While on the one hand there were saints - medical saints - who performed miraculous things for the good of the people, on the other hand we have the influence of the devil, the Christian successor of the ancient evil spirits, as exerted upon the medical views of the masses. The devil and his subordinate infernal spirits were considered the "disturbers of peace" in the health of humanity. Disease was their work, or that of the magic arts of evil men. The imagination of mankind during the entire middle ages, as well as a long part of modern times, credited the devil with some of the most wonderful machinations conceivable. The great epidemic of St. Vitus' dance of the fourteenth century was considered to be the work of the Prince of Hell, and to tell even a part of what else was attributed to him would involve the writing of several books. If there was one thing more than another for which his Satanic majesty had a reputation, it was the creating of discord between men and women, and next to this was his penchant for creating disturbances in the pulpit, as well as in the congregations.

Martin Luther was a strict believer in the doctrine which taught men to hold the devil responsible for the origin of all diseases. He expressed himself as follows : "No disease comes from God, who is good, and does good to everybody, but it is brought on by the devil, who causes and perforins all mischief, who interferes with all play and all arts, who brings into existence pestilence, Frenchmen, fever, etc." Then again he said in regard to his health : "I believe my diseases are by no means due to natural causes, but that "Younker Satan" plays his pranks with me by sorcery." Luther was a better authority upon religion than upon disease or medicines.

In the process of time the belief in demons, a variety of medical superstition, finally developed into an epidemic of insanity, into the belief of witches or witchcraft. The witchcraft delusion on the American continent, existing in the latter part of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, originated in the hysteria of imaginative children eventually becoming a general popular madness, fostered by the highest educational authority in America, the faculty of Harvard College. Good men and women were jailed, tortured and even executed. In England, witchcraft had even a more formidable history, which need not be further referred to in this connection. Attention is called to witchcraft in this connection, more particularly as an illustration of what the unbridled imagination may lead up to; as has been already referred to in Mental Culture.

Many well authenticated instances have occurred illustrative of the tricks or pranks which an impressionable mind may play upon the body. The cases of paralysis which have been instantaneously cured are of this character. Some years ago a street car collision happened in a certain Canadian city, in which a man was injured. As a result of the injury he became impressed with the idea that he was paralyzed. The collision and shock were severe, quite enough to make an ordinary individual believe himself done for; and, as happened in this particular instance, this extraordinarily susceptible individual became firmly impressed with the idea that be was actually paralysed. He was cured by one of the Mind-Cures. A shock of any other character would have produced exactly the same result as did Dowieism.

It is easily understood how this could come about. In real paralysis the nervous currents or impulses from the brain to the muscles is unable to flow to the affected parts, because of pressure of some kind, let us say a tumor upon the nerve. In seeming or imaginary paralysis there is nothing of this kind. It is purely from inability, or the result of the individual failing to put forth an effort of the will-power or mind; without the exercise of this power he remains paralysed. In these cases the mind, consciously or unconsciously, inhibits or prevents the nervous currents from traversing the nerves. Any sudden shock as a fire, a runaway horse, an explosion or earthquake, or even the stimulus of hope or belief in a cure, are quite sufficient to bring about a cure, by starting the current, or mind-motor, as it were. Just as the original cause of many of these cases of paralysis results from a shock, so in precisely the same manner they are cured by shock, an illustration of " like cures like."

In a nutshell the difference between a real and an imaginary paralysis is that the former cannot be cured by any effort which the individual may put forth himself, nor by any exciting agent such as a fire or an explosion; in imaginary or seeming paralysis, a cure may be brought about solely by influences upon the mind of the individual : fire, shock or faith.

The only cure for real paralysis lies in the removal of the cause; if it be the pressure of a tumor,

Nature may remove it; if not, then surgical means only are available.

The difference between a disease and a symptom is something the average man or woman does not even yet know, otherwise we would not hear so much of the cure of incurable diseases by unheard-of or out-of-the-way procedures, or by certain wonderful patent medicines.

Imagination is responsible for probably more than one-half of the existing number of diseases. There are thousands of individuals laboring under the hallucination that they are sick. They think or imagine they are sick.

To all intents and purposes an individual who imagines himself sick, might as well imagine himself possessed of a hobgoblin or demon. Hobgoblins and demons and many so-called incurable diseases existed centuries ago, as now, not as matters of fact, but of fiction - fiction of the mind. In short, they were the products of a vivid imagination, and as such were curable by influencing the imagination.