Editorial July 27, 1907 Issue

MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS

Annie M. Knott

A number of newspapers have published reports of medical experiments recently made by Professor Gates at Washington. According to these reports, the professor succeeded in showing by chemical results the influence of mental states upon the human body. One paper says,—

Professor Gates has shown what is called the causative character of thinking in a long series of experiments. He has found that change of the mental state changed the chemical character of the perspiration. When treated with the same chemical reagent the perspiration of an angry man showed one color, that of a man in grief another, and so on through the long list of emotions. Each mental state persistently exhibited its own peculiar result every time the experiment was repeated. Each kind of thinking, by causing changes in glandular or visceral activity, produced different chemical substances, which were being thrown out of the system in the perspiration ... The results showed ... that each kind of thinking produced its own peculiar substance, which the system was trying to expel.

As a result of her search for spiritual realities, and without taking matter into account as a factor in her experiments, Mrs. Eddy discovered many years ago that "erring, mortal, misnamed mind produces all the organism and action of the mortal body;" a discovery which, she goes on to say, "set my thoughts to work in new channels, and led up to my demonstration of the proposition that Mind is All and matter is naught as the leading factor in Mind-science" (Science and Health, p. 108). At the time of our Leader's discovery her statements of it were met with incredulity on the part of those who were wedded to time-worn opinions and medical theories respecting mind and body, but with the multiplied proofs of the scientific correctness of her statements a great change has come over the world's thought.

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