“I guess you mean you are doing what you are prompted to do by every vagrant impulse that happens to stray into your mentality, aren’t you?” she said archly. “You haven’t really seriously thought out your way, else you would not be here now urging Congress to spread a blanket of ignorance over the human mind. If you will reflect seriously, if you will lay aside monetary considerations, and a little of the hoary prejudice of the ages, and will carefully investigate our present medical systems, you will find a large number of schools of medicine, bitterly antagonistic to one another, and each accusing the other of inferiority as an exact science, and as grossly ignorant and reprehensibly careless of life. But which of these warring schools can show the greatest number of cures is a bit of data that has never been ascertained. A recent writer says: ‘As important as we all realize health to be, the public is receiving treatment that is anything but scientific, and the amount of unnecessary suffering that is going on in the world is certainly enough to make a rock shed tears.’ He further says that, ‘at least seventy-five per cent of the people we meet who are apparently well, are suffering from some chronic ailment that regular medical systems can not cure,’ and that many of these would try further experimentation were it not for the criticism that is going on in the medical world regarding various curative systems. The only hope under the drugging system is that the patient’s life and purse may hold out under the strain of trying everything until he can light upon the right thing before he reaches the end of the list.”
“And do you include surgery in your general criticism?” he asked.
“Surgery is no less an outgrowth of the belief of sentient matter than is the drugging system,” she replied. “It is admittedly necessary in the present stage of the world’s thought; but it is likewise admitted to be ‘the very uncertain art of performing operations,’ at least ninety per cent of which are wholly unnecessary.
“You see,” she went on, “the effect upon the moral nature of the sick man is never considered as rightfully having any influence upon the choice of the system to be employed. If Beelzebub can cast out demons, why not employ him? For, 182 after all, the end to be attained is the ejection of the demon. And if God had not intended minerals and plants to be used as both food and medicine, why did He make them? Besides, man must earn his bread in some way under our present crude and inhuman social system, and if the demand for drugs exists we may be very sure it will be supplied by others, if not by ourselves. Again, the influence of commercialism as a determining factor in the choice of a profession, is an influence that works to keep many in the practice of a profession that they know to be both unscientific and harmful. The result is an inevitable lowering of ideals to the lust of material accumulation.”
“Well!” he exclaimed. “You certainly are hard on us poor doctors! And we have done so much for you, too, despite your accusations. Think of the babies that are now saved from diphtheria alone!”
“And think of the children who are the victims of the medical mania!” she returned. “Think how they are brought up under the tyranny of fear! Fear of this and of that; fear that if they scratch a finger blood poisoning will deprive them of life; fear that eating a bit of this will cause death; or sitting in a breeze will result in wasting sickness! Isn’t it criminal? As for diphtheria antitoxin, it is in the same class as the white of an egg. It contains no chemicals. It is the result of human belief, the belief that a horse that has recovered from diphtheria can never again be poisoned by the microbe of that disease. The microbe, Doctor, is the externalization in the human mentality of the mortal beliefs of fear, of life and power in matter, and of disease and death. The microbe will be subject, therefore, to the human mind’s changing thought regarding it, always.”
“Well then,” said the doctor, “if people are spiritual, and if they really are a consciousness, as you say, why do we seem to be carrying about a body with us all the time––a body from which we are utterly unable to get away?”
“It is because the mortal mind and body are one, Doctor. The body is a lower stratum of the human mind. Hence, the so-called mind is never distinct from its body to the extent of complete separation, but always has its substratum with it. And, Doctor, the mind can not hold a single thought without that thought tending to become externalized––as Professor James tells us––and the externalization generally has to do with the body, for the mind has come to center all its hopes of happiness and pleasure in the body, and to base its sense of life upon it. The body, being a mental concept formed of false thought, passes away, from sheer lack of a definite principle 183 upon which to rest. Therefore the sense of life embodied in it passes away with it. You know, the ancients had some idea of the cause of disease when they attributed it to demons, for demons at least are mental influences. But then, after that, men began to believe that disease was sent by God, either to punish them for their evil deeds, or to discipline and train them for paradise. Funny, isn’t it? Think of regarding pain and suffering as divine agents! I don’t wonder people die, do you? Humboldt, you know, said: ‘The time will come when it will be considered a disgrace for a man to be sick, when the world will look upon it as a misdemeanor, the result of some vicious thinking.’ Many people seem to think that thought affects only the brain; but the fact is that we think all over!”
“But look here,” put in the doctor. “Here’s a question I intended to ask Hitt the other night. He said the five physical senses did not testify truly. Well now, if, as you say, the eyes do not testify to disease, then they can’t testify to cures either, eh?” He sat back with an air of triumph.
“Quite correct,” replied Carmen. “The physical senses testify only to belief. In the case of sickness, they testify to false belief. In the case of a cure, they testify to a changed belief, to a belief of recovered health, that is all. It is all on the basis of human belief, you see.”