Man is an immortal self-conscious spirit, enveloped for wise purposes with matter of a grosser sort, over which he is designed to hold supreme control through intelligence and volition. His integral attitude for self-development and self-government surpasses the belief of his uneducated judgment. But he is reckless and faithless regarding the principles of his inner life, being ignorant of the riches within his spiritual constitution, and the penalty of this is disease, with its innumerable offspring. The kindest and most skilful physicians can bring no perfect health to those who are sick and suffering, because—in too many cases—doctor and patient know nothing of the psychological energies in the human organisation, or that crude and bitter drugs can do nothing compared with the kindly offices of our own spiritual forces. The human organisation is regulated by two great positive and negative conductors, which are the sympathetic and pneumogastric nerves. Like the lesser and more delicate nerves, they take their rise in the brain, as the fount of vitality and sensibility. The sympathetic nerve transmits sensibility and life to all parts of the organism. It belongs to the great automatic hemisphere of mind. Instinct, impulse, and life are its attributes. We are concerned, however, more especially with the pneumogastric nerve, which confers energy and voluntary movement on the internal organism. It is in direct
contact with the attributes and designs of will, and is a motor nerve by which volition may impose its decrees upon the whole physical economy. It is in communication with throat, lungs, heart and bowels—that is to say, with those organs which are most subject to disease. Out of the established fact that this nerve is a conductor of mental decrees arises the treatment and there may arise also the cure of these physical parts. We affirm that man can maintain his health under any reasonable combination of circumstances, and—with this object in view—we counsel respiration as a means of transmitting spiritual vigour to weak and debilitated organs. The heart is covered with the cardiac plexus, which arises from the pneumogastric nerve. The lungs are supplied with another plexus of nerves springing from the same conductor. Lastly, the entire digestive functions are provided from the same voluntary battery at the base of the brain. The organs and parts named are under the immediate control of mind.
The mode of practice is to cultivate deep, slow and uniform breathing, accompanied by a strong exercise of the will to be healthy. In cases of general weakness, concentration should be on the extremities first, working upward and inward progressively. When the brain has been reached after ten minutes of steady and deep breathing, the process should be repeated in the descending scale. By this pneumogastric self-treatment spiritual strength is received from the air. When the science of deep breathing has been attained by practice, and the will has been fixed coincidentally upon the general restoration of the system, the act of concentrating on a single diseased part will become less and less difficult. Consumptive persons may enlarge their chests and lungs beyond the possibility of disease, and so with other complaints. In acquiring this power it may be necessary to practise thrice in each twenty-four hours, the time chosen being one hour and a half or two hours after meals. The help
of a sympathetic associate may, however, be indispensable at the beginning in certain cases. In conclusion, the spirit world will also lend its aid by forming a secret conjunction with the pneumogastric conductor.
And now as regards the sympathetic nerve and its wonderful system of ganglia, the automatic principles of life, motion and energy are conveyed thereby to all interior structures, lymphatic vessels and the living blood of the organism, so that all parts of the body are sympathetically related and no member can suffer without disturbing the whole. The intuition of the sympathetic nerve is wiser than the best physician, its pathological value being exhibited by the lessons which it conveys—as, e.g., the admonishment to sleep when fatigued or to rest otherwise in prostration.