Faith cure

A problematical system under which it is claimed that ailments can be cured without remedies, and through the exercise of faith alone. The faith seems to be in the power of certain individuals to produce this result, or in certain objects, such as an image of the Virgin or other religious emblems. Numerous remarkable results are stated to have occurred, though it has not been scientifically demonstrated that any serious ailments have been in this way removed. Other systems, known as Christian Science, Metaphysical Healing, ., seem based on the same principle, though the advocates of these hold that faith is not nece ary. It is an undoubted fact that the mind has a vigorous influence over the condition of the body, and that a strong belief in the probability of a cure has often been followed by a cure, without medicine or through the use of an inactive substitute for medicine. But, though a person by exertion of his own mental powers may exercise a curative influence over the disorders of his body, it does not follow that another person can do so; and the claim that one person can, by mental exertion, affect the mind, and through it the body of another, needs much additional evidence before it can be accepted as an established fact.