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Between the ordinary college medicine that claims to heal through the chemical changes produced in the body by drugs, and mental healing that claims to do so by changing the mind of the patient, there is a third method of cure that deals with a substance finer than chemical matter, and grosser than mind, namely the vital spirit or rather vital spirits. The Mesmeric treatment and its branches, as massage, muscle beating, operate mainly upon the said vital spirits and their distribution in the patient's body. But before we say more of this substance, we will give some examples of the methods of cure, the direct concern of which are the same vital spirits, — in order to throw a clear light on the theorems on which the system is based.
A child of the writer had sore eyes (conjunctivitis) for two years, until his nurse, an Italian peasant woman, secretly tied live frogs on his eyes; the animals died from their service, but "extracted the poison" so entirely that the complaint ceased and has not returned since that time, now ten years.
A young man of our acquaintance, sick with typhoid fever, was given up by his physician, when, on the advice of a popular female healer, they cut live chickens in halves, and placed them under the soles of the patient's feet. The effect was an exeedingly bad odor spreading in the room, and the chickens' flesh turned green, but the patient recovered, being better in a few hours, whilst "he should have died ", as the astonished physician said when he called in the morning.
The Hindu physicians cure diseases by simply binding upon the arm, neck, or other part of the body, certain roots, leaves, or nuts of healing plants and trees.
Another procedure is this; you mix some object imbued with the blood, perspiration, or other secretitious matter of the patient, called "mumia," with earth, and sow the seed of some healing plant into it; or you transplant the grown vegetable into this mixture; or the plant, shrub or tree may be watered with such mixture; or the mumia is placed in the tree, between the wood and bark, binding the incison as is done in grafting; or the mumia is mixed with food and given to some animal to eat, which usually dies from the "poison," as the plants also gradually perish under the diseased influence.
Almost every person who does not live wholly secluded knows of some example of cure accomplished in a way similar to that mentioned above. Now this "superstitious" kind of medicine has been practised in all ages; and not that only: what the people are doing with childlike simplicity is only the reflection of the medical science of the great occultists of the middle ages, —Albertus Magnus, Paracelsus, Fludd, Maxwell, Van Helmont, Tentzel, Croll, Glauber etc., who in their turn derived their knowledge, directly or indirectly, from the East.
The Scotch alchemist and magician, William Maxwell, who lived about three hundred years ago, has in his "Three books of the Magnetic Art of Healing" a collection of one hundred "Very useful aphorisms of the Universal Soul and Spirit, in which nearly all natural magic is contained," in one of the first of which he states:—
In this creation, where the Soul builds a body for herself, a third principle, standing between the two, is generated, through which the Soul is more closely connected with the body, and all workings of the natural things are effectuated; this third principle is called the vital spirit.
After this definition of the vital spirit, the twelve theorems by which Maxwell brings occult medicine into a scientific system, and which he demonstrates by argument drawn from numerous instructive facts, — will be easily understood: —
1. The Soul is not confined to the visible body, but is also outside of it, and is limited by no organic body.
2. The Soul acts outside of its so-called body.
3. From every body proceed substantial rays, in which the soul is acting by its presence, and to which the soul gives power and efficiency. These rays however are not corporeal only, but severally composed.
4. These rays that proceed from the bodies of the animals and man, possess a vital spirit by which the soul performs her operations.
5. The secretions of the animal bodies contain a part of their vital spirit; therefore they cannot be said to be dead. Their life is of the same kind as the animal's; for it is produced by the same soul.
6. Between the body and the secretions there exists a connection of vital spirit, far away though the secretions may be carried from the body.
The same holds good of any part severed from the body, as also of the blood etc.
7. This vital spirit lasts in the secretions, or severed parts, or the blood, as long as they are not transformed into something else of a different kind.
8 When any part of the body becomes sick, or its vital spirit is impaired, the others suffer with it, or sympathize.
9. If the vital spirit has been strengthened in any part, it is strengthened throughout the body.
10. Where the vital spirit is more exposed, it is more easily affected.
11. In the secretions and the blood the vital spirit is not so deeply immersed and locked up, as in the body; therefore it is more easily affected in them than in the body.
12. The mixture of the vital spirits produces sympathy, and from that sympathy love arises.
To these twelve theorems we may add a thirteenth: —Through the mixture of the vital spirits of two bodies an exchange is produced, one body taking on, by "sympathy", the quality of the vital spirit of the other. This explains the recovery of the patient at the expense of the plant or animal,-that is made sick and even dies. In meditating upon the cause of this exchange, the question arises in our mind whether the vital spirits, as manipulated in the instances quoted above, accomplish the work of themselves, or if the imagination and will of the persons concerned in the case are agents also, or even the indispensable agents, —thus making the cure a performance of so-called magic? We are inclined to answer this question in the affirmative. The greater, then, of course, would be the moral responsibility of the doers of such work, which, if done with wicked variations, naturally, or by the law of cause and effect, would draw after it due punishment, in this life and the coming ones.
We hope Maxwell's theorems, as set forth in this article, will enable every thoughtful reader to account for the successful cures effected by occult medicine, and our outline of the method, — general and, therefore, meagre though it be, will encourage such young physicians as have not yet become incurably diseased with skepticism, to supplement their college course by the study of the great occultists of the past centuries. We do not doubt but this addition to their graduating knowledge will be an element profitable to themselves as well as their patients.
C. W.
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