The New Gospel

They tell us they can free themselves of diseases.  If they meant, by temperate living and appropriate régime, they would be right and in accordance with all sound knowledge.  But they assert diseases to be Spirit-Beings [demons] and boast of being able to expel them by formula: this pretension may enhance their importance with the crowd, gaping upon the powers of magicians; but they can never persuade the intelligent that disease arises otherwise than from such causes as overstrain, excess, deficiency, putrid decay, in a word some variation whether from within or from without.