Soul and body; or, The spiritual science of health and disease

Front matter

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Preface

THE generous appreciation which the public has accorded to the two previous volumes of the author has emboldened him to offer, for their acceptance, the present work. It has been prepared under many and pressing professional labors, which may account in part for any errors and imperfections it contains. The importance of the subjects discussed is indicated by the growing interest felt in them at the present time in the world. It is to be hoped that the work may contain something to meet the wants of those who are striving to attain a truly spiritual life, and that it may contribute an influence toward the restoration of the phrenopathic method of healing practised by Jesus, the Christ, and his primitive disciples. It has been the aim of the author to make the work scientifically religious, without be- 3

4. PREFACE.

ing offensively theological. Of polemic theology the world has had a superabundance for the last three centuries. The religious nature of man has been surfeited and sickened with it. The sorest need of the world, at the present time, is not an increase of sectarian creeds, but a deeper and more intelligent spiritual life, which can come to us only from God, and the opening and descending heavens.

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CHAPTER I. The Spiritual Idea of Health and Disease . = . °

CHAE Eline DE.

The Spiritual Philosophy of the Cures wrought by Jesus, the Christ ‘ : . : : : . : .

CAPT WRe LLL

Faith and Fear, and their Relation to Health and Disease .

CIV TER Lev.

The Morbific and Sanative Influence of the Spiritual World, and how to communicate with that Realm of Life in Harmony with the Laws of Mind : : .

Prayer as the means of Spiritual and Bodily Health, and the Principle of Mediation . : ; 4 2

CHAPTER. Vil The Imposition of Hands, or the Magnetic Movement Cure, and the Rationale of its Efficiency . ; ; ‘ :

Pacu

BaAAL > has,

CHAPTER I.

THE SPIRITUAL IDEA OF HEALTH AND DISEASE

**T hold a middle rank ’twixt heaven and earth; On the last verge of mortal being stand, Close to the realms where angels have their birth, Just on the boundaries of the spirit-land.”

Waar that condition which we call health is, in its reality, and what is the correct idea of a diseased state, are fundamental inquiries. It is the office of the physician to promote the one and combat the other. But unless he has some definite conception of what disease is in its nature and essence, he is fighting against an unseen foe and at a disadvantage. If he is called to improve the health of a patient, to advise as_ to the best means of preserving or restoring it, his advice and efforts will be at random, unless he has a well-defined notion of what health is. The states of health and disease are opposites, and, as in the case of good and evil, if we get a correct idea of the one, we have the means of forming an accurate conception of the other.

What we call disease, or that manifestation of it which comes to the cognizance of the senses in every morbid condition, may be organic or functional. It may be an actual lesion, a loss of continuity in a part, or, as is most frequently the case, only a disturbed action of an organ. But this is only the outward and visible effect of some interior and more hidden cause. Dr. Jahr has judiciously remarked: ‘‘ We are to regard every given case of disease less as a local affection of this or that organ, causing a general derangement in the organism, than as a consequence of a disturbance in the principle which governs and preserves in harmony all the vital functions of the body. From thence it results that, in practice, it is less important to remove the affection of an organ than to regulate the normal state of the principle of health in the organism; convinced that the normal state of this principle being re-established, all the consequences arising from its disturbances would also naturally cease, and in a much more certain and permanent manner, than if they had only been transferred from one part to another by derivatives, or momentarily suppressed by palliatives.”-— (Hlementary Treatise upon Homoopathy, p. 14.)

What the essential principle of health is in the -human body has not been settled in physiology. Various and even conflicting opinions have been entertained regarding it. Itis certain that it is something vastly too subtle to be reached by chemical prepara- - tions and pharmaceutical compounds.

Everything in this volume and in the curative system recommended in it, is based on the fundamental truth, that man, as to his interior being, is_a spirit. 7 This inner nature is the real manhood, —the body, the mere physical organism, constituting no essential a part of his being and existence. The soul, the mind, the spirit,— which terms we use interchangeably, though not absolutely identical in meaning, —is the primary source of life in the body. Mind is essentially active, or possesses force, and is the dynamic principle of the body and the cause of all its movyements, muscular and physiological. The matter of which the body is composed is, in itself, passive and inert, having no life except that which is imparted to it by the all-pervading and animating spirit. There can be no animal or bodily life where there is no mind. The body in fact has no life. It neither lives nor dies. The mind lives in the body, and when the connection is sundered, the bodily envelope’ comes at once under the operation of certain chemical laws or forces which were before held in check by the animating soul, and is decomposed into its original material constituents. The general forces of the universe circulate in our bodily organism; but in addition to this there are peculiar movements that are only attributable to an animating spiritual principle. That the life of the body is not one thing and the life of the mind another, that they are not distinct entities, but identical, is evident. On this subject Herbert Spencer, one of the leading thinkers of the day, very truly says: ‘* Though we commonly regard mental and bodily life as distinct, it needs only to ascend somewhat above the ordinary point of view to see that they are subdivisions of life in general, and that no line of demarcation can be drawn between them, otherwise than arbitrarily.” — (Principles of Psychology, p. 437.)

There is but one Life in the universe, and though this general or universal Life, which is an emanation from God, is that by means of which everything is held in being, yet the entire bodily system, with all its organs and tissues, is in more immediate alliance with the mental nature and mental functions. Without this correspondence and connection the body would exhibit only the phenomena of ordinary matter, and would be motionless, powerless, and without animal vitality. ‘

In studying the connection of mind and body, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion, that the part of the physical organism most intimately associated with mind . is the nervous system. In this term we include the cerebrum, the cerebellum, medulla oblongata, medulla Spinalis, and the nerves thence distributed throughout the body. It is of all the organs of the body, as Prochaska has truly observed, the most important. It is the more immediate seat of the rational soul, and the link by which it is united to the body; it is the instrument by which the soul, so long as it is united to the body, produces its own uses. By it the mind acts on the body, and the body in turn acts upon and influences the manifestations of the mind. But, however great may be the importance of the nervous system in these - respects, it is of further importance, because the soul, through its instrumentality, has the power of exciting in _ the human body various movements that are involuntary, but which are essential to the healthy existence of the body, as digestion, nutrition, secretion, excretion, and all the physiological processes; these functions do not remain long undisturbed, if the nervous system be injured. Since the nervous system is the intermediate organism through the instrumentality of which the mind acts on the body and through which it accomplishes its uses in the external world, it has an important part in all diseases, and its proper treatment and management are essential to life and health.

It is not necessary that I should enter upon any extended description of the structure of the brain and nervous system. All that is known can be found in the more recent works on Anatomy. It is enough for our purpose to say, that the brain is a very complicated organ, and receives a more copious supply of blood than any other part of the system. It has: been computed that one-fifth of the entire circulation passes through the cerebral organism, —a circumstance which indicates great activity and physiological and functional importance. As the nervous system is the intermediate organism through which the mind acts upon and controls the body and affects every particle of it, all disease first manifests itself in some change here. It is the medium through which a spiritual disturbance ultimates itself in every morbid condition which becomes manifest to the senses.

There can be but little doubt that all inflammatory conditions of the body have their seat in the brain, as being the more immediate organ and residence of the spirit. ‘*‘ Many of the older medical writers, among whom are Willis, Chirac, Werlhof, Silvia, and Fracassini, maintain that inflammation of the brain is the proximate cause of fever. More recently several modern he SOUL AND BODY.

writers, particularly Clutterbuck, have advanced the same opinion. There can be no doubt that the brain is the organ primarily affected in this disease, but the exact nature of this disturbance of the brain we are at present unable to state.”— (Brigham on the Brain, p. 805.) .

Health and disease,in their primary causes, their underlying reality, are states of the spiritual principle in man. There is an internal andexternal man. This is recognized and taught by Paul, and is taken for granted in this volume. (1 Cor. xv. 44; 2 Cor. iv. 16.)

, Let us see if we can get the spiritual idea of health emo and disease. We often use the word spiritual without any definite conception of the meaning of the term. By a spiritual idea I mean one that is acquired independently of the testimony of the external senses, and sometimes in direct conflict with their fallacious appearances. To think spiritually is to elevate the thoughts to a range of action above the sensuous degree of the mind. In the case of disease we only perceive by the senses the ultimation of the spiritual disturbance. The interior hidden cause lies beyond their cognizance, and must be perceived by some mental power more interiorly penetrating in its range of action.

In the present earthly stage of our existence the senses have a preponderating influence over our judgment and intellectual states. Hence, in the history of medical opinions (science it can hardly be called), the prevalent theories of disease have been of a purely materialistic character. The various schools of medicine have come only to the recognition of the effects of ee el disease and of the outward symptoms, rather than to the perception of disease in its spiritual causes and its reality. Paul labored to call the attention of the world, in his day, away from things seen and temporal to things that are not seen by the outward eye, and which are invested with an enduring reality (2 Cor. iv. 18), but with poor success. The remedies employed for the alleviation or cure of disease in every subsequent age of Christian history have been those naturally. suggested by their external and sensuous theological and pathological systems, and have been of a crude and material character. They have hot been calculated to reach the root of the malady, but only at best to alleviate the outward symptoms, and ‘‘ have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people but slightly.” But human nature is not wholly nor mainly material, and the body is not merely a nicely constructed physiological machine, moved by the common forces of the universe. It is pervaded in every part, and animated by an interior spiritual nature,’ that is the source of its life and the spring of all its vital activities and movements. ‘To ignore this, as is usually done in the practice of the art of healing, is as unreasonable as it would be for the jeweller, in repairing a watch which keeps bad time, to confine his attention wholly to the hands of the chronometer, without regard to the hidden spring and other internal machinery.

There is often a profound philosophy concealed in the radical meaning of words.. Words are the ultimation, the outward expression of spiritual ideas, and their roots are as the petrified remains of an early spire itual science. Whatis the radical spiritual meaning of the words health and to heal? The words are from the same root as the word whole. To heal comes from the Saxon helan, to cover, to conceal, and to be made whole. The Danish verb heeler, to heal, is equivalent to being whole, entire and holy. <A state of health is a condition of wholeness, completeness, entireness, and the word holy is from the same root. Holiness and health in their radical signification are the same, and are a state of wholeness. In the New Testament to be healed is to be made whole, as in the passages, ‘¢ Wilt thou be made whole?” and“ Go in peace ; thy faith hath made thee whole.” ‘To be in health, to be holy, is to be ‘* made every whit whole.” Jesus said to one of the subjects of his cures, ‘‘Thou art made whole; sin no more lest a worse thing come upon thee.” Thisimplies a restoration of the whole being to harmony. In the system of Christ, holiness and health were joined together. The one was the internal 'spir- -itual state, the other the corresponding bodily condition.

In what does this entireness, this wholeness, consist? The animating principle of the body is what we call interchangeably the soul, the mind, the spirit. There is a law of correspondence, of correlation, between the

- inner man, the living soul, and the external organism, or the latter answers to the former as a shadow to a substance, an echo to the original sound, and an effect to a producing cause. “When the soul is restored to health and harmony by the redemptive agencies of the Gospel, introduced by Christ, the body adjusts itself in waar concordance with the restored spiritual life, for its state is always an effect of which the soul is the cause. In the Scripture idea of regeneration is not only included the idea of a new spirit, but a renewed body. This is also taught in the spiritual philosophy of Swedenbore. When the correspondence between the two departments of our complex existence is complete, the body is pervaded in every part, and without obstruction, by the spiritual principle. This is a state of, wholeness or health. When the spiritual essence does not harmoniously pervade every part, there is something wanting in that part. Itis nolonger complete or whole. The effort, the conatus, the spontaneous and inherent endeavor, the unconscious struggle of the soul, to restore the partially sundered correspondence, is that state of unrest, of disquietude, of disturbance, expressed by the word disease (from dis, without, and ease). When the correrm: spondence between any organ and the answering spiritual principle i is loosened or lost, the vital tone of the part _will be lowered, and its physiological function disturbed, ay altered, or suspended. When any part of the body loses its vital connection or correspondence entirely with the soul, it mortifies, or is made dead, as the word ‘implies. The part comes under the operation of those disorganizing chemical forces, whose action is no longer checked by the vital force, just as the entire body will when sundered from its conjunction with the animating spirit. What we call disease in an organ is usually a partial death of the part. The spiritual life does not * circulate freely throughit. To bring back the spiritual, _ principle to it, so that it will be diffused harmoniously % te t and without obstruction through it, is to heal it or make it whole. :

When the soul, in the calm happiness of unbroken fellowship with God, the Central Life, and in the love of all mankind, and in a state of tranquil trust and faith, that allays every fear, and brings a solid and enduring peace, harmoniously pervades, permeates, and interiorly dwells in every particle, cell, fibre, and tissue of the-body, that is holiness, wholeness, and health, in their highest form of manifestation.

In its radical sense, to heal and to conceal are the same. Health, in a certain comprehensible sense, is concealment, as the word is derived from the Saxon helan, to cover. It requires time for the body to adapt itself to the internal spiritual state, and many of the changes effected in the bodily condition hy the ever-varying mental emotions are transient in their effects. When the spiritual disturbance has not become ultimated in permanent sensible effects, in actual lesions and perturbed functional action, but is, as it were, hidden from view (for it is only effects that are per- %:

ceptible to our ordinary senses), it is still a state of health.

This doctrine of health and disease will be readily accepted by the disciples of Emanuel Swedenborg, and all those who are. acquainted with his doctrine of correspondence between the soul and body, as taught in that profoundly philosophical work entitled the ‘‘ Divine Love and Wisdom.” But a far higher authority has taught that the work of healing must commence within. Christ proclaimed to the world that a truly sanctified spirit will cleanse its outward temple. The process of cure by him was from within, outward. A soul restored by love and faith to union with the divine Life will bring the body into harmony with it, or put it off and go free from it, and graduate to the climes of . bliss. | It is interesting to trace, in the history of Medical _ Science, the progressive development and growth of - the spiritual idea of health and disease. In the earliest Z ages, diseases were supposed to be the result of the PF divine wrath, and it was naturally believed, with that es view of its origin, that, in the temples of the gods, the divine power of healing was most likely to be manifested. Hence the temples of religion became the resort of the sick and infirm, and the priests were the only physicians. This indicates an obscure and shadowy realization of the truth that disease is of a spiritual origin, and that spiritual remedies are indicated as apted to its cure. ! oy Great discoveries in medicine, or in any branch of science, are the result of an inspiration, — an influx of ideas from the higher realm of life and intelligence. It is a light descending from above. All great physicians, of whom there have been but few, scattered sparingly along the centuries of the world’s history, have been, in a certain proper sense, inspired men. It is an interesting fact, that all the great medical lights of the past have been men who have seen the importance of the — influence of the spiritual nature of man in health and disease. One of the first, of whom history makes men-

Sy tion, was A®sculapius, the reputed son of Apollo and 2

Coronis, and the pupil of Chiron the Centaur. He was called the inventor of the art of healing. In the earliest periods of human existence, medicine was based on an instinctive character, just as some animals are seen to resort to certain substances when they are sick, which are unfit to serve them for food; and it would require no great ingenuity to show that those diseases to which man in a state of nature would be most exposed are precisely those in which the instinctive tastes are most developed. — (Meryon’s Hist. of Medicine, p.7.) It isa current opinion, that probably has some foundation in fact, that vegetable remedies are of spontaneous and indigenous growth in the localities which generate the diseases for which they are specifics. These instinctive appetences are often a more unerring prescription of nature than the diplomatized science of medicine can give. The more one lives in a purely natural condition, the more certainly will his intuitions and impressions guide him in the selection of the appropriate remedies for his bodily ailments; these will often be — those things which the so-called medical science would — never think of prescribing, but which nevertheless have a perfect adaptedness to the particular case. A®%sculapius seems to have been the first who attempted to reduce these instinctive prescriptions to something like science. Only a few hints have been preserved as to his system. With the exception of the use of the remedial power of plants, it seems to have been the psychical or phrenopathic method, or the cure of disease by impressions on the mind. The practice of the healing art was connected with the religion of the day, as it always should be. Faith was demanded of the patients, and the process of cure was accompanied with all those mysterious ceremonies and cabalistic symbols that were calculated to excite it among a rude and uncultured people. Something like the modern animal magnetism seems also to have been practised. ‘The patients were thrown into the somnambulic state, or prophetic sleep, in which the appropriate remedies were revealed to them. Ifthe magnetic state could not be induced upon them, the priests themselves went into a state of ecstasy, or trance, and revealed the proper mode of cure. Such was the system of the Asclepiades down to the time of Hippocrates. — (Meryon’s Hist. of nS vol.

Hippocrates, who has been called the father of rational medicine, was born at Cos, 460 B.C. He represents the transition of the art of healing from the instinctive to the scientific. He was the scion of a family who had devoted themselves to the practice of medicine for at least three hundred years, and had pro-

_ duced some celebrated physicians before him. He - inherited his medical faculty, and all the skill of his ancestors seems to have been transmitted to him, and

to have centred in his personality.) His Aphorisms, | which are a collection of short, pithy sayings, give a condensed view of all that was known in medicine and physiology in his day. They have been translated into all the languages of the civilized world, been commented on by authors ‘in all ages, and contain the fundamental principles of all medical science; and, according to Suidas, taken collectively, are ‘‘a performance surpassing the genius of man.” By this he must mean that, like all original men, who make additions to the sum total of human knowledge, he was _ aided by light from the higher realm of intelligence. To him we owe the first acknowledgment and announcement of the principle which he called gto (physis), Nature, as superintending and regulating all the bodily _ functions. ) From this word all those who practise the ‘art of healing have been called physicians. What he called Nature in the human body he viewed as an all-pervading spiritual principle. It is now universally adopted in physiology under the designation of the vis medicatrix nature, the healing force of nature. But it is demonstrably certain that it belongs to the spiritual nature, and is only an effort of the soul to bring the disordered body into correspondence and harmony with itself. : About the time of Hippocrates, or a little previous (500 B.C.), the distinction between the soul and body was first taught by Anaxagoras, one of the most rational and spiritual of the Greek philosophers. During the early period of the history of medicine, the immortality of the soul was deduced from the atomic theory of Democritus. All matter was deemed inde- _ structible, as being made up of simple and indissoluble ‘atoms, and the soul being material — as all matter was indestructible — was necessarily immortal and eternal. This would prove equally the immortality of the body. But the recognition of the distinction between the body and the animating soul was a long step in advance in the spiritual science of healing. A great idea once deposited by the heavens in the mind ef man is never fully lost in the life of humanity. It seems to have the power of reproducing itself, perhaps in other forms, in every subsequent age, and without losing any of its original force.

About the commencement of the Christian era, Atheneus, of Attila, revived the Platonic theory of the existence of an immaterial, active principle called Preuma or spirit, and the state of this principle was considered to be the source of health and disease. A medical sect or school was founded, under the name of Pneumatists, or Spiritualists, whose practice was based on this principle. Jesus, the Christ, seems to have — adopted, or rather to have conformed his practice to that theory, and without deviating from it. A more material conception of this principle was afterwards adopted in physiology under the name of the animal spirits, supposed to be generated in the blood. The idea of a subtle fluid, called animal spirits, retained its place in physiology down to modern times. It is found in Untzer and Prochaska, but they denominate it the wis nervosa, the nervous force, and suppose its origin to be in the brain.

After the subsidence of the Pneumatists the spiritual idea of health and disease seems to have been lost sight of in the practice of medicine. The system of Claudius Galen, which was purely materialistic, was promulgated in the second century, and for thirteen hundred years reigned supreme in Europe, Asia and Africa, and was not seriously disputed until the age of Paracelsus. Christianity, if there had been anything

/ more than an external apprehension of it, would have been a standing protest against the dominant materialistic schools of medicine. Why, in writing the history of medicine, the theory and practice of Jesus, the Christ, is left out, it is difficult to conceive. This divinely human personage had more control over disease than any one who ever appeared in the history of mankind. Whatever view we take of him, as either man, or God, he was certainly the Great Physician of both soul and body; and the principles on which his practice was based deserve the profoundest consideration and study. And it is certain that he employed no chemical remedies. His method of cure was psychical, and not material.

After ages of pure materialism in the science of medicine, the spiritual idea of health and disease was revived by John Baptist Van Helmont, and has never been fully suppressed. It has, ever since his day, claimed recognition more or less in the practice of the art of healing. He pursued the study of medicine for thirty consecutive years with the ardor of an enthusiast, and with an entirely independent spirit. Having renounced all antecedent systems, all academic dignities, and the schools where only superficial and futile matters were taught, he consecrated himself to the discovery of truth from its original source. He became deeply imbued and saturated with the spirit of the mystic philosophy of Thomas 4 Kempis, and John Tauler. He adopted as his fundamental maxim the principle that ‘‘ all truth and wisdom come from God, to whom man unites himself by prayer, contemplation, and good works.” To imitate Christ became the ruling motive and central aim of his life, and in order to copy this divine model more closely in the relief of human misery, he devoted himself to the study of medicine in the untrammelled ardor of an independent genius. Such men are always inspired, and will say and do things beyond the comprehension of the age in which they live, and his works are as unintelligible to the mass of mankind as are those of Jacob Behmen.

The governing principle in the human body, and the source of all its physiological movements, he denominated archeus, perhaps from the Greek word dyxy (arche), signifying origin or first principle. It was not a mere blind force, like the vis vite of later times, but was possessed of intelligence, and endowed with the power of regulating all the movements, voluntary and involuntary, of the body, and remained in it until its chemical dissolution. If I get the true conception of it, he viewed it not merely as the animating principle of the human body, but also as the universal life, and something allied to God or proceeding from him, that, like the Holy Spirit, is the everywhere present organizing principle of nature; for without it, he affirmed that everything would go to confusion, and the universe would return to its original chaos. For some reason it would be difficult to define, he located it more particularly, inthe human body, in the pyloric orifice of the stomach and in the spleen. From this central and commanding position it directs all the functions of the other organs, watching the integrity of each, and maintaining the harmony of the whole.