The Healing Hand E-Book

Sidney A. Weltmer

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 374

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This book is written with the one big purpose of being helpful to everyone who reads it. Whether this reading is only for a few moments to merely glance at its pages or to read it consecutively chapter after chapter; it has in it, in every line of it, a statement of fact learned from every day life. It will teach the avid reader the principles of healing through the three-fold method of: suggestion through the hand; suggestion through the spoken and written word; suggestion through telepathy, as explained in the home method of healing.

Leseprobe

The Healing Hand

Teaching The Principles Of Healing Through The Three-Fold Method Of: Suggestion Through The Hand / Suggestion Through The Spoken Word And Written Word / Suggestion Through Telepathy, As Explained In The Home Method Of Healing.

Sidney A. Weltmer

Contents:

Introduction The Healing Hand.

Foreword

Chapter I - The Hand And The Ancients.

Chapter Ii -  Statement Of Specific Cases

Chapter Iii - Life And Life's Motion

Chapter Iv - Suggestion— The Spoken And Written Word

Chapter V - Nature Good To Man

Chapter Vi - Practical Application Of Telepathy

Chapter Vii – Experimental Study In Telepathy

Chapter Viii - My Initial Experience In Telepathy

Chapter Ix - A Search For Better Methods

Chapter X -  Closing Thoughts

Chapter Xi - Study Of The Real Man

Chapter Xii - Man As A Physical Organism

Chapter Xiii - Man And His Relation To Nature

Chapter Xiv – Man As An Ego

Chapter Xv - Momentous Question— What Is Man?

Chapter Xvi - The Weltmer Method

Chapter Xvii - The Infinite Viewed As A Personality

Chapter Xviii - Mind

Chapter Xix - Thought

Chapter Xx - Consciousness

Chapter Xxi - The Kingdom

Chapter Xxii - Agreement

Chapter Xxiii -  Forgiveness

Chapter Xxiv-  Concentration

Chapter Xxv - Prayer

Chapter Xxvi - The Positive And The Passive Conditions

Chapter Xxvii - Suggestion

Chapter Xxviii - Laying On Of Hands

Chapter Xxix - Telepathy And Thought Transference

The Healing Hand, S. A. Weltmer

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN:9783849623388

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Cover Design: © James Steidl - Fotolia.com

THE HEALING HAND

INTRODUCTION THE HEALING HAND.

This book is written with the one big purpose of being helpful to everyone who reads it.

Whether this reading is only for a few moments to merely glance at its pages or to read it consecutively chapter after chapter; it has in it, in every line of it, a statement of fact learned from every day life.

The purpose of the writer is to present the basic principles of the Law of Life and the lessons that life teaches.

Reviewing the pages of every day life, we know that we acquired all of our knowledge in response to those things of environment which made us think.

Those influences that caused us to think right, that inspired us to learn more, to do more, and to exercise the intent of helpfulness in what we thought and did, were most valuable, and that which has value to one person has value to all.

It is a self evident fact of experience that nothing comes to us that is molded into constructive thought or action, that does not come out of us m response to something that made us think.

That something which caused us to think, no matter in what form it was presented to us, is suggestion.

The one who can help most his fellow man is one who knows what suggestions were helpful to him when he made his response to them, and he will know what suggestions to give and in what manner to present them, that they will be most helpful to those he desires to serve.

In this book is set out simply but clearly an idea of service which all can understand. We define service as that influence which one exerts that helps another, or that one offers to another by which the person to whom it is offered is enabled to make his responses in such a manner that they enable him to help himself.

There are three desirable impulses in each life seeking opportunity for expression. They are health, happiness and prosperity.

Health is first comprehended in our conscious life as a physical condition satisfactory to the individual. A close inspection will show that health is merely the expression of something, and that something is life. That something existed before the flesh it occupies was organized into a body.

Long before he even realized that he had a body, the real individual life in each person, unconscious of how he did it, helped to build this organization and established the laws and rules for their administration.

The operation of these laws within the physical organism without change from the original order established, carries on the life processes in a perfect manner.

When this order is undisturbed in its activity, the body occupied is in a state of health.

We know now that health is this perfect life stream flowing through the body which it shaped and occupies.

Happiness is health in another form, and is composed of the right things of life properly understood, rightly related, and constructively expressed in thought, which finds its outlet in doing things with this body, through this body, and using this body to perform the activities which require contact with the physical world, also using its mental powers in dealing with the relationship that exists between the thought selves of other individuals and himself.

Prosperity is the unhampered and uninterrupted out flow of right intentions through the healthy body and the sound mind of a man.

Prosperity is the application of the laws of physical well being, conscious right thinking, applied to the things which we know and express in such manner that everything it touches is increased, everything it serves is helped, everything it speaks to is enlightened, and everything to which it turns its attention is enriched thereby.

Prosperity is the expression of a man who is physically well and mentally sound, exercising that courage which makes him able to bestow the gifts which he has inherited as a spiritual being, that of "power, of love, and of a sound mind."

Exercising these gifts he prospers, and causes all upon whom he bestows his gifts to share in his prosperity.

This book is divided into three separate sections. The first deals with suggestions which pertain to physical health and action and especially teach how these suggestions may be conveyed from the mind of the healer to the mind of the patient through the cells of the patient's body through the agency of the human hand.

The second section of the book treats also of physical health and physical expression, but will teach how to offer these suggestions through the agency of spoken and written words.

The third section of the book deals with silent influence of thought, describes, defines, and explains the omnipresence of mind, intelligence, power and presence.

The language of this department of psychology is called telepathy, and in this section is taught, as far as it is known, the perfect methods of exercising and expressing telepathic thought.

In this department the philosophy and psychology of prayer and silent suggestion is exhaustively treated, and numerous instances are given which apply to the general reader and enlighten many who have had these mysterious experiences of communicating with their own higher selves, and with the higher things of life itself.

Following the concrete discussion of the three subjects enumerated in the foregoing paragraphs, Healing by the Laying On of Hands, Suggestion through the Written and Spoken Word, Suggestion through the employment of telepathic means, we give the reader an extended symposium of a discussion of the Real Man, as we study him from the view point of origin, present existence and destiny. Also an extensive discussion of the primary and fundamental principles of the laws of mental healing based upon the actual experiences of the author, which we feel will give the reader adequate information that will enable him to understand himself and to prepare him for the practical study of the principles of Suggestotherapy.

Believing that we have rendered a service to humanity, we offer this book, knowing that all who read its contents and understand its meaning will be immeasurably benefited.

FOREWORD

The human hand is trained from infancy to express the thought or purpose of the mind which controls it.

The hand is the tool which the mind depends upon when it wants to get anything done.

Thoughts of action naturally turn to the hand for their expression.

The hand is the first means of expression.

The baby uses the hand long before it learns to talk.

The savage who has but a few words in his vocabulary depends upon the hand to express his thought.

The hand ministers; it carries aid.

The hand lifts the fallen, ministers to the sick ; it is peculiarly the organ of expression of the good wishes of the kindly disposed.

When we are hurt, we instinctively place the hand upon the injured part.

When another suffers and we sympathize, we instinctively use the hand to soothe his pain.

Clasped hands are the universal pledge of friendship and goodwill.

From the earliest dawn of civilization the hand has been used in the most sacred ceremonials.

The hand is the natural organ of expression, and its actions are mental symbols to which man has learned to make response through untold ages of experience and adaptation.

CHAPTER I - THE HAND AND THE ANCIENTS.

The expression, ''the hand of God " is frequently used in the Bible, and with a wide range of meaning. For instance, it is used to signify God's eternal purpose and executive power (Acts 4 :28, 80) ; His providential bounty and goodness (Psal. 104 :28) : His mighty power to preserve and defend (John 10 : 28, 29) ; His sovereign power (Psal. 81:15) ; His help (Neh 2:8, Psal. 74:11) ; His favor (Luke 1:66); His spirit (1st Kings 18:46, Ezek 1:3, 87:1) ; His providence (1st Chron. 29:16, Job. 2:10).

By the laying on of hands, priests were consecrated, ministers were ordained, and special gifts conferred on individuals (Num. 8 :10, Acts 6 :6, 18 :8, 1st Tim. 4 :14) . At the command of God, Moses, by the laying on his hands appointed Joshua his successor (Num. 27 :18) . The Apostles, through the lasing on of hands, conferred the Holy Ghost on those who had been baptized (Acts 8:17, 19:6).

If you will study the manner in which Jesus used His hands in healing and the directions which He gave his disciples for using them for the same purpose, you will, probably, get an enlarged idea of the importance and place which Jesus intended the laying on of hands should have among His followers. Jesus Himself healed the sick by laying His hands upon them : ''He laid His hands on a few sick folk, and healed them'' (Mark 6:5). ''Now, when the sun was setting all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto Him and He laid His hands on every one of them, and healed them'' (Luke 4:40) ; "And He laid His hands on her and immediately she was made straight and glorified God" (Mark 18:18).

Apparently the use of His hands was commonly regarded as a regular part of His procedure, for Jairus said to Him, "My little daughter lieth at the point of death ; I pray Thee, come and lay Thy hands on her that she may be healed ; and she shall live" (Mark 5:28).

After commanding His disciples to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature," Jesus declared, "these signs shall follow them that believe ; they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover" (Mark 16:18).

That these were not mere idle words from the mouth of Jesus is shown by the fact that it was through the laying on of the hands of Ananias that Paul received his sight after he had been smitten with blindness while on his way to Damascus (Acts 9:17). And Paul also healed in the same manner: "And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux, to whom Paul entered in and prayed and lay his hands on him and healed him" (Acts 28 :8) .

We have quoted only a few of the many passages in the Bible (Cruden's Concordance gives more than 600 such) in which the hand is used as an instrument in conveying some thought of blessing or in healing.

But they are sufficient to show that both the prophets and Jesus understood the power of the hand and made an extensive and varied use of it.

Jesus even made healing by the laying on of hands one of the tests of the genuineness of the belief in Him of those who profess to follow His teachings (Mark 16:18). It is not strange, therefore, that the hand has played an important part in Christian literature and in the symbolism and ceremonies of the church, but under the influence of the words and example of the prophets and of Jesus, is it not strange that Christian people have not further developed this instinctive idea that the hand is the means for blessing and help ?

From the time of Edward the Confessor to the reign of Queen Anne, the English and French rulers "Touched" and cured thousands of suffers from scrofula.

Although the hand as a means for expressing conscious thought is most important, it is far more important as a means for impressing and awakening response from the unconscious mind.

It is the unconscious mind that must be aroused in all healing, for it is upon its actions that all healing depends. The unconscious mind, or the healing mind — God's healing power in man — is the only healer of the ills of man. It is that force which has been called "Nature" by physicians since the time of Hippocrates, who taught that "Nature is the first of Physicians," and who used the "Vis medicatrix naturae" (the healing power of nature) as the foundation of his philosophy of medicine.

Whether Hippocrates conceived of Nature as an intelligent power or force within the individual, or whether he considered it a blind force, acting under certain laws, we do not know, but we do know that some of the ancients considered Nature as the hand or word of God, or even as God himself, in all things that exist.

Spinoza, "The God intoxicated man," regarded Nature as Infinite Intelligence, permeating all things immanent in all things, the only power which could react to external stimuli.

Modern thinkers teach that Nature is subjective mind because it operates under intelligent laws, and that all actions of the objects of Nature are intelligent actions.

Mind is that power in nature which can react through the things of environment; which makes natural relations orderly. Mind is the source of the universal harmony which keeps the stars in their courses, and makes the earth bloom with summer and sleep with winter ; which makes a man a man and keeps him so through strife and turmoil, and heals his ills and binds up his broken heart when life has borne too hardly upon him.

The mind acting is the mind thinking. The product of thinking is thought. The mind's action is the mind's thought.

In other words, an action of the mind is a thought and the process of mind acting is thinking.

All thoughts whether unconscious or conscious, are expressed, but many of them are expressed only in the organism of the thinker.

The mind needs no words to command the hand.

The intricate ramifications of the nervous system are the means which the mind uses for expressing such thoughts in the different parts of the body. But there are no nerves to connect different beings with each other.

So it becomes necessary to use some special means by which thoughts may be conveyed from one person to another. Such a means we call language and the organic process of using language for the conveyance of thought from one thinker to another is called speech.

There are a great many forms of speech. The spoken word is not the only one, it is not even the one most used.

It is merely that to which the term is most commonly applied because it is that form of expression that does nothing but speak and is the form of speech most closely associated with words, which are the form used in recording language.

There are many other forms of expression which are even more expressive than vocal speech.

Gestural speech is a very important form of mental expression. The gestures, the expression of the face, or of the eye, the manner, the tone of the voice, all of those unpremeditated, more or less unconscious, expressions which accompany the spoken word are more potent in determining the impression created than the spoken words themselves.

Gestures may be very effective alone but the spoken word without gestures rarely has much force except in the written form. And even here, no amount of skill in the use of words can quite make up for the loss sustained when the gestures of the speaker are lacking.

Any means used for the expression of thought may be called language, and speech is any process that employs such a means.

The use of the hand is therefore a form of speech, and in fact it is the most effective form of speech that we can use.

The hand is the chief source of powerful gesture.

The hand alone may be so expressive that no other form of expression is necessary.

Irrespective of the use of the hands in the sign language of the deaf and dumb, the hands are, of all organs of speech the most important.

The hand speaks to the conscious mind by means of the appeals which it makes through the senses.

The soothing touch, the comforting pressure, the warmth it brings to the painful part, the manipulations of massage, the firm clasp, and all such actions, constitute the language by which the hand conveys the thought of one person to the conscious mind of another.

The language of the hand which conveys thought to the unconscious mind is, however, of quite another variety.

It is a language of motion, but of quite another type of motion than those which we have noted above.

The language of the hand which conveys the healing thought of the therapist to the diseased tissues of the patient is the hand's vibration, and that universally recognized but little understood vital emanation from the hand, which we call maneffluvium or vital magnetism.

Motion is one of the primary facts of material Nature. The super-scientist of today would tell us that rates of motion and space relations, which depend largely upon motion, are at the foundation of matter itself.

A great many of the phenomena of Nature depend directly upon certain rates of motion.

Certain rates of motion of ether give us light; other rates the X-Ray, the wireless telegraph, radiant heat, actinic light, and probably telepathy.

Certain rates of motion of matter give sound; other rates of a different kind of motion give temperature, expansion, and determine the forms of matter, whether solid, liquid or gas.

The movements of masses are the most important factors, in determining the conditions of the surface and form of the earth. The falling rain, the power of the rushing stream, the erosive force of rocks and sands carried along by running water, have made our soils, worn away shore lines, have cut out valleys, smoothed down hills, and have leveled mountains.

The motion of the air has been little less important in shaping the surface of the earth. It makes the waves of the ocean, it shifts the sands, distributes the clouds and brings the rains, or keeps them away.

And, finally, the infinite variety of the complex motions of which protoplasm is capable affords the basis of the phenomena of life.

The chief difference between a living and a dead thing is that the live thing can move in a great many ways while the dead thing cannot. The live thing can make these motions of its own power, while the dead thing has to be moved by external forces under the direction of external intelligence.

Not only is Inherent power of motion the sign of life, but its range is the measure of it. That thing has the highest form of life which has the widest range of motion and the greatest capacity for adapting that motion to the end of perpetuating the self moving power. Without motion the world and even man, as we know him would cease to exist.

Motion, I repeat, is the principal fact in the universe. Therefore, it behooves us to study motion in itself apart from its special forms. There are three characteristics of all motions.

Every motion is a movement of (1) something, (2) in some direction and (8) at some rate. Of these three characters we are most interested, for the time, in the third.

It is the rate of motion of matter that determines the audibility and then the pitch of the sound ; it is the rate of the motion of ether which determines whether we shall see light and what color ; or feel heat, or be sunburned, or be affected by the X-Ray.

It is the rate of the motion of water which determines its carrying power, the rate of motion of the bullet which determines the force of its blow.

And, it is the rate of the protoplasmic motion of the living being which determines its capability of carrying on the functions of life.

When protoplasmic movements are at the proper rate the being enjoys smooth interchange of motion between its different parts and between itself and its environment and we call that state of existence health; but when these rates of motion are disturbed we call the resulting condition disease.

It must be our concern to find means to restore to the sick man the power of keeping the proper rate of protoplasmic motion in his body for smooth operation. Whatever will do this will restore his health.

But we must not fall into the error of thinking that this motion must be restored to the body directly as we would raise or lower the number of vibrations of a string in order to get the pitch desired. Remember that the living thing has power to determine its own protoplasmic motions. That power, is, indeed, the seat of its life. It is the possession of that power that makes it alive. That power also gives it self-motion.

Any object that does not possess this self-moving power is dead and moves only as external force is applied to it.

We do not know what rates of motion, what varieties nor what combinations of motion are required for any living thing to make its condition that of smooth operation which we indicate by the term "health."

As conscious beings, we do not know the rate of the ''health motions'' of either ourselves or any other being. But we do know unconsciously what "health motions" are required for our own organisms, and each other living thing unconsciously knows for itself what motion is required to make it manifest health. Furthermore, it knows how to make its organism move at that rate and in that combination of varieties.

Therefore, our task is to find the means for inducing ''that part of us which knows'' to produce in the organism those motions which are required for its perfectly smooth normal operation.

Of all our agencies for doing this, the human hand is the most important. The hand of the therapist has in its own tissues in health, and at all times when expressing the therapist's strong intention to bring healing, those rates of movement which are normal to the body.

These motions are of unknown forms and rates, but we may be certain that they are very fine and complex. They no doubt belong to those forms of motion generally known as vibrations, and hereafter we shall speak of them as the vibrations of the hand.

By "vibrations," however, we mean no discernible quiver or other trembling movement of the hand, but those invisible "health vibrations" in its tissues which are communicated to the tissues of the patient and so cause his unconscious mind to bring all the tissues of his body to similar vibrations.

We have good illustrations of these relations in the study of sound. Every high school boy knows that when you vibrate one tuning fork of a certain pitch near to another of exactly the same pitch, the second fork will be set into vibration by the first. This is called sympathetic vibration and the second fork is said to vibrate in sympathy with the first.

Sympathetic vibration occurs throughout Nature. You may have noticed when you were singing from music, that when you sing certain notes the book or sheet of music in your hand will vibrate.

The back of your chair often vibrates to certain tones when you sit listening to lectures. It is said that a fiddler once frightened the guardians of the suspension bridge at Niagara Falls into letting him pass free by sawing on one note on his violin until he made the bridge quiver ominously.

Every material object, if set into vibration, will emit some certain note and it will sympathetically respond to the same note when produced outside of itself.

When we talk of the ''health vibrations" of the therapist's hand we are not talking about sound vibrations. These 'health vibrations'' are probably much finer and far more complex than any sound vibrations. But we find in sympathetic sound vibrations a good illustration of what occurs when the therapist's hand is placed upon the painful and diseased tissues and restores them to health and ease.

The normal vibrations of the hand are communicated to the patient's tissues where the hand touches them.

These tissues are thereby caused to vibrate at that rate and in that manner which means health, just as the tuning fork responds sympathetically to another of its own pitch.

By recourse to other phenomena of sound we propose to illustrate our second proposition, that when the unconscious mind of the patient finds that part under the hand vibrating at the normal life rate, the health rate, it will be induced to bring the rest of the organism into the same rate of vibration.

This we can illustrate by reference to the actions of the vocal and articulatory apparatus in singing and talking.

The pitch of the voice in speaking and singing is determined by the vocal cords while articulation and tone quality depend mainly upon the resonance chambers of the head and face especially those in the mouth and nose controlled by the tongue. The voice box, the larynx, is made up of cartilages, membranes, and muscles supplied with nerves which control them. In addition to the larynx and its special vocal structures, the whole respiratory apparatus is brought into such close relation to the special speech organs that the vibrating cords are supplied with any desired volume of air for setting them into motion and for carrying their vibrations outwards through the mouth and nose where the organs of articulation determine the tone quality.

If you have never done so, feel the small of your back, or your abdominal wall, or the chest wall, or the muscles of the neck when you sing or speak in a strong voice. You no doubt will be surprised to discover that muscles in all of these regions are brought into strong action in the process.

And, not only are these muscles brought into action in the production of the voice, but that action is controlled and coordinated action. All of these widely separated parts are carefully regulated with reference to each other and to the desired result.

The center of all this activity is the vocal cords. These are the organs which fundamentally produce the tone. Scientific study of sound has shown that for each tone produced there is required a certain rate of vibration which will produce that pitch and no other.

Men talked and sang for a long time before this was known to science and even now that it is known, very few speakers or singers concern themselves about it when they learn to use the voice.

No amount of conscious knowledge of pitches and combinations of pitches will enable the singer consciously to control the vocal cords so as to produce any certain tones. This is all done unconsciously.

All that happens in the conscious mind is that the singer forms a clear idea of the tone desired and then trusts the unconsciously-controlled mechanism of the voice to produce it.

It may be necessary consciously to train some of the respiratory apparatus in order to bring under better control the volume, and to supply always the required amount of air; and it may be necessary to correct certain bad conscious habits, but when it comes to the matter of making the vocal cords take that tension that will produce just the exact number of vibrations per second required for the desired tone, the conscious mind is powerless. The unconscious mind attends to that.

Take, for instance, the note, middle A. This tone is produced by 485 vibrations per second. No other rate of vibration will produce it. And only a certain tension of any certain set of vocal cords can make that number of vibrations per second.

From time to time as the length and thickness of the vocal cords change with growth or the condition of health, the necessary tension changes.

The conscious mind knows nothing of these conditions, but the unconscious mind keeps perfectly informed of them and makes the necessary adaptations.

When a speaker desires to speak or sing at the pitch of A and with a certain force, the unconscious mind which is in control of the vocal apparatus, brings the vocal cords under a certain tension, puts the air in the lungs under a certain pressure and shapes the tongue in certain forms, with the result that the desired tone is produced.

If it is desired to sing a higher or lower tone the vocal cords are made to vibrate accordingly.

One has only to desire to make any note within the range of the vocal powers and the unconscious mind through the apparatus at its disposal will set the vocal cords to vibrating at the necessary rate, whether the conscious mind knows anything at all about the process or not.

Now that same unconscious mind, that knows how and is able to control all of the intricate mechanisms which produce the voice, knows how, and is able, to control the vibrations of the hand and of the rest of the body.

The therapist who is trained to do this can desire that his hand shall vibrate at the health rate and the unconscious mind will make it do so.

When this vibration is communicated to the tissues of the patient his unconscious mind will be given a suggestion which, carried into effect, will cause the patient's unconscious mind to bring all of the tissues of his body into vibration at the health rate.

It is no more difficult to make the tissues vibrate at the rate necessary for health than it is to make the vocal cords vibrate at the rate to produce some certain tone.

This is one of the things that the unconscious mind naturally knows how to do. This is one of the things that it has been doing throughout the life of the patient, something that it has inherited the knowledge of how to do.

If we can but remove the influences that have interfered with its doing this, and if we can give a strong impulse, suggestion, to do it, there is no reason why it should not bring the tissues into a perfect harmony of vibration at the rate that means perfect health.

That the hand can be used to speak the suggestion that will bring about this result has been proven in innumerable cases where this was the principal or the only treatment used.

One of the difficult problems offered to medical science is to administer a remedy that will restore a normal condition of the capillary circulation without destroying the life of the patient. This can be done within a very few minutes by the suggestionist who knows how to convey his suggestion through the vibration of his hand.

CHAPTER II -  STATEMENT OF SPECIFIC CASES

A Mr. S — from Indianapolis, came under our care about two years ago. His physical condition presented a case of pernicious anemia with a temperature of two degrees below normal, skin showing no surface circulation, cold and contracted, and breathing difficult, accompanied by extreme weakness.

The suggestion necessary in this case should call upon his subjective mind to restore a normal capillary circulation. This suggestion was delegated to the hand. Its active principle was the intention to arouse the subjective mind into harmonious action with the purpose stated.

The hand was applied to the patient's body, allowed to remain for a period not to exceed twenty minutes, at the end of which time perfect capillary circulation resulted and a normal temperature was in evidence.

This was repeated in twenty-four hours. On appearing for the second application, the patient had retained more than one-half of the temperature induced by the first treatment.

At the end of a series of about twelve applications, a normal circulation, normal appetite and increasing strength was so much in evidence that the patient was dismissed, returned to his duties, and continued to improve until perfect health was the result.

There has been no relapse, but a condition of steady improvement has obtained, showing that the subjective mind, reinstated in control of the physical functions, has maintained its ascendency, although this patient is not conscious of the operation of his own mind which assisted the suggestion of the healer in restoring him to health.

The above is one of many hundreds of cases, varying only in degree, which have responded in the same manner to suggestion, where its transmission has been conveyed to the patient's body, without any explanation given to the patient objectively as to the process of his recovery.

Three years ago a Mr. M — , from Iowa, aged sixty-four, applied for treatment. His affliction was cataract of the eyes. One eye was entirely gone and the other was rapidly failing.

Physicians in great numbers had told him nothing short of an operation would in any way afford him even relief and that neither eye would be ready for operation for several months. The patient was a student of mental healing. He believed that if I would place my hands upon him a number of times it would cause absorption of the cataract.

Responding to this conviction of the patient the suggestion was delegated to the hand which was applied daily for three weeks, with the result that at the end of that time the better eye had lost all trace of the cataract, while objects were becoming visible to the other eye. The eye restored to perfect sight has remained so ; the other has not improved but has not retrograded and the three weeks of treatment is all that has been used in this case.

One man came to me who had weeping, burning eczema. At least one-fourth of his body was covered with it. The cracks on some parts of his body were so deep that you could lay a twine string in them, close the opening and hide the string. This man said '1 am thoroughly miserable. I have devoted my life to an idea, which I believe to be of great value to our people, and yet I am in such constant misery I cannot give my attention to the work as I would like. Besides, I have just declined, on account of this miserable feeling, an appointment in the President's Cabinet. If it were not for this disease I would be there now. What can you do for me?

"I will do my best for you, if you will do what I tell you," I replied.

'I do not know a thing about it ; I shall do what you say,'' he promised.

Then I explained to him the secret of the laying on of hands. I told him that if he could be still for as much as fifteen minutes each day and let me put my hands on him, I would do my best and we would see what would come.

He promised to do it. He offered no ideas of his own. He just undertook, fifteen minutes each day, to lie down and let me put my hands on him. The third day he reported that he had slept all night, something he had not done before in a quarter of a century. He said, ''What does it mean?" and I replied, 'It means that you are making a response to treatment" At the end of another week patches of eczema as large as my hand had disappeared from his body. At the end of three weeks he had written to some friends in Chicago and Washington that he was just about well. And at once the telegrams began to pour in upon him, asking him to accept the post at Washington.

He came to me one morning and said, "I think I am about well ; I seem to be getting well ; what shall I do ?''

"Wait until tomorrow morning and I will tell you what to do," I replied.

The next morning he had more telegrams and, when he asked me what he should do, I advised him to accept the appointment. He did so, and since has served the government in that important position.

No suggestions were offered to him, except what were conveyed by my hand. No counter-suggestions were offered by him. He never even speculated on how such a result could come from such treatment. He seemed to get the idea I had given him that if he could, with his voice, catch a tone and produce it, he could catch in his affected tissues the "health vibration" in my hand and express it in bodily healing.

Anyone in that attitude of mind, with enough energy to apply for treatment, and who can assume that attitude toward the treatment, may be sure that through the healing hand there can be conveyed to him the healing word that can awaken his healing mind and make it master of the body.

Let me recount another instance in which the healing hand was used as the chief or only means for influencing the patient. A man came for treatment for constipation of long standing. I believe that he told me that he had suffered from constipation in a very aggravated form for sixteen years.

Acting on the theory that his trouble was due to insufficient secretion into, and insufficient movement of, the colon, I placed my hands on his body with the intention that these defects should be remedied ; that he should secrete more fluid into the bowel and wash out the accumulated masses which had adhered to its walls in places, that more vigorous movements should carry out the contents and discharge them, and that this improved condition should continue. 1 continued the treatment with that unchanged intention for about twenty minutes.

After that one treatment the patient was relieved and has had no recurrence of his old trouble in the twenty years that have elapsed since that time.

It would be easy to recall four or five hundred cases that have come under our immediate notice, some showing an instantaneous result, others requiring from a week to four weeks of daily repetition of the same suggestion before a complete cure was made.

In another case a man suffered so severely from frequent attacks of sciatica, which sometimes lasted a week or more, that he was unfitted for the work he was doing, that of Chief of the Fire Department of our city. In his case the hands were placed on his body with the intention that they would convey to his inner mind the suggestion to relax perfectly and that his nerves would be restored to perfect health. In this case the response was immediate and the trouble has not recurred during a period of twenty years.

In a case of chronic diarrhea continuing from the time of the Civil War until the spring of 1897, the hand was applied as the suggestion for a period of not to exceed five minutes during which the unconscious healing mind of this old ex-confederate soldier restored normal action with permanent results.

A certain lady had for a number of years suffered all the nervous disorders incident to the menopause. The symptoms from which she suffered most were loss of sleep, and the irritation of a nervous cough. Local physicians had exhausted all known remedies, without avail. She applied for treatment which consisted in applying the hands to the back and front of the chest and to the base of the brain with the intention of stimulating the principal vasomotor centers and producing general nervous relaxation. After treatment on three successive days she was cured. That was twenty-one years ago, and she is still in perfect health.

We have dealt with the hand as a source of suggestion to the conscious mind, through gesture ; as a source of suggestion to the unconscious mind through the ''health vibrations" which it transmits to the tissues with which it is in contact.

It yet remains for us to study the hand as the source of an emanation which passes from the therapist to the patient. This emanation has been known from the earliest times and yet even today we understand very little of its nature or properties. Each new observer in each age has called it by a different name according to his idea of its nature or properties. Among the many names by which it has been designated are ''magnab magnum" by Van Helmont, "odic force" by Reichenbach, ''animal magnetism" by Mesmer, "vital magnetism" and "human electricity" by others. It was used in earlier times by names unknown to us, the transmission of this emanation probably being the object of the first manipulations which later were developed into the technique of massage.

A classic example of the transmission of this emanation is found in the fourth chapter of II Kings, which recounts the story of Elisha's restoring life to the son of the Shunammite.

Frequent references are to be found in ancient literature to the practice of employing vigorous healthy persons for giving strength to very weak or very old persons.

The hand is used for the purpose of communicating this emanation in all countries through some form of healing rite. There can be no doubt that this is one of the sources of the healing power of the hand.

All of the names which have been given to this emanation from the body are objectionable because they rest upon some theory of its nature.

We do not know enough about the nature of this emanation to name it from that point of view. We know much more about what it is not than about what it is. We know that it is not electricity, nor magnetism, in any exact meaning of these terms.

We do know, however, that it flows from the hands into the bodies of others where it causes many to experience a gentle tingling sensation ; that it is visible to most people under certain circumstances ; that it will make water glow faintly in the dark ; that it will change the taste of water; that in water and other carriers it will convey the intention of the therapist to the patient without the patient's knowledge of what that intention was ; and that at least a considerable part of the credit for manual healing seems properly to belong to the beneficent power of this emanation.

In the absence of more definite information as to the nature of this emanation it has seemed undesirable to name it according to some idea of what it is; hence my son, Dr. Ernest Weltmer, has made yet another name for it. He has called it maneffluvium, a term literally meaning, a flow from the hand. This name describes its source only, and says nothing about its nature.

While the term is a good one, I still find it somewhat cumbersome and we have grown accustomed to using one of the older terms, vital magnetism, that I frequently use the older term even now though it is not really as good as the new one. In general I use the two terms interchangeably. I shall do so in this book.