half as much and you should create an idea you would be accused of being superstitious, believing everything and imagining all sorts of humbugs.
The word imagination is so misapplied that it has lost all the value it ever had, and like religion it has a name without meaning covering numerous deceptions applied to weak-minded people. I never use the word as others do. When people think they have a disease which I know they have not, I do not ascribe it to their imagination, but to the fact that they have been deceived. A physician may tell you what is not true about yourself. If you believe it and he deceives you that is no disgrace to you, for it shows an honest heart and confidence in the physician. Then follows the creation and appearance of the thing he has told you. As far as you are concerned you are blameless, but the physician is a liar and hypocrite and has used your creative powers to deceive you for his own selfish ends. Now when their hypocrisy and deceit are exposed they cry out, “humbug, our craft is in danger: this quack works upon the imagination of the sick and makes them believe the medical faculty are not honest.”
Let me call your attention to one fact; the word imagination never applies to the first cause. There is a superior power that originates, and imagination does the work and produces. Science detects the direction that is given to imagination and corrects it if false. All men have gone out of the way, and no one reasons from Science. So Wisdom classes them all, that it may save the whole by introducing the light of a new mode of reasoning that will separate error from truth. This refers to the subject of health and happiness and not to arts and sciences. The evils that affect the body and mind are included.
HOW THE OPINIONS OF PHYSICIANS OPERATE
No one knows the mischief or the misery that physicians of all kinds make by their opinions, and this never will be known till man learns that his belief makes his trouble. For instance, a person feels a slight disturbance at the pit of the stomach. Ignorant of its cause, he applies to a physician. Here comes the trouble. The physician assumes a false character. His practice makes him either a simpleton or a knave, for if honest he would know that he could not tell anything
