Two authorities on this point must suffice: Brinton who says (15, p. 6) that "the laws of human thought are frightfully rigid, are indeed automatic and inflexible" and that all minds deal "with nearly the same objective facts in nearly the same subjective fashion, the differences being due to local and temporal causes." (p. 9. ) Again, Boas who in his discussion of the mind of primitive man says (10b, pp. I-II) "it would seem that, in different races, the organization of the mind is on the whole alike, and that the varieties of mind found in different races do not exceed, perhaps do not even reach, the amount of normal individual variation in each race."
It is our purpose, in the first place, to show by a genetic study of the healing art that the ideas of the human race concerning disease and its cure establish this canon. In the second place, we hope, that as the study proceeds, we may discover and make somewhat more evident the laws of mind which condition its reaction to the phenomena which we study. In the third place, we shall hope to be able to show that the phenomena themselves while strikingly different when casually viewed from the outside, the real causes and effects being obscured beneath a mass of form, ceremony and superstitious or unscientific beliefs, are in reality dependent upon the action of certain now commonly recognized laws of mind, quite limited in number and of universal application. Further, we shall attempt, if these three points are well taken, to point a way to a more scientific view of the subject and to suggest some ways by which our knowledge may be made useful in the overthrow of superstition and to the positive benefiting of mankind both physically and mentally.
To the ends suggested our method is to be historical in so far as we study the development of beliefs regarding the healing art; comparative, that we may gather the common elements of the various beliefs; and psychological in attempting to discover some laws of mental life by means of which the phenomena observed may become more intelligible.
In order to determine with some degree of accuracy at what stage of his mental evolution man began to have thoughts about disease and its cure it seems necessary to sketch in brief outline the steps by which he developed, through reaction to a world full of movements, sights, and sounds, a mentality of a higher order than that of his animal ancestry.
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
