Mental and physical ease and supremacy

Preface

In adopting the letter form of treatment for the presentation of the important subject of self-help, I have thought to bring writer and reader into closer personal relationship, and thus reduce the subjectmatter more easily to the level of the lowest comprehension.

The letters themselves deal mainly with facts rather than theories. Even in the warmth of exhortation I have aimed to keep well within the lines of demonstrable truth.

The subject is one of tremendous importance. Humanity is waking to a consciousness that it is endued with power. The innate forces of the Ego are greater — far greater — than the ordinary conception of them. But energy has to be set into action along right lines, and it is astonishing to see how this is sometimes done. One may have no proper conception of the power he has until, on some occasion, he runs across another soul in whom there is a glow of enthusiastic faith and achievement from whom lie takes on stimulation as by a happy contagion and is suddenly set going in the right direction.

To many who take up this volume in a casual way the whole matter will seem puerile. Their perceptives are dulled by materialism, or their assimilatives are not in trim for this kind of thing. To many others the book will come as a message from the skies.

I have aimed to keep back no knowledge calculated to aid the seeker after health, and yet I am perfectly conscious that there are many who will find it impossible so to rally their strong forces as to overcome their physical disturbances without getting into closer relations with one who, by the power of his psychic energies, can bring them to a condition of mind in which they shall be able to control their own forces. On the other hand, there are many who will be able, under the guidance and inspiration of these letters, to rise to high levels of health and efficiency. I have aimed to make the way as clear and easy as possible.

14 W. Washington St., Chicago.

July 30, 1914.

Introduction

Cures have undoubtedly been made in all branches of medicine and by an endless variety of means, but the real curative factor has not always been the drug, the manipulation or the operation employed.

The more meager one's knowledge, the more dogmatic one's opinions. In reflecting upon a cure with a view to determining its causes we too often forget that the majority of ailments pass away spontaneously. How to cure those that do not is the important question.

In analyzing psychic methods of cure I am convinced that I am arriving at a broadly rational solution of the general curative problem — I am not aware that anyone has gone about the study of this important subject from precisely my angle.

Leavitt-Science

Psychotherapy, upon which Leavitt-Science is in part built, is now in the third of the three stages through which all radical improvements have to pass : it is being accepted with the cheerful assurance that its truth has never been questioned. And yet even the profession is densely ignorant of its worth. In accepting certain of its features they think they are accepting all there is in it of value. To most practitioners of medicine it still stands mainly for hypnotism, though many of its up-to-date exponents use hypnotism only in exceptional cases. Suggestion without hypnotism, re-education, persuasion, command, psychoanalysis, telepathy and idealism are to them hardly known.

Psychotherapy in its incipiency is expressed in a common belief long ago uttered in the confession that what one confidently expects is very likely to happen. It is a patient's faith that makes him, whole, and the greatest concern of the physician should be to keep alive a saving confidence in the minds of those he serves.

Give men a working formula for health which commends itself to their credence, then contrive by various means to keep alive their faith in it, and the barriers of disease are the more easily broken down. Unqualified confidence in the development of the desired effect, accompanied by energetic turning of the forces of the whole organism towards the accomplishment of it, is strongly compelling. In obstinate cases, and especially in those wherein it is impossible for the patient to mobilize all his forces, the aid of another, possessed of large faith and positive mentality, contributes strongly to the probability of cure.

Why all this is so I do not pretend to know. The fundamental action is out of sight, and about it, as about all life action, there is a cloud of impenetrable mystery. The usual laboratory tests are too coarse to elicit the necessary reactions, and other facilities for its study must be mainly psychological.

The Question of Self-Healing

Readers of psychotherapeutic literature are always asking, "To what extent can we act as our own healers V 9

In every case it is the patient's own forces that work the cure. The psychic mechanism of each of us is able to cope with whatever may arise if only it be set into right action. And yet failures arise among those who appear to be qualified by knowledge and practice to succeed. In such instances I believe the fatal defect is to be found in an absence of right emotional tone. The fire, the spirit, the gumption, the enthusiasm, the courage, the faith which constitutes the motive power required to operate the mechanism is wanting. The very passivity which lies like a spell on the whole organism inhibits energetic and persistent action. There are faint and pathetic risings of purpose, and there are spasms of energy, but they are again lost in inertia.

Thus things remain until some day the ailing one gets hold of an inspiring book, or comes in contact with another personality that stirs him to the core and awakens a spirit of life and energy within him. The one thing lacking is thus mysteriously supplied, and the whole organism is quickened into activity. I have so often witnessed such phenomena that they have become common ; and yet I never cease to wonder at them.

The physician who proves to be a true healer of disease is always one who is capable of supplying this quickening energy to his patients. He intuitively divines the root of the disorder and restores the sufferer to health and tranquillity by his very presence. What is the precise nature of the operation I do not pretend to know. It is still one of nature's mysteries. The ultra scientist insists that the disorder was fanciful and the cure a mere reaction to an ignorant masquerade ; but his terms do not fit the case. Some day these very scientists mil insist that these truths are as old as the hills — as they really are — and that they have never doubted them.

Leavitt-Science Cures Other Than Imaginary Ailments

Medicine has always followed the practice of smiling increduously at whatever could not be interpreted after its own formulas. It repudiates all that comes to it from irregular sources, but is open-hearted and open-armed to recommendations from its recognized workers, no matter how inane, as witness the bones of its credulous victims which strew the course of practice throughout the years.

Why should it be said that a pain is imaginary because, forsooth, it has been relieved by psychotherapy ? Is thought, which is doing so much in the world to-day, to be reckoned an interloper when it enters the medical field ? And are those who use it to be dubbed quacks and charlatans because it has not yet been added to the armamentarium of the regular physicians? Pain is pain wherever found, tho fn some people it is more easily developed than in others. In any case it is the sensibility of the sufferer that must settle the question of its presence or absence, and his testimony is as likely to be reliable in one instance as in the other. One can suffer most excruciatingly without the confirmatory evidence of a lesion. "It should never be drummed into a patient," says Dr. Moll, "because he has no organic lesion that his malady is consequently imaginary. Folks frequently make such remarks, but a psychologically trained doctor should scrupulously avoid anything of the kind at all times. He should know that the expression "imaginary pains" has been excellently compared with hallucinations. Now we say that the hallucinatory object is imaginary, but it is false to say that the perception is imaginary; it has a central cause, whether the object is imaginary or not. Similarly, a pain that is felt is the result of a definite central process. It is a matter of indifference whether the central process is caused by a peripheral one, such as a prick, or through suggestion by a spontaneous act. The pain exists in both cases, and is not imaginary. If in the latter case the patient were to refer it to an external stimulus, he would be wrong. But the doctor must take the pain the patient says he feels as real. To combat and remove such pains is just as much the duty of the physician as the healing of a wound. A doctor may be able to detect and explain the functional nature of a pain, and even trace it to its mental origin, but he should never say it is imaginary."

It is possible for certain people who have their psychic forces under good control to do some most marvelous things through the exercise of the will, and among them is the inhibition of pain. You will readily agree with me that this power, when acquired over physical sensibility, does not prove that all suffering is imaginary. The only spurious pains I am familiar with are those that a woman sometimes has as a prelude to real labor, and they are spurious only in the sense of being valueless to the parturient act.

Some Valuable Data

A quarter of a century ago Dr. George M. Beard, of New York, made some elaborate experiments in one of the large public institutions of that city to determine the power of the mind — and more especially the patient's mind — over physical conditions, or as he puts it, "in order to determine, as accurately as possible, how far it is possible to cure disease by mental influence alone."

I continue to quote from his record.

"In these experiments, which were kept up for many weeks, no medicine of any real value was used, but simply what are called placebos, to act upon the minds of the patients, and induce them to believe that they were taking or doing something that would surely cure them. A favorite device was to tell the patients that they would get well at a certain day and hour. I would say : 'Take this, and you will be well on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock.' 'Take a drop of this mixture just as you are half through dinner, and in half an hour your pain will leave you.' In the majority of the cases — though not, of ourse, in all — these predictions were literally fulfilled. The patients did get well on the time appointed, and many and profuse were the thanks that I received for my success.

a In these experiments were proved absolutely, and beyond all question, that it was possible to relieve in this way, not only imaginary functional troubles, but also genuine and organic diseases, although the results were more certain and more permanent in functional than in organic disease. It had previously been denied by physicians that organic diseases could be affected through, the mind.

"What astonished me most was the permanency of the cures in many of the cases. They not only got better, but they kept better, and, in some instances, recovered entirely."

Dr. Beard a little later goes on to say in italics: "What patients confidently expect to happen will be very likely to happen."

When I tell you that the physician who conducted these experiments was one of the most eminent specialists in America, was a professor in the University of !New York, and a man whose word no physician of standing would for a moment question, it will be evident to you that the testimony here produced is positive, unequivocal and wholly reliable.

The experiments not only established the validity of the claims made by many equally honest men to the value of psychotherapy in the treatment of functional ailments, but it places the stamp of approval on the contention of a small number of trained and experienced medical men that its curative virtues are not restricted to those diseases not yet in the organic stage. To me this is the most valuable part of the testimony, for it is upon this rock of contention that the friends of mind-cure in the medical ranks have split. Pure skepticism is the only thing that keeps the conservative ones from bestowing all the benefits these methods are capable of bringing. Leavitt-Science does cure organic disease.

Cures at a Distance

Several years ago I began experiments to determine the true value of what has been termed "absent treatment." I acquired patients in various parts of the world who were suffering from ailments of all sorts, entered into correspondence with them so as to learn the peculiarities of each case, and then applied to them the principles of treatment herein set forth. I did not attempt to do so by mere thought power, as do the Christian Scientists and many of the New Thought healers, but I educated my patients to think wholesomely, to hold the attitudes of confidence and authority, and to develop as masters of their own forces. They were told to lay aside fear and doubt and discouragement, and to cultivate all the ennobling, the uplifting and the commanding graces. I got into close touch with them, established a rapport that gave weight to my words and thoughts, assured them of my support, of the power of the suggestions I gave and of those they were instructed to give themselves, commanded them to diligence and perseverance and otherwise brought to their aid psychic energies in their various forms. This work I am still doing and the results have been so encouraging that, by means of this book, I am now putting myself into rapport with a host of people in need of various kinds of help, supplying in it what they need to bring them back to health of body and peace of mind. Distant patients are asked to accept these as personal letters, and to make the instruction and inspiration they contain their daily stimuli.

There is rarely an excuse for protracted illness of a slow and dilatory type. The well can stay well if they will, and the ill can get well. These letters contain a Gospel of Health full of potency. There are some who will find themselves unable to accept the message I send, and these are the very ones who are most likely to protest their inefficiency; but to those who bring to their perusal a spirit of honest seeking, of sincere desire and a modicum of faith, making the letters a daily study and their precepts a daily practice, they will be sure to prove "a savior of life unto life."

Let the serious reader of these pages take to heart all that I have here set down as conclusions derived from long and patient research. I do not hesitate to commend them to the needy everywhere.

Letter I A MORE DIRECT WORD

Dear Header:

Are you nervous and restless ?

Are your spirits depressed ?

Are you filled with fear ?

Are you sleepless?

Are you continually studying your feelings ?

Are you indifferent to those you ought to love?

Are you weak?

Are you prematurely old?

Are you in mental or physical distress ?

Have you lost your grip on yourself ?

Do you have to drive yourself to useful action ?

Have you been bereaved ?

Do your finances worry you?

Does the thought of age oppress you ?

Has life lost its color ?

Does the thought of death rise like a spectre before you ?

Do you sometimes wish to die ?

Have you been told that you have organic disease ?

Then the letters which follow are just what you need.

Among other things, they will teach you

That your source of power is within ;

That you ought to trust yourself;

That trials are not enemies;

That you should be master and not servant;

That you have authority over yourself;

That your moods can be controlled;

That heredity can be overcome ;

That your fears can be dissipated ;

That you can sleep;

That you can be strong ;

That you can be of service, though old ;

That you can recover your grip;

That your interest can be awakened;

That your grief can be driven away ;

That you can recoup your losses, and

That you can overcome your physical ailments.

But do not misunderstand me. I do not say that an application of the instruction contained in these letters is sufficient to cure disease in all its forms; but I say it will prove of high value in all ailments, and will cure many of them.

This means that Leavitt- Science is the most efficient of all single means of cure; and that for functional nerve disturbances it is the only cure.

Other Than Psychic Means Sometimes Required

It must be further understood that the amount of positive energy in one who is ailing is not always sufficient to bring about the desired result without aid from another who knows how to meet the requirements of the case. If in your case an appeal has to be made to a physician for help, be sure to choose one whose practice is tinctured with the New Psychology, for the old-time notions to which most physicians are wedded are liable to prove more harmful than helpful. I do not mean to inveigh against the many physicians in every city of our land who are doing splendid work along lines of their own choosing. Most of them are doing their work nobly and honestly. That it does not prove more effective is the fault of its materialism.

But you are not likely to require additional aid if you catch the full meaning and spirit of the letters.

I shall not be surprised to learn that you have succeeded far beyond your expectations.

Now, let me go a little farther and tell you that you cannot expect to get well and remain so if you continue unwholesome ways of living and thinking. The mission of this book is to point out the way to health, and then to give you a strong push in the right direction. At the same time remember that :

You will have to do the walking ;

That the way leads up hill ;

That in places it is very steep and difficult;

That the course you have been following is easy — so easy that you can toboggan most of it; but it takes you to mental and physical disaster;

That there are no easy cuts to the goal. There are short cuts for intrepid feet, but I do not recommend them. Take the longer course, as it gives you time for development and brings you to the end without weariness or ennui.

Letter II THE MYSTERY OF CURE

I have often denied that there is any mysticism about the sort of curative science I shall outline. I have insisted that the only requirement from the patient is the acceptance of plain, practical truths, sueh as would or should appeal to the good sense of anybody. I say: "Here is a rational proposition, and one you cannot decline." Yet some do decline it. Others accept it intellectually without pronounced benefit, while others take it in, without a word, finding relief. And then I begin to think there is at least a mystery about the process of cure.

The physician in general practice who follows orthodox methods has a similar experience. There are some people who can almost uniformly be raised out of their troubles with but little effort and without a painstaking consideration of precise methods. Opening his case of simple remedies, the physician can dispense his medicines, give the directions, and go away without a doubt that he shall find the patient better at his next visit. A single call is often sufficient to set the organic machinery in order, even when the symptoms have looked menacing. About the visit itself there seems to lurk a mysterious influence which serves to set things going aright almost at once.

In this way organic as well as functional troubles are sometimes disposed of as if by magic. On the other hand, symptoms of slight disorder quite as frequently give a world of trouble. Again and again does the doctor return to find that the patient has made no improvement, or has even become worse, when the case had given good promise of speedy recovery. Remedies upon which the doctor has learned to rely produce no apparent effects.

I have talked with hundreds of my confreres on the question and have had identical admissions from them. Surgeons, too, have been brought into the symposium with harmonious testimony.

Medical Fallacies

The history of medicine is full of marvelous cures made by earnest men whose successes led them to believe that they had found nature's secret regarding healing agencies. Their cures were doubtless genuine and their enthusiasms were built upon substantial results, and yet after a time their confidence was lost and then their house of cards came tumbling down.

That greatest healer of all, the serious-minded Mazarine, when He returned to His own part of the country and undertook to work His wonders, found His charms inert, for it is recorded that He was unable to do many marvels there. Among His successors there were for a time some wonderful cures, but by degrees the power to work them failed and the church accepted the dictum of the clergy that the day of miracles was at an end.

A century and a half ago Mesmer set the French capital wild over his successes with all manner of diseases, and for years he was regarded with the admiration accorded to all great healers. But after a time he was robbed of his power and sank into oblivion.

In our times innovators spring up, do marvelous things, catch the eye of the public, raise high hopes and then drop out of sight. In some of the exploited remedies there is a modicum of virtue remaining as an accretion of truth, and tending, along with others, to lift the load of suffering humanity.

Men are looking for specifics and panaceas with indefatigable zeal and persistency, but thus far they have looked in vain because they have looked in the wrong direction.

The Healing Entities

When we reflect that what we can expect from the outside in the work of putting this physical house of ours in order does not bulk very large, but that the forces within us are the healing entities, the advisability of choosing our helps with discretion becomes evident.

The unexpected often happens under particular conditions. In the very thick of a warm fight for supremacy the sturdy powers of the organism sometimes receive reinforcements from unexpected and mysterious sources, enabling them to win a quick victory. We look on with wonder and see a sick man get well promptly when we had expected a long fight to cure him, and ask ourselves what it was that saved him. No vaunted remedy was used; the usual routine was followed, and yet all at once the patient took a turn in the right direction and got well quickly.

The Healing Mysteries

Say what we will, the fact remains that about every cure there is an element of mystery. The true physician is a priest at a holy altar. Healing virtue is not to be found in the remedy itself, but in an unction which carries to the organic centers that wonderful something which works the cure. By such action the life forces are encouraged to get about their work with renewed energy and with increased intelligence. Like all the energies that we know anything about, this one stands wrapped in mystery. Its subtle elements do not react to our gross chemicals ; its true nature does not disclose itself at our coarse bidding. We are as puzzled as is the schoolboy by the magician.

One who is ill, having tried all the vaunted remedies without relief, picks up an idea or two from the teachings of another, which, joining the general content, set in motion new and efficient forces. Another consults the same source of power without getting a particle of help. The doctor uses his powers upon a patient today with surprising effect, and on another tomorrow with no effect at all. The first goes away to sound his praises and the second to proclaim his inefficiency.

There is mystery about the whole problem of cure, behind which only a few have yet had a discerning glance. Medicine proceeds in its blundering and bluffing way, while the people look on with mixed emotions of hope and fear. What is to come of it all ? The effects of disease and the means of recognition are being exploited. Here and there one declares that he is on the very verge of a great secret of cure, while others of larger credulity naively affirm that they have already found it.

Nature does most of her work under cover; her forces and processes are invisible. How, then, can we expect to learn her secrets if we study the physical side of the problem only ? Our most delicate instruments of precision are too coarse. We must catch the emanations from the mysterious depths, and to do so we have to search more carefully amongst the mental and spiritual phenomena. It is of the results of such research work as this that I am about to speak.

Letter III THE BASIS OF CURE An Analysis of Phenomena

Let us now analyze the phenomena mentioned in my last letter, to learn, if we can, their meaning.

One step at a time. Take first the susceptible patient who for some reason is so quick to respond to almost every form of treatment used, provided it be administered by his own physician or one in whom, for some sentimental reason, he has learned to have confidence. If the true potency of the remedy were in the drug, the vaccine, the electricity, or whatever is employed, the results should be substantially uniform, no matter what the patient's mental attitude, and the treatment should win its way against the innuendoes, the sarcasms and the denunciations of the patient and his friends. Even tho the physician forced his way into the house and insisted on curing the patient nolens volens, he would be able to do so. But, says my critic, there is great resistance offered to the curative action of the remedy by the adverse mental attitude. Mental opposition is able to antidote the good effects of the remedy, no matter how precious its values as a curative agent. But let us suppose that there is no opposition, the mental attitude being one of mere indifference. The patient may take the ground that the medical attendant is not able to effect progress one way or the other. There is neither help nor hindrance offered the earnest doctor who is trying his best to set up an action in his patient which shall result in his cure. With a neutral state of mentality in the patient, it seems as though the curative means and measures ought to be able to produce their good effects if they carry energy of the necessary kind. In a series of such instances the patients might all recover, just as they might should no remedial agent be used, for the natural forces are the great factors in cure under all circumstances, the remedies used doing nothing more than support and stimulate the life forces as they are marshaled to the contest. But it is not in such instances that the physician's efforts reach a high degree of efficiency. The results obtained are indifferent. Patients are apt to feel that their own physician becomes so well acquainted with their physical peculiarities that he knows best what remedies are suited to them. There is some truth in the supposition, but it is not so large as is commonly believed. The familiarity which gives the regular attendant his advantage is chiefly an acquaintance with the mental constitution of his clients, and he reaches them mainly through their minds.

Let us now turn to the phenomena accompanying the introduction of new remedies and analyze them in an equally brief way.

When we look at the flat failures of nearly all the vaunted remedies for stubborn ailments which have been introduced during recent decades, we are impelled to suspect the honesty of the men who introduced them. There is no doubt that some innovators, recognizing the credulity of the public, have dreadfully imposed upon it. Their loud claims were sure to turn the confidence of many into curative channels and, it was assumed, the successes obtained were sufficient guaranty of the promoter's sincerity. When cures of refractory forms of disease have followed the administration of a remedy, it is impossible for one to sustain a contention of its lack of curative energy, and so the introducer of it escapes without legal, or even moral, rebuke. Besides, it is a moot question whether the resulting cures made under such conditions are not an adequate justification of the action of the introducer, even though he well knew that his cures resulted from psychic impressions rather than from the virtues of the remedies themselves. In all forms of practice there is a similar action going on, and the most conscientious consider themselves justified in encouraging it within limits. Only a short time ago a physician of large experience, in the course of a conversation regarding curative measures, said to me under his breath: "Doctor Leavitt, the practice of medicine is a great big humbug." To this characterization I do not yield, though I am sure that there is much in medicine that passes for what it is not.