As already mentioned before, some of the material I'm going to bring here will not necessarily come from the established scientific literature but, rather, also from personal and newspaper reports. Nevertheless, I will try to bring as many refereed, professional references as I can. I will also publish most reports you might send me about your own personal encounters with imaginative healing methods. To this end, please refer to my e-mail request at the end of my main page. Thanx for your help!
A very nice article to start with is that of S.W. McDONALD (McDonald, 1998) which investigates beliefs about healing in early modern Scotland. His information comes from a study of 61 Scottish witchcraft trails of the 16th and 17th centuries (1563 to 1735). According to his work, there are two classes of cures: those involving black magic, i.e. intending harm to individuals, and those involving white magic, i.e. those incurring no harm to others. (In the quotes below referring to this paper, the locality and year of trial have been taken from Table 1 of McDONALD and given by me here in ()'s after the respective names of the accused witches.)
Black magic cures fall into two categories:
- reversing disease by casting off illness allegedly already caused by the witch
"Diseases left when Katherin Moore (Bute, 1662), Beigis Tod (Longniddry, 1608) and Agnes Finnie (Edinburgh, 1644) met their supposed victims. Margaret McWilliam (Bute, 1662) simply told the patient's wife that he would be well. Johnett Wischert (Aberdeen, 1597), however, provided beer and drugs to remove a fever. Grissel Gairdner (Newburgh, 1610) used drinks and incantation to reverse madness. After Margaret Hutchison (Duddington, 1661) allegedly cursed her maid who became distracted, she transferred the disease to a cat. Fever left Cuthbert Greg when Margaret Wallace (Glasgow, 1622) took him by the wrist and prayed."(McDonald, 1998, p. 120)½
- transferring disease from one individual to another
"Margaret Clerk (Lumphanan, 1597), a midwife, was twice accused of transferring labour pains to men. ... it was believed that Isobel Young (East Barns, 1629) transferred disease by placing an enchanted thread across door so that the illness passed to whoever next entered. John Neill (Tweedmouth, 1631) also allegedly laid disease at a door. Aliesone Nisbett (Berwickshire, 1632) was reported to have transferred a puerperal disease to a midwife. She washed the patient's perineum (the region between the anus and the scrotum or vulva, author's comment) and legs with hot salty water. She then passed thrice around the bed widdershins (in the opposite direction to the sun) muttering charms. Finally, she threw the water on the fire saying 'Bones to the fire and soul to the Devil.' The midwife, Helene Park died within 24 hours."(McDonald, 1998, p. 120)½ (Here we actually have a good example of psychogenic death!)
On occassion the transfer was carried out in two stages. "John Burgh (Kinross-shire, 1643) transferred ane heavie seiknes from Helene Young to her servant, Jonet Clerk, and then from Jonet to a lamb. Agnes Sampsoune (NetherKeith, 1591 - also known as the "Wise Woman of Keith") cured Robert Kerse " ...wha was heavily tormented with withcraft and disease laid on him by ane westland warlock, when he was in Dunfries; whilk sickness she took upon herself; and keep it with great groaning and torment till the morn; on whilk time there was ane great din heard in the house; whilk sickness she cast off herself in the close, to the effect ane cat or dog might have gotten the same; and, notwithstanding, the same was laid upon Alexander Douglas in Dalkeith, wha dwined and departed therewith, and the said Robert Kerse was made hale(Chambers, 1858)."(McDonald, 1998, p. 120)½
"Jonet Cock (Dalkeith, 1661) was said to have transferred disease from one child to another(Scott-Moncrieff, 1905)½ and John Neill (Tweedmouth, 1631) was accused of transference when, after his cure of George Ruele, the patient's wife and brother-in-law succumbed to the same condition(Society, 1974)."(McDonald, 1998, p. 122)½
Both categories above are of interest to us here and are most closely related to my overall theme of psychogenic death.
White magic cures fall into at least four categories:
- use of herbal remedies
This category interests us here insofar as the plants were often used in ways other than or in addition to simply eating or drinking as a tee, and were frequently accompanied by charms, incantations and rites of varying compexity - see the next two categories below.
"Margaret McLevin (Bute, 1662) treated John Mytyre, the tailor, for a sore shoulder by applying charmed tallow and herbs. She also treated a childhood disease, «the Glaick», with a herb called «achluiuisge». She carried the child to where the herb grew, keeping off roads and avoiding meeting anybody. The herb was picked in the child's name and brought home, again avoiding company. Margaret then boiled the herb, without letting a dog or cat pass between her and the fire, and administered the drink three times to the child."(McDonald, 1998, p. 120)½
"Bessie Aitken (Edinburgh, 1597) claimed to heal gyneacological problems by passing the woman nine times through a garland of woodbrine in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Bartie Patersoun (Newbattle, 1607) ordered James Brown,
"'... to tak nyne pickillis of quheit, nyne pickills of salt and nyne peces of rowne-trie, and to were thame continuallie vpone him, for his helth; commiting thairby manifest Sorcerie and Witchcraft.'(Pitcairn, 1837)½
"Katharine Oswald (Niddrie, 1629) tried to cure a boy of fevers by telling him to,
"'... pluk up ane nettill by the rute and to lay it doun upone the hie gait (high road) and to pische upon the crope (stem) thairof quhilk scho commandit him to do thre seuerall moirningis befoir the soneryseing and to be bak agane within his hous befoir the soneryseing ...'(Society, 1974)" (McDonald, 1998, p. 120)½
- use of charms
"Pre-Reformation belief in the power of holy wells is seen in some trails. Bartie Patersoun (Newbattle, 1607) washed his sick bairn in water from the Dow Loch and then cast the bairn's sark into the water. Similarly, Issobell Haldane (Perth, 1623) cured a child with water from the Turret Port of Perth. Thomas Greave (Fife, 1623) cured a farmer's wife by having her husband heat the coulter of his plough and cool it in water from the Holy Well of Hillside. He then made certain signs and crosses on the water after which she drank it and was cured."(McDonald, 1998, p. 120)½
"South-running water was regarded as having special properties. The Devil was said to have taught James Reid (Musselburgh, 1603) to use it to cure diseases:
"'... for cureing of Sara Borthuik, ... qhua was grevouslie trubillit and diseasit, be bringing of south-rynand watter fra the Schyreff-brayis-wall, and casting a certaine quantitie of salt and quheit about hir bed; be the quhilk cuir scho was hailit.'(Pitcairn, 1837)"(McDonald, 1998, p. 120-121)½
"Wet sarks were also used in cures. When Andro Pennycuke had a skin condition, Christian Lewingstoun (Edinburgh, 1597) dipped one of his sarks in the well behind the house and then put it on him wet. At this the poor man nearly fainted. A man recovered when John Neill (Tweedmouth, 1631) made his wife wash his shirt in running water and then put it on him. Sometimes south-running water and wet sarks were used in combination. When Bessie Inglis was 'deidlie seik', Jonet Stewart (Edinburgh, 1597) washed her sark and mutch in south-running water. She put the wet sark on the patient at midnight, saying thrice, 'In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.' A red-hot poker was then placed in the water and straw burned at each corner of the bed."(McDonald, 1998, p. 121)½
"Thread was sometimes used in cures, probably in the belief that the disease transferred onto it. On Bute, Jonet Man declared that Jonet McNeill (Bute, 1662), in curing her child seriously ill with 'The Glaick', said a charm in Irish (probably Gaelic) and then passed a thread around the child's neck, crossed it on his chest, brought it under his armpits and tied it behind his back. Jonet Man left the thread for 48 hours, then cut it off and burnt it in the fire. Patrik Lowrie (Ayrshire, 1605) and Thomas Greave (Fife, 1623) both cured seriously ill children with special cloths. The latter also passed patients through loops of yarn."(McDonald, 1998, p. 121)½
Physical elements were often combined with incantations.
- use of incantations
"Sometimes words and signs formed the entire cure. Thomas Greave (Fife, 1623) was indicted with curing a number of people by making signs, crosses and uttering unknown words. When Margaret Wallace (Glasgow, 1622) and Christian Graham healed a child,
"'Margaret lifted up the bairn's head, and Christian took her by the shackle-bane (wrist), and brought the bairn forth of her bed where she was lying in great pain before; and thereafter, settling her down upon ane stool, with some crosses and signs made upon her, and by uttering of divers words, restored her to her health.'(Chambers, 1858)"(McDonald, 1998, p. 121)½
Bessie Dunlop (Ayshire, 1576), Alesoun Peirson (St. Andrews, 1588) and Andro Man (Aberdeen, 1597) invoked the help of faeries.(McDonald, 1998, p. 121)½
- use of other magic rites
Thomas Greave (Fife, 1623) used a remarkable method to cure James Mudie's wife:
"... he caused a great fire to be put on, and a hole to be made in the north wall of the house, and a live fowl to be put forth thereat, at three several times, and taken in at the house door backwards, and thereafter taking the fowl and putting it under the sick woman's armpit, and then carrying it to the fire, where it was held down and burnt alive; and in that devlish manner, practised by him, cured her of her sickness. For this he received twenty pounds from her husband."(McDonald, 1998, pp. 121-122)½
Of course, the truth of the alleged healings in Scottish withcraft trails is difficult to establish. (Think of interogation by torture etc, to say nothing of spontaneous healings.). Nevertheless, McDONALD does mention that another researcher "HANSEN(Hansen, 1971), however, suggests that people who believed themselves bewitched actually got ill and could die. Possibly reconciliation with the witch was sometimes of such psychological relief that the patient recovered"(McDonald, 1998, p. 122)½.
McDONALD mentions that medical training began to be offered by the Scottish universities in the 1600s, thus gradually bringing about the regulation of medical practice and, with it, the legal enforcement of rules: Only those with testimonials from recognised medical schools were allowed to practice, meaning, amongst other things, only men! He concludes his paper with the remark: "The cures, however, did not die with the witches but continued into the nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries(Comrie, 1932),(Buchan, 1994)½. Maybe experience was not unlike alternative therapies today. They seemed to work but no-one knew how"(McDonald, 1998, p. 122).
Religious cures
In the hills of Montesiepi near Siena in Toscana there lies a mysterious round church built by the holy knight, Galgano. This unique building is a kind of astonomical calendar. It was used in the 12th Century as a place for secret initiation rituals focussing on early Christian symbolism of the sun. There is a sword stuck in the rocks in the middle of the church which becomes illuminated twice yearly: by the last evening rays of the sun on the 21st of September, when day and night are of equal duration, and, again, by the first morning rays of the sun on the 21st of December, the shortest day of the year. The most spectacular event occurs, however, in the early morning of the longest day in the year, namely, on the 21st of June: Already before sunrise, the morning light fills the apse and the two window rooms to its right and left with a golden illumination, probably symbolising the Holy Trinity which the sun symbolizes. Also on the shortest and then again on the longest day of the year, a sunlit circle roughly one meter in diameter appears on the wall already before sunrise, announcing the winter and summer solstice. This circle wanders for the next hour with the rise of the sun following an elliptical, inverted arch which finally ends on the sword, illuminating it for a moment before vanishing. The circular floor is divided up into the 12 Houses of the Zodiac with the 1st House identical with the apse and probably symbolising the Self. The above-mentioned circular projections of the sun take place in the 8th House which astrologers asign to the sign of the Scorpian. The Eight is also symbol of transformation, of death, but also of rebirth according to the teachings of numerology which flourished in the Middle Ages. (Information taken from (Pfister, 2000).)
Galgano began building the church in 1182 and died very young already before its completion. Soon thereafter, a quite unusual veneration began. None other than Kaiser Friedrich I. Barbarossa visited Galgano's grave during his stay in Siena in 1185 in order to honor him. The reverence of this "holy book in stone" increased to such a degree that even the most unusual reports of miracles were claimed to have taken place here. Following is one example: Women brought Galgano a crippled girl in the hope that he could heal her. Galgano refused; he didn't want to exult himself as a miracle maker and healer. He instructed the women to go kneel beneath the sword in the rock and to pray: This would bring the child recovery.
One should not forget that such a cure borders on heresy as it was practiced at that time by the Catharans, Catharists and Waldensians: Recovery does not require any kind of divine or ecclesiastical mediation but, rather, can be achieved directly through the personal belief of the faithful.
Galgano's fame spread so rapidly that the Church proclaimed him as Saint in record time. His followers founded a religious hermitage society at Montesiepi. Two decades later, however, the monastic order of the Cistercians took over the Montesiepi and banished the hermits to the plains beneath the hills where they built a huge cloister in 1215, the first gothic structure in Toscana. Unfortunately for his later Brothers, the veneration of Galgano died out rather quickly after his death, and his round church outlived both his own fame as well as the hermit order which adhered to him.
«KEEP POSTED FOR OTHER STORIES TO FOLLOW!»
Modern cures (20th Century and later)
Psychogenic healing is not something limited to fantastic stories of past history which, admittedly, can hardly be accurately confirmed today according to modern medical standards. Indeed, healing by imagination is a medically well-established reality of the 21st Century attested by many present-day reports. In the following, I sketch a few selected reports.
Mentally enhancing the success of operation or other treatment
"I didn't only believe, I knew that nothing would go wrong!", claimed Theo Kelz . Indeed, a belief is only then an effective means against illness when it is not recognized as a belief but, rather, as an unquestionable fact. The Austrian "fighting patient" received two donors hands and felt marvellous after his successful 18-hour operation in the University Clinic of Klagenfurt on the 7. of March 2000. The rural police officer lost his hands in a tragic accident on the 24. of August, 1994 while investigating a suspicious pipe which passers-by in Klagenfurt had brought to his attention: He took the heavy thing to the local airport where he placed it on the conveyor belt to the x-ray machine with which he planned to inspect its unknown contents. Suddenly, while setting it down, it exploded, blowing both his hands off. It later turned out that the bomb was the creation of the infamous letter-bomb assailant, Franz Fuchs, who had already had the former Vienna mayor, Helmut Zilk, on his list of victims.
From the very beginning after his accident, Theo remained courageous. He didn't withdraw back into the shadows of existence, refused to declare himself an invalid and never asked himself the almost inevitable question: "Why me?" He immediately acquired two artificial limbs, learned to use them as well as possible, and went back to police work again in 1995 already. Nevertheless, a single vision haunted him from day one after his accident, namely, to some day become a "complete human being" again by undergoing a transplantation. And Theo Kelz was a "perfect" patient upon whom his doctors could completely rely for his conscious and unconscious cooperation: He was steadfastedly optimistic, highly disciplined and totally trustworthy. During the deep sleep of his operation, Theo reported: "Beautiful pictures constantly ran through my head, pictures of my wife, of my many trips, of my many friends." On the day after his operation after awakening with two hands from an anonymous dead man, he didn't even ask how the operation went but only about how long it took: He had already excluded the possibility of any complications, these were simply out of question. During the rehabilitation stage at the Rehab-Center Tobelbad, he celebrated the tiniest improvement as a great success: "I practice, and practice, and practice", he said, and indeed did so, five to seven hours per day on the average, as well as pedalling ten kilometers per day on his home trainer. That his doctors could only assure him of roughly 60% his previous hand power hardly disturbed him: "I know I'll be able to achieve more than that!", he said nonchalantly and set his hopes on his power training. Exagerated optimismus? Not only, conceded Hildegunde Piza, director of the Department for Restorative Surgery: "With a fighter like Theo Kelz almost nothing seems impossible to me". (Story taken from (Santner, 2000).)
Overcoming fatal illness by the power of imagination
A man with an advanced stage of cancer had ceased to respond to radiation treatment. He was then given a single injection of an experimental drug, Krebiozen, considered by some experts at that time to be a "miracle cure" - it has since then been discredited. The results were shocking to the patient's physician who stated that his tumors "melted like snowballs on a hot stove". Later, the man read studies suggesting the drug was ineffective, and his cancer began to spread once more. At this point his doctor, acting on his intuition, administered a placebo intravenously. The man was told the plain water was a "new, improved" form of Krebiozen. Again, his cancer shrank away dramatically. Then he read in the newspapers the American Medical Association's official declaration: Krebiozen is a worthless medication. The man's faith vanished and he was dead within days. (Story taken from (Dossey, 1991, p. 203.).)
Lance Armstrong, 30 years old and probably the world's best bike racer today, had had only a 5% chance of surviving his bout with cancer (malignant tumors in his testicles, head and lungs) just four years before winning the Tour de France in 1999. According to his autobiography (Armstrong, 2000), one can defeat death if one is determined enough to do so: Unbounded rigour, unrelentlessness and egoism are the common ingredients in his recipe for winning at sport and in life. "In order to win, I would have also bitten the head off my opponents", he writes as prerequisite to his success. At any rate and as I already mentioned in the general introduction to this topic, optimism, a sense of personal control and the ability to find meaning in one's life experiences have been proven to be valuable psychological resources which can be life-saving in times of physical illness or mental distress (Taylor, Kemeny, Reed, Bower, & Gruenewald, 2000).
Armstrong, L. (2000). Tour des Lebens. City?: Lübbe-Verlag.
Buchan, D. (1994). Folk Tradition and Folk Medicine in Scotland: The Writings of David Rorie. Edinburgh: Canongate Academic.
Chambers, R. (1858). Domestic Annals of Scotland. Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers.
Comrie, J. D. (1932). History of Scottish Medicine. (2nd Ed. ed.). London: Bailliere, Tindall and Cox.
Dossey, L. (1991). Meaning and Medicine. New York: Bantam.
Hansen, C. (1971). Witchcraft at Salem. London: Arrow Books Ltd.
McDonald, S. W. (1998). The Witch Doctors of Scotland. Scot Med J, 43, 119-122.
Pfister, P. O. (2000). Die Rotunde vom Montesiepi. Der seltsame Heilige Galgano, seine Rundkirche mit dem Schwert im Fels, die Sonnenphänomene, Lorenzettis Fresken - ein toskanisches Ereignis. Waldgut: Verlag Im Waldgut.
Pitcairn, R. (1837). Ancient Criminal Trials in Scotland. Edinburgh: Maitland Club.
Santner, I. (2000, 27. July). Hände von einem Toten. DIE WELTWOCHE.
Scott-Moncrieff, W. G. (1905). The Records of the Proeedings of the Justiciary Court, Edinburgh, Volume I 1661-1669. Edinburgh: T.A. Constable for Scottish History Society.
Society, S. (1974). Selected Justiciary Cases 1624-1650. Edinburgh: Stair Society.
Taylor, S. E., Kemeny, M. E., Reed, G. M., Bower, J. E., & Gruenewald, T. L. (2000). Psychological Resources, Positive Illusions, and Health. American Psychologist, 55(1), 99-109.
(Last revision: 06. January 2001)