faith-cure

English

Alternative forms

• faithcure

Noun

faith-cure (countable and uncountable, plural faith-cures)

1. The act or process of curing disease by calling on the faith and expectations of the patient, without the use of medication or physical forms of therapy.
   • 1889 October, “Christian Science; or, Faith Cure”, in Dental Headlight, volume 10, number 4, page 155:

     Her earnestness led from one christiant work to another, and drawn onward in this way, in two years she had “passed through,” (as school-children would term it) sanctification and faith-cure, left her husband and children, and set herself up to a small circle of followers who worshipped her as the descended Christ.

   • 1897, Rudyard Kipling, Captains Courageous:

     He had surrounded her with doctors, trained nurses, massage-women, and even faith-cure companions, but they were useless.

   • 2014, Mary Baker Eddy, The Spiritual Writings of Mary Baker Eddy:

     It is often asked, Why are faith-cures sometimes more speedy than some of the cures wrought through Christian Scientists?

   • 2021, Vivian Phelips, The Churches and Modern Thought:

     The healing miracles performed by Jesus are now frequently attributed to the use of the same power as that by which faith-cures are effected at the present time—a power upon which the science of psychology is shedding a new light, and which mental therapeutics will one day place at the disposal of the human race.

See also

• faith healer
• placebo effect