Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/238

But we must go a step farther. We must admit not only that regular medical practitioners have been making use of the principles of suggestion, but that the people at large, the common people, the ignorant and the superstitious, have had an intuition into their nature and have been practising psychotherapeutics, with more or less of success, from the dawn of history down to our own day. The practise of medicine is, even to-day, an art largely based upon empirical rules learned from the experience of the common people. Scientific medicine has in the past adopted into its pharmacopoeia a great many of the "simples" cherished by the people, but has discarded their innumerable hints as to the value of psychotherapy. It is now beginning to turn to this neglected wisdom, to make use of the spiritual "simples," to learn what curative powers reside in the soul.