The following are extracts from a lengthy essay written by R. Sears M. D. of Marshalltown, Iowa, entitled, "The influence of mind as a cause and cure of disease," and published in a recent number of The New York Medical Examiner, one of the leading publications of the Allopathic School. Dr. Sears was for upwards of thirty years an Allopathic physician in active practice:—
The early history of medicine is obscure and uncertain. In fact empiricism of the rudest sort seemed all of it. The causes of disease were little understood as well as their cure. The remedies used were of very uncertain efficacy: charms and incantations often took the place of other remedies. As medical knowledge became more general, medical research into the causes and nature of diseases became more profound and scientific. The virtues of the remedies used to cure disease and the quantity necessary to produce results became more surely known. To the present century, and to the latter part of it, belongs the credit of the most thorough and scientific investigations into the etiology of disease and into the character and efficacy of remedies. Much, very much, has been learned which hitherto had been unknown or only vaguely suspected. All honor is due this noble army of honest, patient, persistent and brilliant investigators.
While the profession has generally held to the theory of man's dual nature, I regret that truth compels me to say that these investigations have usually been in the direction of the material man. Very few comparatively have been the researches of medical men into the realm of mind or the spiritual man. Even in their investigations into disordered mental conditions, as insanity and other diseases of the nervous system, they have pushed their search into the physical condition of the brain and its appendages in order to discover there what changes in their physical condition caused the mental phenomena. They seem to assume that these mental conditions are the result of physical causes only, and ignore the physical effect upon the brain and its appendages by the continued influence of mind acting on them.
