latin historian Cassiodorus, is natural healing; for, once make your patient cheerful, and his cure is accomplished. In like vein is an aphorism of Celsus: It is the mark of a skilled practitioner to sit awhile by the bedside, with a blithe countenance. William Ramesey, M.D., in "Elminthologia" (1668), remarks that fancy doth not only cause but also as easily cureth divers diseases. To this agency may be properly referred many alleged magical and juggling cures, attributed to saints, images, relics, holy waters, avemarys, benedictions, charms, characters, and sigils of the planets. All such cures, wrote this author, are to be ascribed to the force of the imagination.