Another strong man of this same kind was Prince Alexander of Hohenlohe. Though a prince he had become a clergyman and spent his life in the service of the poor. Shortly after he became a priest he went through a great epidemic, fearlessly caring for his poor people, and as a consequence inspired them with so much confidence that ever after they came to him with all their ills. He was able to help, not only the poor, but also many of the nobility. Some of the things reported as accomplished through his influence show extraordinary power. His usual method was to endeavor to inspire in the people who came to him a faith in their cure, and then after a time the cure was actually accomplished. During the recent troubles in Russia, attention was called to the fact that the famous Father John of Cronstadt, the hero of Bloody Sunday, was looked up to with so much respect and veneration that many people found themselves helped physically by contact with him. There are a number of interesting stories of cures of ills of various kinds, some of them exclusively mental, but many of them fundamentally physical, which took place as a consequence of the new spirit of hope infused into people because of their confidence in Father John. His subsequent history seems to indicate that this was evidently due to the forceful personality of the man rather than to any special religious influence. His influence was not limited to the ignorant masses in Russia, for some of the cures reported occurred in families of the better class, thoroughly capable of judging the character of the man apart from his religion. {76} SUCCESS IN HEALING We have any number of examples, then, of this power of the healer in history. Over and over again we find that it was the personality of the man and the suggestive value of the means that he employed that enabled patients to cure themselves, that is, to use all the vital force which they had for curative purposes. This force had hitherto been inhibited by their own doubts of themselves and their doubts of the value of all ordinary means of cure which had been previously employed in their cases. This is the secret of the success of the healer, and this secret is much more valuable for therapeusis than any remedy which has come down to us from the olden time. It has, unfortunately, been neglected, and thus an important benefit to humanity has been lost. Now that we are able to review frankly and deliberately the conditions that obtained in the past, it is time to set about making use of this oldest secret in medicine, now no longer a secret, as a strong factor in the treatment not of disease but of patients.