ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses mainly on the healing practice that was most specifically though of course not exclusively compatible with spiritualist belief: that of so called spiritual healing. As people will see, such assistance was variously conceived as aiding anything from initial diagnosis, to final and in a sense seemingly just 'physical' aspects of curative treatment. The chapter as a whole, author will allow certain individuals to seem to introduce themselves, along with their claims and problems, rather casually. Ashman's interest here, is that, although he was 'heart and soul a Spiritualist', his curative methods which seem to have involved hypnotism stroking, rubbing, breathing at or opposite the site of affliction and, occasionally, what he called 'percussion' bore a rather broad contemporary kinship. Thus people have seen spiritualist journals, both plebeian and not, acting as entrepots for discussions and advertisements in almost any area of heterodox curative theory and practice.
