Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1884 — Mind Cures. [ARTICLE]

Mind Cures.

While Chicago is busied with great material enterprises, Bostou is developing a new “ism” that is likely to create a good deal of attention. It is called the mind cure. Literally thousands of the people of that good city believe that disease may be banished from the oarth hv professing a belief in supernatural agencies, and submitting to the personal magnetism of certain highly endowed men and women, who, by the laying on of hands, can rid the afflicted Serson of the ills he suffers from. Gen. UP. Banks, the Rev. W. It. Alger, and a great many clergymen are said to be believers in the mind cure. Diseases of all kinds, it js claimed, are because of a lack of faith. Fear, which is inverted faith, is one of the inciting causes of physical ailments. Of course this craze is but the repetition of an old, old story. From the medicine man in his wigwam, all through the history of the race, certain religious, mystical zealots have claimed that mind is so far superior to matter as to be able to control it. The power to heal the sick is regarded in many countries, as it has been in all ages, as a warrant from the Most High to prove the truth of certain theological dogmas. It is, however, surprising that so intelligent a community as that oi Boston should give acceptance to so old a superstition. It is, nevertheless, true that the imagination has much to do with the fancied ailments of nervous people. Many hundreds of thousands of human beings think they are sick when all they really need is some stimulus that will set them to work, or some absorbing pursuit that will take then! out of themselves. When one’s energies are directed outward instead of inward there is no time for brooding over fancied ailments. This is all there is in faith cures or mind cures—-Dem-oresfs Monthly.

The editor of a scientific monthly asks for correct drawings of a “Tornado at Work. ” A man who went home the other night and found his wife reading a letter signed “Tour Own Julia," which she found in his inside coat pocket, has made a sketch of the •subsequent proceedings," which he will send to the scientific editor.— £jc. The following ages have, on the authority of a skillful arborculturist, been attained by trees: Yew, 3,200 years; schnbertia, 3,000; cedar, 2,000; oak, 1,500; spruce, I,2oo;.liine, 1,100; Oriental palm, 1,000; walnut, 000; olive and cypress, 800; orange, 630; maple, 500; elm, 300. - —; a —1 "Oh, don’t propose to me now," shrieked a Philadelphia girl as her lover dropped on his knees and seized her hand. “Don’t pop the question now," she screamed; "don’t, don’t, don’t If I pav yes you’ll want to kiss me, and I’ve been eating onions." How 1 xattral it will be for Jay Gould to singent on hi* new yacht: “Bear down on the bull works!" The Hmrimippi dvil-aerrice law shuts saloon-keepers out of office.