Can Imagination Kill?
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CAN IMAGINATION KILL? MEDICAL doctors and persons experi.L'J- enced in human ailments are ac quainted with the important part which imagination plays in respect to the origin and cure of diseases. Medical aid is some times sought by persons who really believe themselves suffering from some bodily afflic tion, but who, when examined, are found to be quite free from every possible ailment. It is also well known that sick persons re cover quickly or slowly according as they have or have not faith in their medical ad viser or in his nostrums. This introduces the much wider subject of faith-healing, on which a great deal has recently been said, and by means of which much benefit ap pears to have been derived. Cases in which illnesses are originated or aggravated by the imagination are numerous; but those which have terminated fatally are comparatively rare. At first, it is difficult to lead one's self to believe that imagination can really kill; but a brief consideration of the slight effects produced in less serious cases prepares the way for further belief. One or two instances of non-fatal cases will suffice. Some time ago a girl about sixteen years of age had a prescription made up at a chemist's. The prescription was a double one — part being for internal use and part for external appli cation only. The usual red " Poison " label was affixed to the bottle containing the lotion, and a verbal caution was also given. The girl, having been under medical treat ment for some time previous, was permitted to take and apply the medicines herself; and so careful was she, that her precautions to avoid mistakes were the subject of frequent comment and occasional banter. One day a male cousin, having unfortunately resolved to play her a practical joke, transposed the labels on the bottles — which in other re spects were not very much unlike — soon after the girl had taken her first dose. In an apparently careless way her attention was
directed to the bottles, and, to her horror, she discovered that she must have drunk some of the lotion. Within half an hour she had frightened herself into the belief that she was poisoned. She complained of a burning sensation in the throat and stomach, of colic, and other symptoms of poisoning. A little later she was seized with an over powering tendency to sleep. The doctor was summoned in haste. He heard the girl's story and applied such remedies as he thought proper. But the girl grew worse. She was sinking so rapidly that at last the frightened and hitherto silent culprit con fessed what he had done. At first the girl did not believe him; and it was not until the doctor had taken a large dose from the redlabelled bottle that she was convinced. Then she began to recover, and in a few hours the immediate effects of the practical joke left her. A well authenticated case is told of a young lady who for seven years or more has been under the impression that she is paralyzed. She looks strong and healthy, but lies all day on a couch, and has to be carried about in an invalid chair. She shrieks with pain whenever a limb is moved. Her parents have taken her to at least a dozen physicians, — some of the most emi nent men in London, — and all agree that she is in perfect health. One of them plainly told her, after a most exhaustive examina tion, that she was simply wasting her par ents' money, and added, that he would gladly give a hundred pounds in exchange for such a constitution as hers. And now as to the fatal cases. Some time last summer an inquest was held in London on the body of a young woman who it was supposed had poisoned herself. The usual examination of the contents of the stomach contained a powder which in appearance and general character corresponded with a certain insect powder. Now, the manufacturer claims that this powder is absolutely non-poisonous,
