So far as the author knows, this is the first time in the history of medicine that an attempt has been made to write a text-book of the whole subject of psychotherapy. We have had many applications of psychotherapeutics to functional and organic nervous and mental disease and also indirectly to nutritional diseases; but no one apparently has attempted to systematize the application of psychotherapeutic principles, not only to functional diseases, but specifically to all the organic diseases. A chapter on the use of mental influence in anesthesia was, during the course of the preparation of this volume, written for Dr. Taylor Gwathmey's text-book on Anesthesia, which is to appear shortly (Appletons). No one knows better than the author how difficult is the subject and how liable to misunderstanding and abuse. He appreciates well, too, how almost hopeless it would be to make a perfectly satisfactory text-book of so large a subject at the first attempt. The present volume is founded, however, on considerable experience, on wide reading in the subject, and on much reflection on its problems. It is offered to those who are interested in the old new department of psychotherapy until a better one is available. The author's principal idea in the book has been to help students and practitioners of {viii} medicine to care for (_curare_) suffering men and women and not cases, to treat individual human beings, not compounds in which various chemical, physical and biological qualities have been observed, diligently enough and with noteworthy success, but incompletely as yet, and quite without the satisfying adequacy which it is to be hoped will result from future investigations. James J. Walsh. 110 West Seventy-fourth Street, New York City. {ix} CONTENTS PAGE Introduction 1 HISTORY OF PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS SECTION I _Psychotherapy in the History of Medicine_ I. Great Physicians in Psychotherapy 7 II. Unconscious Psychotherapeutics 19 III. Genuine Remedies and Suggestive Exaggeration 25 IV. Signatures And Psychotherapy 35 V. Pseudo-science and Mental Healing 38 VI. Quackery and Mind Cures 46 VII. Nostrums and the Healing Power of Suggestion 53 VIII. Amulets, Talismans, Charms 60 IX. Deterrent Therapeutics 63 X. Influence of the Personality in Therapeutics 69 XI. Faith Cures 77 GENERAL PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS SECTION II _General Considerations_ I. Influence of Mind on Body 84 II. Unfavorable Mental Influence 93 III. The Influence of Body on Mind 100 IV. The Mechanism of the Influence of Mind on Body 108