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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    ment or restoration to health has, alas ! been but temporary, for, on the mental stimulus excited by religion and hope wearing off, the patient has relapsed to the former condition. In Catholic countries of the Roman and Greek communions the walls of the churches are decorated with votive inscriptions, with small models of limbs in wax, in silver, and in less costly materials, and in some one finds even the crutches of the halt and lame, who, faith having made them whole, have needed them no longer. It is hardly remarkable to find that this custom of decorating the sacred walls with tokens or memorials of gratitude for divine intervention and grace was practised in the classic days of Egypt and Greece, for, as the Preacher asked: 4 Is there a thing whereof men say, See this is new ? It hath been already in the ages which were before us.’ So the temples of Serapis1 and of the gentle- 1 Strabo has recorded the great reputation for healing enjoyed by a temple of Serapis, near Canopus, in his day. Pilgrims of all ranks assembled there, and the canal way from Alexandria, which was their route, was crowded day and night with the temple traffic. See Geography of Strabo, Bohn ed., vol. iii. p. 238.