Three Thousand Years of Mental HealingCutten, George Barton
History
Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing
Cutten, George Barton
Mental healing
In addition to what Dr. White says here about the treatment for
threatened hydrophobia in the eighteenth century, we find a curious
mixture of science and superstition in the nineteenth century in
connection with the same trouble. Early in this century physicians
discovered that the most effectual remedy against the bite of a rabid
animal was the cauterization of the wound with a red-hot iron. In
Tuscany, however, the iron which they heated was one of the nails of
the true cross, and in the French provinces it was the key of St.
Hubert. This, though, was only to be used in the hands of those who
could trace their genealogy to this noble saint. At the abbey of St.
Hubert, in the diocese of Liege, the intercession of the saint still
continued to be sufficient to effect a cure, provided it was seconded
by some religious ceremonies, and a diet which would reassure the
patient.
After the discovery of the "true cross," portions of this relic were
much used for aid in any emergency. In addition to sanitary and
healing powers, fragments suspended to a tree manifested the proper
location of sacred edifices. St. Magnus, who seems to have carried
pieces around with him, completely vanquished demons who frequented a
locality selected for a chapel. Eyesight was restored to a humble
merchant seeking the blood-stained marks upon the chapel of this same
St. Magnus. The blind man was feeling his uncertain way to the place,
where these discolorations reappeared more distinctly after each
washing with heavy layers of lime.
St. Louis, almost in the agonies of earthly dissolution, with rigid
body, rigorous limbs, and fluctuating spirit, was brought to full
health by the application to his moribund body of a piece of the true
cross, about the year 1244; and later in the century miracles took
place at his tomb. M. Littre, in his _Fragment de Medecine
Retrospective_, describes seven miracles which occurred at his tomb,
some of which cures, however, were very gradual. We are also told that
when a humble hunchback bowed the knee in adoration at the tomb of St.
Andreas, his irresistible faith instantly released him from his
unnatural rotundity. In 1243 a Ferrara writer was at Padua, and while
attending vespers at the tomb where the sainted body of the Minorite
Anthony reposed, he affirms that he saw a person who had been mute
from his birth recover his voice and speak audibly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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