By Dr. Benjamin Bush.

"To another is given the gift of healing by the same spirit."

If your present speaker - the one who controls this morning - is not endowed with the same gift of eloquence of some who address you, you will at least give him the credit of sincere study in the department of healing; and from experience of more than one century in both worlds, somewhat of knowledge concerning it.

Unquestionably the science of materia medica has failed to develop in proportion to human thought; for since the days of Esculapius undoubtedly the theories of medicine have changed but slowly, and step by step such portions of human science as have been incorporated into medicine have come by force, and not by the enlightment of the schools of medicine.

In Therapeutics there is undoubtedly an improvement; but it is more the result of that which has come, not in the regular schools of practice, but through what is termed "quackery " in the old. The " quack " is undoubtedly the prophet in the world of medicine. Without him there never would be any progress; and still the schools of regular practice are so far behind the actual state of healing in the world, that more than three-fourths of mankind entirely distrust the regular practitioner.

From a severe and strict adhesion to the most orthodox rules of the Allopathic school, unto the gift of divine healing your present speaker has been converted. When on earth it was the severest ritualism in materia medica; now it is the announcement that there can be but one future school of healing; namely, that of the spirit. Spiritual healing is to take the place of all else. As nature provides a panacea for every ill, and as in proportion as the ills of mankind are purely physical, there will be physical remedies; as they are spiritual, instead of physical there will be spiritual remedies.

The schools of practice, however, differ so essentially that it is not worth while to discuss their propositions except to discover that in not less than a century of time that which was most poisonous has become healing'; that which was injurious has become acceptable, and the reverse. He who attempts to regulate his own organism or habits to the schools of medicine would be obliged to take one day that which medical men declared was poisonous, and at another time to reject it altogether.

From long experience I have discovered that most of the ills in human life, physically, are traceable to the mental or spiritual condition of the individual. Perhaps some of you may have heard of the spread of the cholera in Philadelphia nearly a century ago, when it was distinctly discovered by your speaker that the minds of the people had more to do with the spread of the epidemic than the physical contiguity of the germs of the disorder itself; that if you remove the fear of contagion either by isolation, separation, restoring confidence or by removing people from psychological contact, that that one malady can be stayed almost instantly.

I had no knowledge of this psychological power, as such, by name, but discovered that the fear in the mind of the individual had largely to do with the taking on of the disease.

Cholera is a negative disease; and while there are germs, undoubtedly, that are communicated from system to system, or in food, or in atmosphere, cholera is not a contagious disease in the sense that small-pox is, and other diseases that are communicated by animalcuhe. If the cholera germs are in the water or in the food, or anything you partake of in common with others, you will doubtless absorb those germs, but the physical contact of one person with another, independently of the psychological power, will not cause the disease to be communicated; but neverless it is true that it spreads more rapidly than almost any other disease.

The biblical healing which I have quoted here as belonging to one of the spiritual gifts, has always been supposed to be entirely separate from the science of medicine; and so it is, since science gropes in the dark for causes which she can only discover by probing blindly the effects in the human system. Now we are perfectly well aware that the same disease rarely produces the same effects in two different persons of different temperament, and that entirely dissimilar diseases may produce similar symptoms, and therefore that these symptoms are not even clues to the sources of disease in man.

On the other hand, spiritual or psychological healing arrives at the source of the difficulty without questioning- the symptoms - finds at once the causes instead of the effects of disease. The difference between the science of medicine and the perception or intuition of a true healer, is the same difference that exists between the body and the spirit, or between a mere technical knowledge and that very soul or essence of knowledge in the world. Therefore, while I cannot decry any anatomical or physiological knowledge that will bring mankind to the facts concerning their physical structure, I still believe until the psychological department of man is included in the science of medicine there can be but little successful general healing.

I doubt not that if the physicians of the earth were at this instant entirely removed, and mankind left to the laws of nature or their own devices, that their would in ten years be observably less disease than at the present time. I doubt not that the mistakes of medicine have many times caused more disease than the absence of medicine would have produced; and I say this not from prejudice but from long and careful study.

The remedies that hundreds intend as specifics can only be applied by one having certain knowledge concerning a disease, and concerning the nature or temperament to whom the remedy is to be applied. It is folly to treat an infant as you would a grown up man, or one of very delicate tempera-meilt, as you would treat an organism made of iron and steel. It is folly to have a regime that will at once subject the nervous woman and the strong physical man to the same order of treatment; and only the careful physican, who after years of practice rejects nearly all of his violent remedies, can be said to be the consistent and careful healer. The young student, the fresh graduate, is anxious to apply all the therapeiitics and the principles of them that he finds in the treatises on materia medica. Not so with the experienced physician; a few remedies carefully applied, and above all, a watchful and parental care over his patients. Those who have practiced for twenty or thirty or forty years carry very little medicine, and convey less to the systems of their path while they give careful advice, search out the main malady that may be the cause of the disease, and in that way probably cure more than medicine has ever dreamed of.