140. W. B. Carpenter, Principles of Mental Physiology, 1824, p. 684, is engaged in pointing out the physical effects which may be wrought by "expectant attention." He says: "That the confident expectation of a cure is the most potent means of bringing it about, doing that which no medical treatment can accomplish, may be affirmed as the generalized result of experiences of the most varied kind, extending through a long series of ages. For it is this which is common to methods of the most diverse character; some of them — as the Metallic Tractors, Mesmerism, and Homoeopathy — pre- tending to some physical power; whilst to others, as to the invoca- tions of Prince Hohenlohe, and the commands of Doctor Vernon, or the Zouave Jacob, some miraculous influence was attributed. It has been customary, on the part of those who do not accept the 'physical' or the 'miraculous' hypothesis as to the interpretation of these facts, to refer the effects either to the 'imagination' or to 'faith' — two mental states apparently incongruous, and neither of them rightly expressing the condition on which they depend. For although there can be no doubt that in a great number of cases the patients have believed themselves to be cured, when no real ameli- oration of their condition had taken place, yet there is a large body of testimony and evidence that permanent amendment of a kind perfectly obvious to others has shown itself in a great variety of
286 NOTES TO LECTURE III
local maladies, when the patients have been sufficiently possessed by the expectation of benefit, and by faith in the efficacy of the means employed."
141. The New Review, January, 1893, P- 23-
142. A writer in The Edinburgh Review for January, 1903, p. 154, has this to say of the use of "suggestion" at Lourdes: "What is so painful and so repulsive in Lourdes and similar centres of pop- ular devotion, is not so much the fanaticism of the pilgrims, the commercial element inseparable from the necessity of providing transport and lodging for the multitude of strangers, or even the incongruous emergence of those lower passions never wholly absent when men are met together, and separated by so small an interval from overwrought emotion, whatever its source, as the deliberate organization of hysteria, the training of suggestion, the exploitation of disease. Everything in the pilgrimage is calculated to disturb the equilibrium of the faculties, to stimulate, to excite, to strain. The unsanitary condition under which the journey is made, the hurry, the crowding, the insufficient food and sleep, the incessant religious exercises, the acute tension of every sense and power, all work up to a calculated climax."
143. Op. cit., E. T., pp. 118 ff.
144. Lourdes, pp. 42 ff.
145. Ibid., p. 56.
146. Ibid., p. v; cf. also Herbert Thurston, Hastings's ERE, vol. VIII, p. 150. This is apparently also what J. A. MacCulloch means when he says (Hastings's ERE, vol. VIII, p. 682): "Occa- sionally miracles at Lourdes are also wrought on more than neurotic diseases," and "they suggest an influx of healing power from with- out."
147. Op. cit., pp. 150 ff. Cf. John Rickaby, "Explanation of Miracles by Unknown Natural Forces," in The Month for January,
1877.
148. October, 1880, pp. 386-398.
149. P. 398.
150. La Verite sur Lourdes, pp. 123 ff.
151. We take the account as given by A. Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, I, p. 139.
152. The shortcomings of the authorities at Lourdes in their reports of the cures may be read in The Dublin Review, October, 1908, pp. 416 ff., apropos of Doctor Boissarie's L'CEuvre de Lourdes, new ed., 1908. Cf. Paul Dubois, The Psychic Treatment of Nervous Disorders, p. 211: "I have detected in the physicians of the bureau of statistics, in spite of their evident good faith, a mentality of such a nature that their observations lose all value in my eyes."
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153. Sir Francis Champneys, M.D., F.R.C.P., in The Church Quarterly Review, April, 1917, p. 44, says justly: "It is not safe to define a Miracle as something which cannot be understood; for, at that rate, what can be understood?"
154. Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 52.
155. Deut. 13 : 2.
156. Paris, p. 195.
157. Lourdes, p. 39.
158. See above, p. 59.
159. Lourdes, p. 82.
160. P. Saintyves, Les Saints successeurs des Dieux, p. n, note 1.