Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of DiseaseWalsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Science
Psychotherapy: Including the History of the Use of Mental Influence, Directly and Indirectly, in Healing and the Principles for the Application of Energies Derived from the Mind to the Treatment of Disease
Walsh, James J. (James Joseph)
Mental healing
Some of the phases of indeliberate psychotherapy, however, are even
more interesting than this chapter of the history of genuine and
deliberate psycho-therapeutics. Not a few of the remedies recommended,
even by distinguished physicians, were utterly inert, yet accomplished
good through their effect upon the patient's mind. If we were to omit
all reference to certain favorite prescriptions that passed down from
generation to generation, sometimes for centuries, yet eventually
proved to be quite inefficient for the purpose for which they were
employed, what a large lacuna would be left in the history of medical
treatment! Galen's _theriac_ is a typical example of this. Still more
strikingly the role of psychotherapy is seen in the many remedies that
were recommended at various times for such self-limited diseases as
erysipelas, ordinary coughs and colds, pneumonia and typhoid fever.
Anything that was administered just before the change for the better
came in these diseases, or that was persistently taken until that
change came, was proclaimed as curative.
An even more interesting chapter in the positive history of
psychotherapy is that which shows how the value of genuine remedies
was exaggerated by suggestion, and how these remedies became
therapeutic fads, and sometimes almost seemed to be cure-alls. What a
large place antimony holds in medical history, though it is now
entirely discredited! How beneficent has venesection seemed, though it
is now frankly confessed that it has but a narrow usefulness for a
very circumscribed set of ills! Calomel in large doses has a history
very like that of antimony. Alcohol in various forms, now so
strikingly losing its hold in therapeutics, must also be placed in
this category.
Psychotherapy has perhaps had its most fruitful field of potency in
connection with discoveries in the physical sciences. Whenever a
discovery has been made in any science, an application of it to
medicine has been mooted by some fertile mind, though as a rule it
eventually proved to have no place in medicine. One might ordinarily
expect that the suggestion would be latent only when the discovery was
in one of the sciences allied to medicine, but this relation has not
been necessary. Discoveries in astronomy even, in light, in
electricity, in every department of physical science, have each been
given their opportunity to affect patients' minds favorably, and have
succeeded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account