Epilepsy
Epilepsy is one of the diseases of which we know very little. To say that all Epilepsy is caused by suggestion may not be supported by some authorities, but I believe that nearly all
authorities now accept the theory that there are at least certain kinds of Epilepsy which are psychic--mental.
Gowers has described psycho-epileptic attacks, the symptoms consisting principally of periodic attacks of intense fear or of intense depression, usually beginning and ending suddenly, but of more or less protracted duration.
Coriat, in "ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY" supports this theory. The purely psychic character of the attacks is shown in their origin in anxiety or other emotions, the complete or abortive persistence of the anxiety in the attacks, the cleavage of the personality, their automatic character, and the possibility of their artificial reproduction or the artificial synthesis of the lost memory for the attack.
When the attacks consist merely of periodic anxiety and depression, they can frequently be reproduced at will by allowing the mind to dwell upon the attacks and can even be prevented by directing the mind along other channels. The feeling of depersonalization, of unreality, the possibility of artificial reproduction of the attacks and of the artificial recovery of the amnesic period, shows that we are probably dealing with a process of mental dissociation.
If this be true, and it is as reasonable as any other theory which has yet been adduced to explain epileptic attacks, we see where psychology may be the key to solve the whole situation.
Many people in our classes who have been sufferers from Epilepsy have been greatly
benefited by mental treatment. Oliver Sabin tells of a man who had been a victim of epilepsy for over forty years but when there came into his mind the realization of the truth that he was the image and likeness of God, that he lived and moved and had his being in the
God-consciousness, and therefore was perfect as God is perfect, the epilepsy never again made its appearance. Yes, epilepsy can be healed.
Epilepsy Can Be Cured
One of the greatest mental healers in America, was, over twenty years ago, given up by some of the best physicians in the country, with the diagnosis that his malady would lead either to death or insanity. He is still living and, in his own language, "I am not a dead one, and if I am insane, I am enjoying it." He has not had an epileptic seizure for a quarter of a century.
Into one of Henry Victor Morgan's meetings there entered a young lady who had been an epileptic for years. She had heard the story of some one else who had been healed of epilepsy and was so thrilled with the thought that healing could be effected by mind and that
she could be normal like others, that she took the statement exactly as it was given in the healing meeting that day and went out cured. She has not had a seizure since.
Yes, many people are healed of epilepsy. We may not know the particular thing that has caused it, but we do know that mind treatments can heal.
The young lady mentioned above was healed and never had a second treatment, however, if one is not healed so quickly, the following method of treatment will be of great service.
That people have been cured of epilepsy is no longer a question. Many have been. The best suggestion we can offer you is that you practice the silence and charge the subconscious mind faithfully each night upon retiring with this affirmation (also take the affirmation when you hold the silence).
All the organs of my body are functioning normally. I am a son of the Divine, perfect in Spirit, mind and body. I am at one with the Universal Spirit of God and just as there is no
imperfection in the Father, neither is there any in me. I am well, whole and perfect, strong and harmonious.
If you will hold this thought as mentioned above at least four times a day, five to fifteen
minutes at each period, and then again as you drop off to sleep, using the method of charging the subconscious mind as outlined in this volume and Practical Psychology and Sex Life, Volume 3 in this series under chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, you can get your mind so that your seizures will not be so frequent. The main thing is to have your mind thoroughly
occupied with the affirmation or formula we gave you above (or other formulae), a few days before your customary seizures. When you have passed one or two of your ordinary periods for the paroxysms you will feel much encouraged. This will give you more strength to continue holding this thought we have given you, most faithfully a few days and hours before the
expected time. This in time will crowd out the subconscious thought of epilepsy, making you well.
It will not be long before you will have passed the time for seizure the second time and probably the third time for a seizure, then again it will come back. This is to be expected but be not discouraged ; know that if you have been able to de- lay one seizure each week, that you will have that same power again and in time have perfect control.
The Reason
Probably, for some reason or other, there is deeply imbedded in the subconscious mind the idea that at certain times the seizures are going to return. Every time that so-and-so happens, so-and-so will follow.
To make the opposite suggestion strong enough and often enough is to effect a healing, while, as we mention above, some are healed instantaneously.
Perhaps not all epileptics are responsive to mental healing and yet that may he due to the fact that we have not learned the last little letter in the alphabet of healing. Possibly, therefore, all cases of epilepsy can be healed. Surely it is worth while to make the effort. There is a large percentage of cures to the credit of suggestion. Some who have practiced this method believe
that every case of epilepsy can be cured in the young before forty years of age is reached. In view of the fact that many have been healed even after that age we need not give up trying just because we have not yet learned a one hundred per cent healing.
The late Hugo Munsterberg, M. D., for a number of years Professor in Harvard University, was successful in curing certain kinds of diseases by hypnotism. If every other method fails, we should not hesitate in recommending that this method might prove successful with certain subjects, if treated by a reputable practitioner of hypnosis. To verify this method we give below an illustration by Professor Munsterberg.
Another Way
A young woman afflicted with epilepsy was brought up in the belief that she had only from time to time fainting attacks from overwork, and with them secondarily neurasthenic
symptoms, especially spells of depression colored by a constant fear of the next fainting. She had heard voices all her life and they frightened her in an intolerable way. I produced a very slight hypnotic state. I concentrated my effort entirely on suggestions which were to give her new interest in life, and diminished the emotional character of the voices without even trying to make them disappear. I proceeded for several months. The young woman herself believed that the fainting attacks came less frequently afterwards; yet I am inclined to think that that is an illusion. But there was no doubt that her whole personality became almost a different one with the new share in the world. The epilepsy remained probably unchanged but all the superadded emotions were annihilated and she felt an entirely new courage which allowed her to control herself between her regular attacks. She had been unable to undertake any regular work before for a long while, but all that improved. More than a year afterward, she wrote me: "I have really worked most of the time this past winter and spring and I think I can see a steady though slow gain. I am reading quite a little and doing it for the most part easily.
To be sure I have, after I have read, hard times with the voices but their character is usually less determined and fearful than formerly. Several times I have thought I must come again to you but each time I have started again to fight it out for myself, but now, as I am gaining, I can better estimate the great help your influence was to me at a juncture when everything seemed so hopeless and helpless."
Even in slight psychasthenic disturbances, the psychotherapeutic influence is not always successful, especially if there is no time for full treatment. But it is very interesting to see how even in such cases the symptom is some- how changing, almost breaking to pieces. It
becomes clear that a protracted effort in the same direction would destroy the trouble completely. Typical is a case like the following.
An elderly woman has been troubled her life long by a disproportionate fear of thunderstorms with almost hysterical symptoms. As she had no other complaint, I hardly found it worth while to enter into a systematic treatment and could not expect much of a change from a short treatment, considering that her hysteric response had lasted through half a century. As she begged for some treatment, I brought her into a drowsy state and told her that she would in future enjoy the thunderstorms as noble expressions of nature. The whole procedure took a few minutes. Yet after some summer months she wrote me a letter which clearly indicated this characteristic compromise between the habitual dread and the reinforced counter idea. "I have the same sick dread at the sight of thunder clouds that I have always had, but I seem to have gotten somehow a most desperate determination to control my fear. I have done this to
the extent of keeping my eyes open and looking at the storm. Is that hypnotism or pride."
Insanity Also
We have had enough evidence now by the practice of mental therapeutics to know that insanity can be cured. Insanity may be healed also by music.
There is a doctor who does not want his name known because he would be ostracized by his profession, but who tells me that he has healed many a person from insanity by talking
directly to the subconscious mind. The patient may seem to be listless and paying no
attention to what the doctor says. That does not discourage the experimenter. He continues to talk in a constructive, positive, health bringing, normally constituted way to the subconscious mind of the individual. Sometimes weeks afterward he will see the same patients (he's working in a big State Insane Hospital) when they will speak to him in a normal way and say they knew everything he was telling them when he was talking to their subconscious and yet they could not answer, or they seemed to be speechless.
It is the same thing in healing insanity as any other kind of weakness or sickness, namely, reach the subconscious by a counter suggestion. Crowd out the old thoughts and images with the new.
One of the particularly evil suggestions of the day is implanted in wide spread medical dicta relative to venereal diseases, especially syphilis, which is said to be detected by the blood test.
Of all of the discouraging things I ever met in my practice, the most pronounced examples (psychologically speaking) have been good, normal young women who have contracted syphilis from their husbands, have had blood tests made month after month, with the awful news, periodically imparted to them, that they are no better.
George Starr White, M. D., has written a most illuminating treatise, "The Blood Test Fallacy" in which he shows that blood tests are absolutely erroneous and that there is nothing to them.
We have records of people who have been healed of blood poisoning, without any recurrence in any way whatsoever for fifteen years and more.
To tell a person that he or she is infected with the most loathsome and horrible of scourges and then to continue to inform the sufferer that he or she is getting no better (because blood tests indicate no improvement) is about as deadly a suggestion as imagination could
conceive.
Don't believe everything that you hear.
The Blood Test Fallacy
For many years the medical profession has been taught, and they, in turn, have taught the laity, that "pure blood means health." How often we hear it said that "the blood tells."
Inasmuch as great truths are taught by similes, I shall introduce one here: In a certain village there are one hundred inhabited houses. The water supply is carried through a common main
to all these houses. A sewer system takes away the liquid refuse from these houses. Would you judge the character of any one of those inhabitants by the water-supply pipe, or by the outflow of the sewer ? The water might be contaminated that goes to those houses, but the inmates might be educated enough to so change that water as to make it safe to use. One house might pour quantities of alkali into the sewer, but another might pour in enough acid refuse to neutralize the alkali of the other. In short, no one would think of judging the character of the inhabitants in a village by the water supply, nor by the sewer outflow.
In all life--be it animal or vegetable--there is a "liquid tissue" which acts as a carrier of food to all parts and also acts as a carrier of detritus, or worn out tissues, to be cast out.
The sap of the tree carries the life-giving particles, be they gaseous or solid, to every part of the tree and fruit. It also carries off, for final disposal, that which is not wanted by the tree.
Would you imagine that the sap of a tree would tell that a limb was dead, or that some fungus had attacked the bark of the tree or the fruit? No, it will not.
The blood of any animal--red blood or white blood-- carries food to all parts of the body and carries away the waste particles. The fluid that carries the food is called arterial fluid, while that which picks up and carries away the waste is called venus fluid.
In warm-blooded, and in some cold-blooded animals, the food-carrying fluid is red and called arterial, or oxygenated blood, while the waste-carrying fluid is blue and called venus, or deoxygenated blood.
This blood is a tissue just as much as muscle and bone are tissues. It is a part of the
"community" and like the water pipe in a community, carries something in for the "families" to use, and like the sewer, carries out of the "families" what is not wanted.
From time immemorial there has appeared to be something mysterious about red blood. Had the "old philosophers" reasoned from the standpoint of evolution, they would have discovered that the juice of plants and the sap of trees and the white blood of some animals and the red blood of other animals, are all for the same purpose and act about the same. Because the blood was red and represented life, as it were, the erroneous idea arose that "pure blood means health."
An animal may have any kind of disease and still not have it show in the blood. The blood itself can be diseased, and because of its inability to carry on its work make all other parts of the body sick, but an arm or a leg or any part of the body can be diseased and the blood not show it at all.
I have often seen the blood of persons dying from various diseases tested and show nothing abnormal, except, maybe, a lack of red cells, the carriers of food, and an increase of "white cells," the carriers of waste material. By certain standard laboratory tests, the blood may even indicate disease when this action resulted simply from some temporary change in the blood itself, dependent upon the demands made upon it.
Now I expect those who have not investigated the subject, or those who have not made it a business to study laboratory methods of all kinds, to say that such statements as the above cannot be true. I am prepared to say that I know they are true.
I have sent, or had sent, samples of blood from persons afflicted with known diseases, to State and Government laboratories as well as to the best known private laboratories, all using so-called ethical and standard methods of testing, and received no two reports alike. The reports are always more often contrary to the clinical findings than corresponding to them.
Here is the crucial test: Let the blood be sent to any board-of-health laboratory, state or city--and no symptoms of any kind be given, city--and the reports will be a revelation to the sender. If the symptoms are given, be they correct or not, the reports will usually be in keeping with the report sent.
I have squandered hundreds of dollars on laboratories throughout the United States to make sure that I was correct in this and now I know that I am correct!
I have had personal training in all modern laboratory work and I know that I know what I say when I state that there is no test of the blood that will tell what ails the person from whom that blood was taken, unless the disease be of the blood itself!
I have talked "confidentially'' with the heads of the best laboratories in the land and they have told me the same thing, but added, that inasmuch as their work was that of testing, they had to use the recognized, standard, ethical methods. They also would state, if closely
questioned, that they usually reported to suit the sender, for to be at variance with the sender would likely make them lose his patronage. This is human nature. There is no use in trying to side step that factor, even if the blood would tell. But the blood cannot tell!
The brain or nervous system sends out a call for certain food and the blood brings it, if it can be had, or can be manufactured for it in the system. The blood then picks up what waste it
The brain or nervous system sends out a call for certain food and the blood brings it, if it can be had, or can be manufactured for it in the system. The blood then picks up what waste it