Disease is of two kinds: (a) Material, and (b) Spiritual. For instance, a cut of the hand: if you pray for the cut to be healed, and do not stop it bleeding, you will not do much good, this needs a material remedy.
Sometimes if the nervous system is paralyzed through fear, a spiritual remedy is necessary. Madness, incurable otherwise, can be cured through prayer, but an abscess cannot be cured by prayer alone. Extreme cases need prayer. It often happens that sorrow makes one ill. That can be cured by spiritual means. Blindness is physical, not spiritual. They say our Lord cured blindness; it was blindness of the soul. (“They have eyes and see not, ears they have and hear not.’’) He brought on spiritual awakening.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (Discourses given by ‘Abdu’l-Baha in London and Paris’; Star of the West, vol. 2, no. 19, March 2, 1912)