Hope And Healing
Sources:
Papers On Health
The mind has always an influence on the body. Life
rises and falls under the influences of ideas, so as to prove that
these are a matter of life and death to man. To give an invalid hope
is, then, to help mightily in healing the disease, whereas to tell
patients that they are incurable is the sure way to make them so. But
there is, on the other hand, little good in falsehood and false hope:
this has often been found to
fail and leave the patient in complete
despair. No one can tell the immense power for healing which is exerted
when one who truly hopes for the patient looks brightly into his eyes,
and speaks with a genuine ring of hope of the possibility of cure. So
many cases found incurable by the usual treatment have yielded to that
recommended in these papers, that in almost all cases we may see some
ground for hope, if not of cure, at least of great alleviation. To give
this impression to a patient is to half win the battle.
There are many who speak most carelessly, even wickedly, to those in
trouble. They think it a duty to dash their hopes and predict gloomy
things. Such should never enter a sick-room, and should, indeed, change
entirely their manner of speech. To go about the world sowing doubt and
gloom in men's hearts is a sorry occupation, and one that will have to
be accounted for to Him who is emphatically the "God of hope."
Look, then, in treatment for every least sign of improvement.
Discourage all doubts and encourage all hopes, and you will make what
would be a really hopeless case, if the patient were left to despair,
one that can be comparatively easily cured. "A word to the wise is
enough."