Three Thousand Years of Mental HealingCutten, George Barton
History
Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing
Cutten, George Barton
Mental healing
The Scotch considered certain wells to have healing properties in the
month of May. In the Sessions Records (June 12, 1628) it is reported
that a number of persons were brought before the Kirk Sessions of
Falkirk, accused of going to Christ's Well on the Sundays of May to
seek their health, and the whole being found guilty were sentenced to
repent "in linens" three several sabbaths. "In 1657 a number of
persons were publicly rebuked for visiting the well at Airth. The
custom was to leave a piece of money and a napkin at the well, from
which they took a can of water, and were not to speak a word either in
going or returning, nor on any account to spill a drop of the water.
Notwithstanding these proceedings, many are known to have lately
travelled many miles into the Highlands, there to obtain water for the
cure of their sick cattle."[45]
To-day, probably the most efficacious waters are to be found at the
sacred fountain at La Salette and at the holy spring at Lourdes.
We have another specific form of healing which should be noticed. It
was especially common in Eastern churches, and was found to some
extent in the West. I refer to Incubation, or "Temple-sleep." This
practice came down through early civilizations and was an adopted
practice among Christians. The patient went to some church well known
for its cures, which was provided with mattresses or low couches, and
attended by priests and assistants. Devotions being finished he lay
down to sleep. Sometimes he slept immediately, at other times sleep
must be wooed by fast and vigil. At any rate, during the sleep he
dreamed that the saint touched him, or prescribed some remedy, and in
the first case he awoke cured, and in the second the prescribed
medicine brought about the relief.
Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, wrote about 640 as follows:
"Cyrus appeared to the sick man in the form of a monk, not in a dream,
as he appears to many; but in a waking vision, just as he was and is
represented. He told the patient to rise and to plunge into the warm
water. Zosimos said it was impossible for him to move, but when the
order was repeated, he slid like a snake into the bath. When he got
into the water, he saw the saint at his side, but when he came out,
the vision had vanished." Beside the cure of this paralytic at the
church of Cyrus and John, he mentions the cure of many other diseases
by this method of incubation. Among them are dumbness, blindness,
barrenness, possession, scrofula, dyspepsia, a broken leg, deformities
of limbs, lameness, gout, diseases of the eyes, cataract, ulcer, and
dropsy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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