human
A writer in the _Boston Advertiser_ (U.S.) of January 18th, gives an account of what he considers to be a new development of a very common form of hysteria. This new development is the latest doctrine of a sect founded some years ago in Park Street, Boston, under the name of Christian Scientists; the meeting being attended by devout if not strictly philosophical or scientific ladies. The new doctrine is this: Matter in itself, they say, is inert, insensate, lifeless, and unpotential; the power which animates matter is divine. Illness is want of vital power, therefore want of divinity. A mind healer is a person who is full to superabundance upon his own cognizance of the Almighty, and who is willing to allow his, or more generally her, superfluity or abundance to overflow into the person of some patient in whom it is declared the presence of disease proves the absence of the Lord. The process is of the simplest. The healer sits down with her back in contact with the corresponding portion of the patient's person, and for the moderate price of a dollar an hour allows the supposed divine influence to filter from vertebræ to vertebræ.