Abstract
IN answer to Mr. W. R. Bousfield's question I may say that he is mistaken if he thinks that I would deny the possibility of curative processes being set going by “suggestion.” But I would maintain that suggestion is not a mental process. There is a popular error, widespread, that thought can be directly transferred, whereas, as a matter of fact, we know that one organism communicates with another by physical means through the organs of sense—by touch, smell, taste, sight, and hearing. Suggestion consists in bringing to bear appropriate stimuli which directly or indirectly set going certain metabolic processes; or, to put it in another way, the stimuli excite in the organism responses which from one aspect appear as a series of metabolic processes, and from another aspect as a series of mental processes. The one series cannot be altered without also altering the other.
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GOODRICH, E. [Letters to Editor]. Nature 108, 531 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/108531a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/108531a0
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