98 OCCULT PRINCIPLES OF HEALTH & HEALING
enormously increased, and the tie between them was
closer than possible where the offices of spiritual and
medical adviser are divorced.
It is patent that the art of medicine has reached a
stage of efficiency which could not have been attained
save by devotion to that one particular end and aim.
The safeguards of sanitary laws, the extinction of
insect carriers of disease are monumental testimonies
to the value of modern scientific methods. Thus it may
seem as if all were well and there were no need of
further effort. But in reality, until humanity as a whole
enjoys perfect health, there is no issue more important
than the question, How may we attain and maintain
perfect health?
In addition to the regular school of surgery and
medicine, which depends exclusively upon physical
means for the care of disease, other systems have
sprung up which depend entirely on mental healing. It
is the custom of organizations which advocate “mind
cure”, “nature cure”, and other like methods to hold
experience meetings and publish journals with
testimonials from grateful supporters who have
benefited by their treatments, and if physicians of the
regular school did likewise there would be no lack of
similar testimonies of their efficiency.
The opinion of thousands is of great value, but it
does not prove anything, for thousands may hold an
opposite view. Occasionally a single man may be right
and the rest of the world wrong, as when Galileo
maintained that the Earth moves. Today the whole
world has been converted to the opinion for which he
was persecuted as a heretic. We maintain that as man