PSYCHOLOGY AS AN ADJUNCT IN THE TREATMENT OF DISEASE.*

BY L. J. JONES, M. d.

It may, in the opinion of some of our allopathic colleagues, be verging on lines of the irregular, or downright heresy, to connect with our well-credited allopathic philosophy any one of the many modern Schools of the Healing Art (and they are innumerable, mostly fakes and charlatanistic, both in theory and practice), but it must be conceded by all who have investigated unbiased, unprejudiced, and with the purpose of seeking truth, that the scholarly minds that advocate and teach psychotherapeutics in many of our higher universities,

* Read before the Southern Kentucky Medical Association, Adairville, Ky., April, 1902.

both in this and foreign countries, at least should demand our solicitous and honest investigation.

It is claimed that the therapeutic application of psychology, or psychic phenomena, as advocated by such brilliant minds as Hudson, Tucker, Burnheim, and others of equal note, is one of the greatest evidences of the advanced era in medicine and surgery. Not until the last few years has this comparatively new philosophy made such headway among the intelligent and inquiring minds of our profession, as well as other scientists.

It seems that the name of "Suggestive Therapeutics" is the title applied to the modus operandi of its wondrous claims. Then what is Suggestive Therapeutics, or how administered for relief?

To begin at the beginning, its accredited advocates lay down this fundamental principle, that is, Hudson starts off with this hypothesis: "Man has two minds, and designates them the objective and the subjective mind. The objective takes cognizance of the objective world, is man's guide to his struggle with his material environment: its highest function is that of reasoning. The subjective perceives by intuition, is the seat of the emotions and the storehouse of memory."

And he says the subjective mind is always amenable to suggestion from the objective mind. It is claimed that the subjective mind, or as Herbert Spencer puts it, "the infinite and eternal energy" has exclusive control of all our involuntary organs, both while asleep and when awake, such as the lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, uterus, and all other involuntary organs of the body. Therefore if it is true that the subjective mind or life principle is amenable to suggestion from the objective, material, or reasoning mind, it naturally follows that we can use suggestion to control or alleviate diseases of those organs which it governs. That is "Suggestive Therapeutics" as I understand it. It can not be denied by any one who has investigated this science and the claims of its advocates that honest hypnotism is a reality, and that surgical operations of some magnitude have been and are daily performed without the least pain under its wonderful anesthetic influence. The effect of mind on the bodily structure, both in health and disease, is too well known by all intelligent observers to make it necessary here to elaborate at any length to prove the fact. We see it in every-day practice. We give placeboes with the view of beneficent results as

surely often as we look for a purge after administering an infallible cathartic.

Müller makes this observation: "It may be stated as a general fact that any state of the body which is conceived to be approaching, and which is expected with certain confidence, the certainty of its occurrence will be very prone to ensue as the very result of that idea, if it be not beyond the bounds of possibility."

And Tucker makes these observations: "When a person, on swallowing a bread-pill in the belief that it possesses aperient properties, is purged, it is said to be through the definite direction of thought to the intestinal canal, such leading idea exciting the same peristaltic action as would have been induced by castor oil. In such cases the fixed idea is that certain phenomena will occur."

We all know that vomiting can be brought about by the belief that an emetic has been taken. As germane to the subject the immortal bard says in his "Winter's Tale": "There may be in the cup a spider steeped, and one may drink, depart, and yet partake no venom, for his knowledge is not infected: but if one present the abhorrent ingredient to his eye, make known how he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, with violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider."

Thus, auto-suggestion, the most important feature of the philosophy, is proven to have its influence. May not this explain the cause of so many immunes to virulent epidemics such as yellow fever, cholera, etc., for it is well known that many people, especially physicians, with impunity, do fearlessly attend the sick and dying of those dreadful epidemics and never take the disease?

We might mention many instances of its practical utility as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of nervous and functional diseases, such as neuralgia, hysteria, hypochondria, etc., and even some organic or structural diseases, its claimants assert, are cured by its wonderful influence, and that the "bloody stigmata" is brought about by the same. It is claimed by Dr. Pitzer, of St. Louis, that "cures wrought by suggestion are readily accounted for upon scientific principles, and can be demonstrated by natural laws: that the human body is made up of cells, each cell possessing its own peculiar mental power which it gets from the subjective mind, and that suggestion fixes and fastens the patient's attention upon proper methods of thought and action; and that mind has a direct effect upon the func

tionating of the cells. So we can use it (mind) by means of suggestion to produce definite effect upon organs or functions of the body and cause a rearrangement of atoms, cells, and molecules, or actual cell changes; and that is the principle upon which all cures are made by suggestion."

It might seem superfluous to adduce facts to illustrate the wonderful power of hypnotic anesthesia, for I do not propose to cite or detail experiments made to prove the truth or correctness of psychotherapeutics, but only to say what I have said tentatively, with the view of asking an investigation of a matter about which so much is said and claimed in the press and magazines of the day.

And if we do not admit its claim, may it not be owing to a lack of its recognition and appreciation?

So I repeat, it is more with a desire to call out the views of gentlemen present than to assert my views as to the real merit of the system that I have thus expressed myself.

FRANKLIN, KY.

CAUSES OF BLINDNESS IN KENTUCKY: FROM A STUDY OF THE
EYES OF THE PUPILS OF THE KENTUCKY INSTITUTION
FOR THE EDUCATION OF THE BLIND.*

BY W. O. BAILEY, M. D.

For several years I have assisted Dr. J. M. Ray in examinations at different times of the eyes of the children at the Kentucky Institution for the Education of the Blind, and we have recorded the history of each case as fully as could be ascertained by physical and oral examinations.

In all we have examined two hundred and twenty-eight cases, of which one hundred and eighty-nine (189) were white and thirty-nine (39) colored.

In 1895 Dr. Ray read a paper before the Kentucky State Society, reporting one hundred and seventy-five (175) of these cases, of which one hundred and thirty-nine (139) were white and thirty-six (36) colored, since which time we have examined fifty-three additions to the institution, of which fifty were white and three colored.

* Read before the Falls City Medical Society, December 4, 1902. For discussion see p. 453.

I have thought it would be of interest to this Society to study the causes of blindness in those cases in which any considerable number were caused by the same disease. I append a complete tabulated report of the whole two hundred and twenty-eight cases at the end of this paper. Having been unable to get a report of the blind in Kentucky according to the census of 1900, I am compelled to use the census of 1890 in making a report of the statistics in this State on the subject. In 1890 Kentucky had 1,976 blind, with a total population of a little over one million, eight hundred and fifty thousand; she has, therefore, one blind person to every 940 inhabitants, which by comparison with other countries, you will see, is very high. The same census gives the United States one to every 1,218 inhabitants; in England the proportion is one to 1,235, and even in the densely populated countries on the Continent the proportion is about one to one thousand.

Authorities have shown that the poorer and more ignorant the inhabitants of a country, the greater is the proportion of blind in that country. The climate of this State and the general good health and vigor of its inhabitants and the absence of crowding should militate against the spread of contagious eye diseases, and it is a reflection upon the education of her people and the intelligence and skill of her physicians that such a proportion of her inhabitants are blind.

Inasmuch as no one competent to differentiate the causes of blindness has made an examination of all the blind persons in this State, I have thought we could get a fair idea of the causes and the proportion of each by a study of the eyes of the pupils of the Kentucky Institution for the Education of the Blind. I will now take up a consideration of the most important causes in the order of their importance, the importance being decided by the larger proportion.

We find that purulent ophthalmia is responsible for a greater number of these cases than any other one disease; sixty cases, made up of fifty-three white and seven colored, or 26.3 per cent of the total, are directly referable to this disease as a cause of blindness, and about 90 per cent of these were due to a purulent conjunctivitis known as ophthalmia neonatorum contracted during parturition, and which we all know can almost invariably be prevented if treated by the Credé method of instilling a solution of nitrate of silver into the eyes immediately after birth. We found in these cases either atrophy of the eyeball or large corneal opacities, some accompanied by anterior synechia or staphyloma.