The natural healers must be more careful about their statements if they would have the respect of intelligent people, and they must labor diligently to be well informed. For their own good regular physicians will have to be more open-minded, and recognize the fact that it is not necessary to have a M. D. degree to accept the truth regarding healing. Medical men are losing their hold on the public largely because they have cultivated the class spirit.
It is a well known fact among natural healers that most cases of
Bright's disease are curable, even after they have become chronic.
However, a physician who voices this truth will probably be classed
among irresponsible dreamers by other doctors.
Antagonism of this kind breeds extremists and is therefore harmful to the public, which pays for all the mistakes made. It is very easy to lose one's mental balance and to begin to play on a harp with but one string. We have a large army of Christian Scientists. If it were not for the way in which physicians of the past mistreated the body and neglected the mind, this sect would not exist. The doctors, with their awful doses of nauseous and destructive drugs, went to one extreme. The reaction was the formation of a sect that has gone to the other extreme. The Christian Scientists are incomprehensible in spots to us mortals who believe in a body as well as a mind, but they have a cheerful and helpful philosophy which brings enjoyment on earth and they have done an immense amount of good by teaching people to cease thinking and talking so much about themselves and their ills. Among other demonstrations, they have shown the uselessness of drugs.
Of late so many varieties of drugless healers have sprung into existence that it is difficult to remember even their names. There are many pathies. These have a tendency to take one part of the human being, or one procedure of treatment, and to play this up to the elimination of all the rest. Some do everything with the mind. Others pay no attention to the mind. Bathing, massage, manipulating the spine, washing out the colon, baths in mud, sunshine or water, suggestion and many other things are separately given credit for being cure-alls. Many of these are excellent as a part of regenerative treatment, but they are not sufficient of themselves to give permanent results.
Most healers have too narrow vision. People come to them because they have faith. The faith alone will produce temporary improvement, but as soon as the interest is gone and the procedure grows old the patient becomes worse again unless the treatment possesses genuine merit. Osteopathy is most excellent, as a part of a healing system, but it is not sufficient. The osteopaths find their patients relapsing over and over again, or taking some other disease. However, they are learning, in increasing numbers, that if they would keep their patrons well, they have to give them education along the line of hygiene and dietetics, with a little mental training thrown in.
Many chiropractors are learning the same thing. In some chiropractic schools there are professors wise enough to teach their students to be broad-minded. The true natural healer makes use of air, water, food, exercise, mental training—in fact, all the means nature has put at his disposal. He realizes that the best treatment is education of the patient. In many cases a cure can be greatly hastened by proper local treatment.
It is unfortunate that the nature healers are so divided and that many operate upon such a narrow basis. If the vast majority of them were well informed, broad enough to make use of all helpful natural means, and were designated by the same name, it would not take them long to gain more public confidence and respect than they now possess. So long as the nature healers segregate themselves and allow themselves to be narrow, so long will they have to struggle at a disadvantage against the more united wielders of scalpels and prescribers of drugs.
The question of choosing a health guide is sometimes perplexing. The patient should select one in whom he has confidence, for confidence is a great aid in restoring health. It often happens that there is no one in the town in whom the patient has confidence, for many communities have no competent natural healers. Then the question is whether or not to seek advice by correspondence. In acute diseases this is generally a bad plan, for the family often lacks the poise and equanimity necessary to carry out directions. In chronic cases it is usually all right. Here all that is required is correct knowledge put into practice and errors are not as dangerous as in acute diseases. Curable cases will get well by following the advice given by correspondence. A medical man who educates people by correspondence is considered unethical and is severely censured by the ethical brethren. To prescribe medicine by mail is without doubt reprehensible, but to educate people into health is a work of merit, whether it is done face to face or by correspondence. It is advantageous to meet the physician, talk things over and be examined, but it is not necessary.
I know of some cases of acute disease treated satisfactorily by letter and telegram, but the patients' families were in sympathy with natural methods, of which they had a fair knowledge, and they had unlimited confidence in the healer.
I am personally acquainted with many people who have been educated out of chronic disease and into health by correspondence, after the local physicians had vainly exhausted all their skill. It is simply a matter of applied knowledge and it works just as well in curable cases if given by telephone, telegraph or letter as if imparted by word of mouth. However, it seems to me that it is most satisfactory for all concerned when the healer and the sufferer can meet.