What is ordinarily termed mind cure is not mind cure in the sense that the term implies, but it is simply the mind toying or playing with the idea of a cure, for while the mind is thus engaged, nature’s energy is accomplishing the result or cure. This is the only rational explanation, and corresponds with the cures that nature is continually making in the lower orders of animals. If the recovery of the sick depended entirely upon the caprice and wisdom of the doctor, and not on the reparative forces of nature, the race would soon die out. I fully recognize the fact that the curative force can be stimulated; this may be done through the influence of nourishing food, alcoholic stimulants, a drug or medicine, or through purely mental influences. No physician can estimate how much merit he can accredit to the methods or substances he employs in any particular case that recovers, and how much to the lady physician, Dame Nature. This old lady doctor is ever active, and the most inert drugs, employed or administered with her assistance, have achieved wonderful cures; this the history of medicine confirms. The tar water cure of Bishop Berkeley is an illustration how an inert substance is capable of making for itself an enviable reputation for curing ailments, like pleurisy, pneumonia, erysipelas, asthma, indigestion, hypochondria, and other diseases. This remedy had the vehement indorsement of one of the greatest metaphysicians of the English-speaking world, and that the cures reported by him were genuine no one will doubt for a moment; but the bishop, like many of our day, was determined to have a remedy to cure disease, where none was required, but the mind had to be humored, while nature was actively repairing the disorder. To-day almost everyone is satisfied, that the virtues ascribed to tar water by Berkeley were a delusion, which was shared by all those who believed as he did.