10 MEDICINE

Where Truth Abides - Robert Browning

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise

From outward things, whate’er you may believe,

There is an inmost center in us all,

Where Truth abides in fullness; and around,

Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,

This perfect clear conception--which is Truth.

A baffling and perverting carnal mesh Blinds it, and makes all error; and, to know

Rather consists in opening out a way

Whence the imprisoned splendor may escape,

Than in effecting entry for a light

Supposed to be without.

The attitude of the practitioners of medicine toward mental chemistry has always been most catholic. To quote from Dr. Osler: “The psychical method has always played an important, though largely unrecognized, part in therapeutics. It is from faith, which buoys up the spirits, sets the blood flowing more freely, and the nerves playing their parts without disturbance, that a large part of all cures arise. Despondency or lack of faith will often sink the stoutest constitution almost to death’s door; faith will enable a bread pill or a spoonful of clear water to do almost miracles of healing, when the best medicines have been given over in despair. The basis of the entire profession of medicine is faith in the doctor and his drugs and his methods.”

F. W. Clarke has fitly summed up the relation of modern chemistry to progressive medicine: “Medicine is indebted to chemistry for almost a new pharmacopoeia, for not only have new medicines been created, but in place of old drugs, crude and bulky, the compact and more elegant active principles are now employed. Anaesthetics, such as ether, chloroform and nitrous oxide; hypnotics like chloral; the remedies derived from coal-tar; and alkaloids like quinine, morphine, and cocaine, are a few of the contributions with which chemistry has enriched medical practice. Even antiseptic surgery depends upon chemical preparations for its success.”

On the other hand, Dr. Osler admits that, “We have not as yet made as many additions to the stock of panaceas as we might. But chemistry has done vast service for us, and will probably do far more. Aside from the discovery of new substances like cocaine, it has given us the active principles of calculable strength and purity, in place of crude drugs of varying strength at best, and of varying purity and age, and there is no reason why we may not have new specifics as sure (and for as important diseases) as quinine.”

Our problem would be more simple, and the doctors, with their wide knowledge and splendid service, would have solved the problem long ago, had it been a purely physical one; but unfortunately it is a mental problem long before it becomes a physical one; as we continue to exercise our capacity for response we shall find it necessary to treat our thoughts and emotions if we are to establish health upon a firm basis.

For instance, it is commonly recognized that worry or continued negative emotional excitement will disorganize digestion. When the digestion is normal the feeling of hunger will stop, will be inhibited when we have eaten as much as we need, nor will we feel hunger again until we actually require food. in such cases our inhibiting center is working properly. But if we get dyspeptic, this inhibiting center has ceased to function, and we are hungry all the time, with the consequent tendency to overwork an already impaired digestive apparatus. Mankind is continually experiencing such small great center. They come and go--and properly so--without drawing from the organism as a whole much consideration. But if the disorder has grown out of a deep-rooted cause which cannot easily be removed, disease of a more serious nature will ensue. Under such circumstances, by reason of its seriousness and long continuance, the trouble involves all parts of the organism and may threaten its very life. When it reaches this point, if the administration at the grand center is vigorous and determined and wise, the disturbance cannot long endure; but if there is weakness at the center the whole federation may go down with a crash.

Dr. Lindlahr says that “Nature Cure Philosophy presents a rational concept of evil, its cause and purpose, namely: that it is brought on by violation of Nature’s laws, that it is corrective in its purpose that it can be overcome only by compliance with the Law. There is no suffering, disease or evil of any kind anywhere unless the law has been transgressed somewhere by someone.”

These transgressions of the law may be due to ignorance, to indifference, or to willfulness and viciousness. The effect will always be commensurate with the causes.

The science of natural living and healing shows clearly that what we call disease is primarily Nature’s effort to eliminate morbid matter and to restore the normal functions of the body; that the processes of disease are just as orderly in their way as everything else in Nature; that we must not check or suppress them, but co-operate with them. Thus we con, slowly but laboriously, the all-important lesson that “obedience to the law” is the only means of prevention of disease, and the only cure.

The Fundamental Law of Cure, the Law of Action, and Reaction, and the Law of Crisis, as revealed by the Nature Cure Philosophy, impress upon us the truth that there is nothing accidental or arbitrary in the processes of health, disease and cures; that every changing condition is either in harmony or in discord with the laws of our being; that only by complete surrender and obedience to the law can we master the law, and attain and maintain perfect physical health.

In our study of the cause and character of disease we must endeavor to begin at the beginning, and that is LIFE itself; for the processes of health, disease and cure are manifestations of that which we call life and vitality.

There are two prevalent, but widely differing conceptions of the nature of life or vital force: the material and the vital.

The former looks upon life or vital force with all its physical mental and psychical phenomena as manifestations of the electric, magnetic and chemical activities of the physical-material elements composing the human organism. From this view point, life is a sort of “spontaneous combustion,” or, as one scientist expressed it, a “succession of fermentations.”

This materialistic conception of life, however, has already become obsolete among the more advanced biologists as a result of the discoveries of modern science, which are fast bridging the chasm between the material and the spiritual realms of being.

The vital conception of Life or Vital Force on the other hand, regards it as the primary force of all forces, coming from the central source of all power.

This force, which permeates, warms and animates the entire created universe, is the expression of the Divine Will, the Logos, the Word, of the Great Creative Intelligence. it is this Divine Energy which sets in motion the whirls in the ether, the electric corpuscles and ions that make up the different atoms and elements of matter.

These corpuscles and ions are positive and negative forms of electricity. Electricity is a form of energy. It is intelligent energy; otherwise it could not move with that unvarying wonderful precision in the electrons of the atoms as in the suns and planets of the sidereal universe.

If t his supreme intelligence should withdraw its energy--the electrical charges (forms of energy)--and with it the atoms, elements, and the entire material universe, would disappear in the flash of a moment.

From this it appears that crude matter, instead of being the source of life and of all its complicated mental and spiritual phenomena is only an expression of the Life Force, itself a manifestation of the Great Creative Intelligence which some call God, other Nature, the Oversoul, Brahma, Prana, etc., each one according to his understanding.

It is this supreme power and intelligence, acting in and through every atom, molecule, and cell in the human body, which is the true healer, this “vis medicatrix naturae” which always endeavors to repair, to heal, and to restore the perfect type. all that the physician can do is to remove obstructions and to establish normal condition within and about the patient, so that the power within can do its work to the best advantage.

In the final analysis, all things in Nature, from a fleeting thought or emotion to the hardest piece of diamond or platinum, are modes of motion or vibration. A few years ago physical science assumed that an atom was the smallest imaginable part of a given element of matter; that although infinitesimally small, it still represented solid matter. Now, in the light of better evidence, we have good reason to believe that there is no such thing as solid matter; that every atom is made up of charges of negative and positive electricity acting in and upon an omnipresent ether; that the difference between an atom of iron and of hydrogen, of any other element, consists solely in the number of electrical charges or corpuscles it contains, and on the velocity with which these vibrate around one another.

Thus the atom, which was thought to be the ultimate particle of solid matter, is found to be a little universe in itself in which corpuscles of electricity rotate or vibrate around one another like the suns and planets in the sidereal universe. This explains what we mean when we say life and matter are vibratory.

What we call “Inanimate Nature” is beautiful and orderly because it plays in tune with the score of the Symphony of Life. Man alone can play out of tune. This is his privilege, or his curse, as he chooses, by virtue of his freedom of choice and action.

We can now better understand the definitions of health and of disease, given in the catechism of Nature Cure as follows:

“Health is normal and harmonious vibration of the elements and forces composing the human entity on the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual planes of being, in conformity with the constructive principle of Nature applied to individual life.”

“Disease is abnormal or inharmonious vibration of the elements and forces composing the human entity on one or more planes of being, in conformity with the destructive principle of Nature applied to individual life.”

The question naturally arising here is, “Normal or abnormal vibration with what?” The answer is that the vibratory conditions of the organism must be in harmony with Nature’s established harmonic relations in the physical, mental, moral, spiritual, and psychical realms of human life and action.