Faith-healing and Christian Science / by Alice Feilding.

  • Feilding, Alice.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Faith-healing and Christian Science / by Alice Feilding. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    belonged to persons whom he had cured of lameness. The common healing formula was to c stroke the part affected thrice gently, to blow on it thrice, to repeat a form of words, and to give a perforated coin or some other such object to be worn as an amulet.’ Most people will be able to call to mind instances of this same sort of simple and ignorant faith-healing. Who, for instance, has not heard of ‘ the old woman ’ who, in this or that neighbouring hamlet, was renowned for a mysterious wisdom in the art of curing or charming away such common diseases as the poor are most usually afflicted with ?1 Some concoction of woodland herbs picked at dawn and a cabalistic incantation were credited with the wonder wrought, but in faith really lay the active principle of the cure. In the days of the generation now passing away—a generation innocent of the vulgar smattering of cheap scientific knowledge, and simple enough to 1 ‘ Old women,’ says Brand in his notes on ‘Physical Charms,’ ‘ were always famous for curing warts; they were so in Lucian’s time.’—Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, Bohn ed., 1855, vol. iii. p. 276.