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
A glance at this list shows exactly the class of cases in which
suggestion has always played a large role, and for which there has
been, at various times, a series of specific remedies, medicinal,
manipulative and surgical. Others extended the value of the moxa
beyond these affections. Ponto found it valuable in gout, and in the
various chronic affections which are sometimes grouped under the name
chronic rheumatism. He insisted that the moxa could be placed on
almost any part of the body, though the contra indications he suggests
show how far the men of his time went with its use. Only these
portions named might not have a moxa applied to them. It must not be
used on the skull, on the eyelids, on the ears, on the mamme, on the
larynx and on the genitals, though it might be applied to the perineum
or the perineal body.
Deterrent Taste and Smell.--The disturbing effects produced by other
senses besides those of sight have been used in the same way for the
production of definite therapeutic suggestive effects. A number of the
ill-tasting, almost nauseating drugs of the olden time prove to have
very little real therapeutic efficiency in the light of modern
clinical careful observation. This is particularly true of the herbs
and simples. Many a disgusting preparation apparently owed all of its'
good effects on the patient to the effort that was required to swallow
it, producing such a favorable influence upon the mind, by
_contrecoup_ as it were, that the patient got better. A little girl
said that cough medicines were nasty things they gave you in order to
keep you from catching cold again. The sense of smell has been used in
the same way. Valerian is probably an efficient drug in certain
respects, but undoubtedly its efficiency is materially increased by
its intensely repulsive odor. For many of the psycho-neuroses and
neurotic conditions generally the ammonium valerianate is likely to be
much more efficient than the strychnin valerianate, though probably
the {69} latter should be considered as more physically efficacious in
its tonic properties. Asafetida, musk and some preparations of the
genital organs of animals that used to be in the pharmacopeia, owed
most, if not all, of their power, whatever it was, to the mental
effect of their odor and the feeling of deterrence that had to be
overcome before they were taken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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