The Founder of Mormonism/Chapter 9

Mormon demonology led up to Mormon faith healing. If the Saints cast out devils in the name of the Lord, why could they not cast out diseases? They tried the experiment as early as 1834. 'When the cholera first broke out in the camp,' says Kimball, 'John S. Carter was the first who went forward to rebuke it, but himself was immediately slain. . . . Even brother Joseph, seeing the sufferings of his brethren, stepped forward to rebuke the destroyer, but was immediately seized with the disease himself.'^[1] This incident is significant, it shows up Smith in a new light. The prophet of the restoration of gifts,^[2] was now in the clutches of popular demand; he was a minister of healing, not because he knew any medicine, but because of the expectations of his adherents. However it is not ​entirely fair to make Smith a physician in spite of himself: notwithstanding early failure, through ignorance and overconfidence, he was not always unsuccessful in the curative art.

Circumstances did not always get the better of him; within ten years he had learned how to alleviate considerable suffering, in the sphere of nonorganic troubles. It was his later limitation to disorders of this character which goes far to prove that, somehow or other, he had gained a crude but real knowledge of mental healing. What were the sources of his knowledge? At first glance they appear to be borrowed. Like other divine healers, male and female after their kind, the head of this Latter-day Church had his body physician. Dr. John C. Bennett was in good standing among the Saints for at least eight years; if he was not a quack, he was of the old school; he, then, may have given to Joseph a smattering of medical lore, but as to technical suggestive therapeutics he was decades behind the times.^[3]

The real origin of Joseph's faith healing is at​tributable to the usual mixture of heredity and religion. His father contended for 'the ancient order of things,' but, when his children needed 'doctoring,' sent them to his wife; she in turn, as 'Mother in Israel' threw much physic at the suffering Saints.^[4] And, outside the Smith family, Mormon medicine was not one whit ahead of the kitchen-physic of Puritan days;^[5] indeed the ancient doctrine of signatures—the theory of correspondences between drug and disease—was actually set forth in mystic fashion.^[6] Finally an editorial in the Times and Seasons, recommended Indian herbs as more natural remedies than physicians' prescriptions.^[7]

Again, all these notions appeared in religious guise among Joseph's progenitors. His mother's brother, Jason Mack, was the colonial medical parson redevivus. About 1776 he was called a Seeker and believed that by prayer and faith the gifts of the gospel, enjoyed by the ancient disciples, might be attained; in a letter to his brother, dated 1835, he wrote:—'But last, though not least, let me not startle you when I say, that, according to my early ​adopted principles of the power of faith, the Lord has, in His exceeding kindness, bestowed upon me the gift of healing by the prayer of faith, and the use of such simple means as seem congenial to the human system. The first of my peculiar success in this way was twelve years since, and from that date I have had little rest. . . . And when the learned infidel has declared with sober face, time and again, that disease had obtained such an ascendancy that death could be resisted no longer, that the victim must wither beneath his potent arm, I have seen the almost lifeless clay slowly but surely resuscitated, and revive, till the pallid monster fled so far that the patient was left in the full bloom of vigorous health.'^[8]

Smith's uncle practicing faith healing on his semi-communistic farm in 1823, doubtless led his nephew to have a try at the same thing; but with the latter there was greater promise of results. In the first place, the public was looking for wonders of healing. The adjacent Oneida Community of Perfectionists announced, somewhat later, cures by faith;^[9] but already western New York was thoroughly impregnated with restorationist views. In fact, the Irvingites sent a deputation to Smith, to express ​sympathy because of his assertion of the perpetuity of miracles in the Church.^[10] Furthermore, Joseph was bound to succeed in his new rôle, because he possessed a credulous clientage. Among his followers the examples of divine healing were as numerous as they were dubious. In particular, the Faith Promoting Series, although hardly to be considered a literary source, is nevertheless a perfect mine of the marvelous, and out of these 'serpentine windings of human life,'—to use Joseph's phrase, it is possible to extract some pertinent facts.

Behind the apparatus of holy oil, consecrated flannels and the like, there is a dim apprehension of the power of mental suggestion. Thus faith is demanded of both patient and bystander. 'The Lord wants the meek and humble,' says Benjamin Brown, 'many come with their hearts buckled up to the highest point of resistance, bitterly opposed to the truths of the Church,—and then require a miracle.'^[11] Again there is demanded laying on of hands with vocal, or with silent prayer. Expressed technically, this is verbal or unconscious suggestion, which combined with the subject's expectation, produces effects varying with the fancy of the individual.^[12] While ​Elder Brown was praying over a man stricken with palsy—'a warning influence, such as he had never felt before, extended down his palsied side.^[13] Again Philo Dibble narrates, how when Brother Newell Knight laid his hands on his head, but never spoke,—

'I felt the spirit resting upon me at the crown of my head before his hand touched me, and I knew immediately that I was going to be healed. It seemed to form like a ring under the skin, and followed down my body. When the ring came to the wound, another ring formed around the first bullet hole, also the second and third. Then a ring formed on each shoulder and on each hip, and followed down to the ends of my fingers and toes and left me.'^[14]

How transitory were these 'cures' is exemplified in the very case of the above operator. When Knight was dying, January 11th, 1847, his wife told how 'the elders came frequently and prayed for him. After each administration he would rally ​and be at ease for a short time and then relapse again into suffering.'^[15] That such divine healing presented the usual dangers was to be expected, when one only considers the delicate and elusive reactions of mental suggestion. So Elder Brown, when standing by a 'possessed sister,' asserted 'I knew the answer she was going to give, for I was possessed by a similar spirit.' How the Mormons, despite their 'silent treatment,' slid by the truth of the force of auto-suggestion is shown in their attempts at explanation. Brown himself, raised up from a seeming deathbed by the prophet, asks the sceptical reader:—'Was it the power of the imagination over the body that cured me, when I did not even hear Joseph's voice, or know that any operation on my behalf was going on, until I found myself well?'^[16]

Mormon ignorance of elementary psychic phenomena naturally got them into trouble. The mischief that one man could do is exemplified in the preposterous claims of Brown. Shortly before the time he tried to exorcise the possessed sister, he asserted, 'I cure a man with a skull crushed by a tree; I cure a woman of cancer, she said the cancer worms felt like a thousand gimlets boring into her brain.'^[17] The deadly tendencies of Mormon faith ​healing were recognized by their contemporaries. In Batavia, New York, in 1841, 'after healing a deaf and dumb child, the enemies of truth,' says Thompson, 'are doing their utmost to make people believe that no miracle has been wrought.'^[18] In 1833, the Western Monitor of Fayette, Missouri, asks: 'What would be the fate of our lives and property, in the hands of jurors and witnesses, who do not blush to declare, and would not upon occasion hesitate to swear that they have wrought miracles, and have been the subjects of miraculous and supernatural cures?'^[19] In England the missionaries of healing called out a more legal, if not a more determined opposition.^[20] It was Elder Richards who exclaimed, 'How absurd to have no other resource when ill but a physician.' While on the British mission, he advertised 'Bones set through Faith in Christ,' and Elder Phillips made this additional statement: 'While commanding the bones, they came together, making a noise like the crushing of an old basket.'^[21] Along with charlatanry among the priesthood, there was fatal credulity among the laity. ​Lorenzo Snow, writing from London in 1841, said of Elizabeth Morgan, before her death: 'She continually expressed a wish that no doctor should administer her medicines; and particularly requested that no one should cast any reflection upon her dear husband and children because no doctor had been employed, for she wanted no physician but the Lord.'^[22]

The fatuity of the Mormon missionaries is patent in their official organ; the Millennial Star of Liverpool cites a case of 'cancer in the heart miraculously cured by baptism'; it gives, at the same time, a notice of Elder Hyde's death through the same disease.

Things were different at headquarters in America. Smith was a faith healer, but he recog​nized his limitations. He had acquired wisdom through hard knocks. In 1832, two years after the exorcism of Newel Knight,—'the first miracle in the church'—the prophet was poisoned by something he ate and claimed to have been instantly cured through the laying on of hands by Brother Whitney. This was explained, not by the means of relief nature had already taken, but by administration in the name of the Lord.^[23] But in 1834, happening to be involved in the cholera epidemic, the prophet was not slow to learn that his powers were circumscribed. Speaking of the attack he said: 'The cholera burst forth among us, even those on guard fell to the earth with their guns in their hands. . . . At the commencement I attempted to lay on hands for their recovery, but I quickly learned by painful experience, that when the great Jehovah decrees destruction upon any people, makes known His determination, man must not attempt to stay His hand.'^[24]

It is high time to approach the philosophy of Joseph's real accomplishments as faith healer. Back of his not unsuccessful practice he had a theory. In a single word, the potent force with him was faith: without it no cures are possible. This is the substance of the seven Lectures 'originally delivered be​fore a Class of the Elders, in the School of the Prophets.' These discourses are vapid yet they have significance,—they contain adumbrations of the really vital principle in mental healing. This doctrine of faith was an approximation to the subjective attitude of trust demanded in suggestive therapeutics. Smith defines it at the start, both negatively and positively:—'without it both mind and body would be in a state of inactivity; . . . as faith is the moving cause of all action in temporal concerns, so is it in spiritual; . . . but faith is not only the principle of action, but of power also, in all intelligent beings, whether in heaven or on earth.'^[25] Like previous magic healers, from Paracelsus to Gassner,^[26] Joseph's system was largely mystical; with him, healing was counted a sacerdotal gift. Nevertheless he was wary in regard to his priestly function. When it was asked in 1842 'what signs do Jo Smith give of his divine mission?' the prophet gave this delphic response:—'The signs which God is pleased to let him give according as His wisdom thinks best.'^[27]

To turn from theory to practice, and to examine a half dozen faith cures, ranging from total failure ​to permanent relief, and from a lonesome child to a crowd of adults. In the first case strange reliance was placed on external means; Joseph attempted to 'cure by baptism' Lydia Kimball, age eight, who shortly died of brain fever.^[28] This failure discloses two things that, at this time, Smith was rashly ignorant of the incurable, and also that he was far from knowing one of the general principles of suggestion, namely that children are less susceptible to mental treatment than are adults.^[29] Similar ignorance is displayed in the next example, for it is only repeated suggestion and the continuous presence of the operator that can affect the restless mind of a child.^[30] Kimball's account is in effect, as follows: When Joseph was in Far West, a child was taken sick, he laid hands on it, and it got better. As soon as Joseph went outside the house, the child was taken sick again. A second time he laid hands on it, and it recovered. 'This transpired several times and Joseph inquired of the Lord what it meant, when he had an open vision and saw the devil in person.'^[31]

The third episode concerns an adult, but the alleviation is only temporary. So far the two points of ​interest are these: that the prophet, with his superior authority, had greater success than two elders who had already made the patient 'perfectly whole';^[32] and that the subject, in his attempt at explanation, has no inkling of the fact that suggestion may reach the brain, other than through the sense of hearing. 'While at Commerce,' narrates Brown, 'I was sick of swamp fever for two or three weeks. I was so far gone that I was quite senseless, and all thought I was dying. Joseph Smith laid his hands on me and commanded me to arise and walk in the name of the Lord. The first thing I knew, I found myself walking perfectly well.'^[33] The transient character of this cure, and the recurrence of the trouble, agree with the results of suggestive treatment. Suggestion may lower the temperature in fevers,^[34] but in those of a cyclic character, it merely diminishes the suffering and tones up the system.^[35]

The next 'cure' is as ephemeral as it is magical. Like so many of the Saints, living along the Mis​souri River, the patient was presumably overcome by fever. It was claimed that he was raised from his deathbed, yet he shortly has a relapse and needs further treatment. As Woodruff inopportunely admits, Fordham faints at the sight of the mob, but revives under Joseph's influence.^[36] Two accounts are given of the Fordham case and they agree in two important particulars: on the one hand, the edge is taken off the miracle from the fact of the previous use of remedies; on the other hand, Joseph's operations appear to have brought about a condition resembling artificially induced hypnotic sleep. Kimball tells how 'Joseph stepped to the bedside of brother Fordham, who was insensible and considered by the family to be dying. He looked him in the eye for a minute without speaking, then took him by the hand and commanded him to arise and walk. Fordham did so, threw off all bandages and poultices, ate a bowl of bread and milk, and followed us into the street.'^[37]

​The last of the individual cases is that of Mrs. Johnson of Hiram, Ohio. It has a negative interest because the environment was one of psychic hostility. Yet the sceptical narrator himself admits the cure.^[38] The prophet being asked if he pretended to the performance of miracles, and answering that he had the ability only through God, Mrs. Johnson was suddenly introduced. Joseph was not taken aback, but with calm assurance he looked intently into the woman's eyes, then taking hold of her arm 'palsied by rheumatism,' he commanded her in a solemn voice to be made whole. The bystanders asserted that the patient at once found her arm under control and that it remained thus, until her death fifteen years after. This cure, being well attested, is of course cited by the Mormons as miraculous, while their enemies put forward the usual half-baked explanation of animal magnetism.^[39]

A brief scrutiny of these cases will reveal to what degree they may be put in terms of reputable ​psycho-therapeutics. At first it is difficult to decide whether Smith's achievements were due to simple suggestion or hypnotic suggestion, for it is almost impossible to draw a sharp line between the two.^[40] Suggestion without hypnosis is probable in the majority of instances, since the states of consciousness, ranging from lethargy to light sleep, were induced pathologically and not artificially, by the disease and not by the operator. Nevertheless real hypnotic suggestion may be postulated, if one accepts the less occult definition of hypnosis as 'the production of a psychical condition in which the faculty of receiving impressions by suggestion is greatly increased.'^[41] This would cover the various cases cited, for in the lightest stages of hypnosis there is no loss of consciousness, while good results are effected even when the patient denies having felt any hypnotic influence.^[42] Again, real hypnosis is implied in the Johnson case, not simply because chronic rheumatism has yielded to hypnotic treatment, but because 'the immense power of hypnotic suggestion is shown by the fact that it succeeds in a large number of cases in spite of mistrust.'^[43] Still further, the above instances may be brought under hypnotism if suggestion is given its ​full signification; the word does not merely stand for an artful hint or insinuation, which increases the patient's receptivity, it also connotes a reinforcing of the subject's power to perform the suggested act.^[44] Lastly, Smith's successes lay in the sphere of hypnotic successes, roughly defined as neuroses, for the alterations were psychic rather than organic.^[45]

But lest wisdom be attributed where wisdom was lacking, there is need of a final word of qualification. Smith's gift of healing was got by chance, it was magical in theory and sacerdotal in practice, nearer the middle ages than modern science. The prophet insisted on faith, his followers believed in the priesthood, and both priest and people trusted in the efficacy of prayer. As already seen, faith with Joseph was no longer a mere youthful reaction against infidelity and dry scholasticism, but a positive means to gain an unthinking obedience. Moreover as to prayer, Smith directs his 'quorums of three' to pray in succession and in successive ​quorums,—and then to lay on hands.^[46] But this psychic inductive method might easily be spoiled; as Brown said of a moment's inattention on the part of a single elder,—'this broke the chain of our union and strength.'^[47]

It was through the appeal to the emotional and unthinking side of human nature that the Mormons could employ their primitive machinery. Oftentimes the elders would anoint the patient with oil, although it was admitted that this could not reach the root of the disease.^[48] Once Joseph descended to the use of the charm or talisman. Woodruff says that after Fordham was revived,—'then Joseph sends me with his red silk handkerchief to cure two children of a man of the world. I wipe their faces with it, and they are cured.'^[49]

The prophet used magic; he also sought the aid of mystery. Judging from the local admiration for the architectural abortion of Salt Lake City, the earlier Saints were capable of looking on even the Temple of Zion at Nauvoo as a holy shrine. At any rate, soon after the first log was laid, Smith called for a Recorder of Miracles.^[50] Yet uninspiring surroundings were offset by the blind ​zeal of the persons concerned. It was not material things but psychic processes that helped the most. Hence Joseph's manner of making the healing suggestion, to his disciples at least, was undeniably impressive. It was not in the opinion of Pratt alone that the prophet was 'of an expression peculiar to himself, on which the eye naturally rested with interest, and was never weary of beholding.'^[51] It was from the false perspective of emotional excitement that most of his followers looked on the person of their ecclesiastical head with reverence and awe. Indeed, these American sectaries were strangely like those who once sought to be healed of the king's evil; they lived in the nineteenth century, yet the great mass of them believed in the divine right of their ruler. Despite this kindred touch of madness, there were also present among the Mormons the more normal circumstances which favor mental healing, namely: the patient's desire to be cured, his belief in the means, and a sympathetic environment.^[52]

With the summary statement that the convinced mind works the quickest, it is possible to get at the significance of Smith's wholesale acts of faith healing. In the two accounts of the scenes on the banks ​of the Mississippi, the fabulous drops off of itself, as when, for example, it was alleged that the prevalence of chills and fever was due to the devil. There yet remains a slight residue of facts, which needs explanation, since it cannot be wholly explained away. The annual affair at Lourdes is a far call from the Nauvoo affair of sixty years ago, yet under both there is a thin stratum of truth. It may be expressed in the formula of recent practitioners: that collective hypnosis is possible among the ignorant classes and that, conversely, when the psychic contagion becomes stronger, hypnosis is rendered easier.^[53]

To turn, inconclusion, to the scene of July 22d, 1839: 'It was a very sickly time,' narrates Woodruff.^[54] 'Large numbers of the Saints, driven out of Missouri, were flocking from Commerce and were living in wagons, tents and on the ground. Many were sick through exposure. Brother Joseph had waited on the sick until he was worn out and nearly sick himself. After praying, he healed all in his house and door yard; then in company with Sidney Rigdon and several of the twelve, he went through among the sick lying on the bank of the river, and he commanded them in a loud voice to come up and be made whole and they were all healed.'