Faith Cures--and Others

In the wake of Emile Coue, many innovations, scientific and otherwise, have followed. There is, for instance, " Sister" Mabel Harrell, nurse of New York, who has effected miraculous " cures" in Harlem, Negro enclave of the metropolis. Cripples, paralytics, the blind and deaf, idiot children have flocked to her meetings in an ecstasy of evangelical fervor. Prayer, hymn-singing, the laying on of hands, and unquestioning faith are her only accessories. These "cures " are, of course, explainable by perfectly natural psychological processes, and are nothing new under the sun. For certain types of afflictions, and with certain religious temperaments, Sister Harrell and her like may do little harm and much good. No public health laws are violated, but the effects are almost always temporary.

On a far different plane is the serious attempt of St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie, an old downtown church in New York, to establish a scientific " body-and-soul " clinic. It is under the auspices of the National Association for the Advancement of Scientific Healing, with Dr. Edward S. Cowles, neurologist, at its head, assisted by six physicians, and a corps of ministers, nurses and social workers. The medical men control all treatments. Where spiritual guidance is needed, clergymen are called to assist. Rev. William Norman Guthrie and Rev. Edward Cosbey, rectors of the church, are actively identified with the movement, and several prominent physicians, ministers and laymen are directing the work of the Association.

All applicants receive a thorough mental and physical diagnosis. The cases treated are chiefly well-known psychiatric types--multiple personalities, obsessions, phobias, depression and melancholy, hypochondria. The treatment consists largely in recognized psychoanalytic methods of probing the patient's mental life, revealing the forgotten early experiences, hereditary or other causes which initiated the difficulty, and encouraging the sufferer to face and conquer his own troubles. Fifty patients a day are coming to the clinic, many of them intelligent and refined persons, and excellent results have already been secured.

A similar clinic has been opened recently at the Plymouth Congregational Church, Seattle, Wash., Dr. Chauncey J. Hawkins, minister. The clinic does not follow the methods of Coue, or the Emmanuel Movement, though it recognizes and utilizes the mental elements in healing. The treatment is entirely in the hands of responsible physicians and psychologists, without interference by the clergy.