Part 25

Back of what the “scientists” claim to be pure superstition, is a grain of truth. I believe there is some truth in palmistry, telepathy and clairvoyance, and it is proven that there is efficiency in fetishes, amulets, charms, et cetera, though I have yet to observe a case of either telepathy or clairvoyance that I considered a demonstration of phenomena. It is possible for one familiar with human nature to foretell to a reasonable extent, or predestine personal actions. If a right-handed man is lost in a forest and we meet him, we can tell him that he is moving in a circle to the left, because he will step a little further with his right foot.

So-called superstitious people have a right to their superstitions; they were sick, procured their charm and got well. It is well-known that a patient, lacking confidence in his physician, receives but little benefit from his treatment (charm). When our non-superstitious people call on the doctor and he fails to cure them; he then berates their lack of superstition.

Let us follow a “superstitious” lady who desires to get rid of a wart on her finger. Auntie brings the washing some Saturday evening, and notes the wart on madam’s finger. She says, “Lawd, lady, why don’t you get rid o’ dat wart?” and madam replies that she has consulted several doctors, but they cannot get the roots out; the wart always grows back. Auntie informs her that an old mammy she knows would charm that wart away; she has seen her do so lots of times; it is easy. Madam becomes interested, so she thinks it over and all the time she is thinking about going to mammy’s cabin, she is holding in her “mind” the thought of getting rid of the wart. She dresses very plainly one afternoon, and starts for mammy’s cabin, all the time nervous and afraid that somebody will see her and know where she is going. Therefore, she is thinking all the time of getting rid of that wart. Timidly knocking at the door, she goes in, filled with awe and fear, and notes the surroundings. After talking with her, mammy has her sit down, takes her hand, makes some cabalistic passes, telling her just exactly what she must do, and that at a certain time, exactly, she must do a certain thing; if she will do so for a certain length of time, the wart will surely disappear.

The woman, after watching mammy’s work and manipulations, returns home, still afraid of being observed by her neighbors, and at last sits down with a sigh of relief, thankful that the ordeal is over, not realizing that for the past two hours her mind has been set on getting rid of the wart. Now her curiosity is aroused; will the wart disappear? Every time she feels the wart, it arouses in her “mind” the thought of its disappearance; and every little while she goes to the light to see if the wart has really vanished. In time it does. If this is not a practical case of suggestion by reaching the mind, I do not know what is. I fail to see the superstition, as the wart disappears by suggestion. Madam does not care whether it was suggestion, or what it was, she knows the wart was on her hand, and remembers the learned (?) doctor’s failure, realizing that mammy has done what the doctor failed to do, and is happy, or, as the doctors say, she is now extremely superstitious. No! What you think is, what you believe is, as far as you are personally concerned.

Our psychologists are always talking of emotion. Emotions are extremes and the same nerve-ends are stimulated to produce the two opposite emotions. Sadness affects certain muscles of the face and forces the tear ducts to pour forth tears. Extreme mirth produces the same result.

The myriads of deductions, as to emotion, made by our psychologists are entirely false. We have five ways of receiving ten extreme ideas, and to the degree of emphasis or stimulus (suggestion), and of the ideas already associated, do the emotions respond.

I believe the Sympathetic System and the cerebro-spinal system to be of one Abdominal Brain. The cerebro-spinal receives the impressions and carries them to the sympathetic ganglion, which receives unconsciously and can perform this function free from the cerebro-spinal, but the cerebro-spinal can do absolutely nothing without the sympathetic. In other words, it is inherent with, and cannot be disassociated from the sympathetic.

You see, hear, smell, feel or taste something repulsive, and immediately become sick at the stomach. The cerebro-spinal simply registers the memory of the sense-stimuli, but the nerve-ends that receive this are beyond all question sympathetic, the cerebrum being simply a side issue, and like the registering mechanism of a phonograph; so, instead of being sick through a reflex action, which I cannot comprehend, it is all direct. So-called reflex action has never been comprehensively explained to me. All action is direct.

If matter is the expression of mind, so-called magnetism must be an expression in matter that attracts other matter. Therefore, a person possessed of a pure body will have a pure mind, consequently, a pure expression in his face, attracting the pure, and vice versa. That this is true, I have proven.

There was a time in my life when pure women, children and babes were afraid of me, and would not look at me. I decided to “clean house,” and after my surgeons had finished with me, acquired the thought that man partakes of the nature of the food he eats. I was in Kansas, where they fed us on ham and eggs or bacon and eggs for breakfast, roast pork for dinner, and cold ham and sausage for supper; at last I concluded I was a hog, and began experimenting. Desiring to cease drinking liquor, I stopped eating pork, and, strangely, the amount of liquor I consumed proportionately decreased. I then quit eating flesh, and in eight months, with no effort on my part, ceased drinking liquor.

Before this, I had reached such a stage that when a gentleman invited me to his home I would refuse; being afraid to meet the ladies of the family. In a city in Arkansas I played an engagement of one week, returning after a couple of weeks, and had to lay off one night. That night I was invited to a children’s party. I was afraid to go, but went after my friend insisted. The children, of course, knew who I was; they began talking to me and I forgot myself. For a time I was thoroughly unconscious of my environment, recovering to find that I was in the middle of the parlor on my knees with some dozen little girls around me, some with their arms about my neck, and the tears were rolling down my cheeks; then I realized that I had “cleaned house,” that the brutal nature had passed away, and the “magnetism” with which I had been blessed as a lad, had partially returned; had returned to the extent that the children had seen in my face and responded to the love I now had for them. This is the pleasantest memory of my life.

After that I used to smile and speak to the babes as I passed them on the street, and they always smiled in return. A year before this time, if I looked at a baby it was certain to cry.

To further prove this thought, about a year afterward, I met a party of ladies in a hotel parlor, became very angry, and dismissed them. Going onto the porch of the hotel (this was in the South), I saw a baby in a carriage. When I spoke to the baby it began yelling, and would not stop until I left. Upon meeting the baby the next day, when I was in a good humor, it was pleased to see me, thus showing that personal magnetism is simply the expression in matter of mind. Therefore, the foul mind gives forth foul expression, which is immediately responded to by those of the same type.

To cultivate personal magnetism, cultivate purity. The orator or the actor who magnetizes (?) his audience is simply a person possessing much expression, and who unconsciously tells his story by affecting two senses. The non-magnetic man is the one who affects only one—the ear,—but the man who affects both the eye and the ear, who is full of expression and gesture, is the most magnetic always.

My dear reader, you are a hypnotist, why is it that people in the front pew of a church, particularly if the altar be high, so readily fall asleep? Easy position, upturned eye, concentration, and monotony in the voice of the minister. There is but one way to hypnotize, and that is by bringing the proper five attributes together. The making of “passes” is simply using the deaf and dumb language to a person. They suggest through feeling what the comprehensive hypnotist suggests through the ear. Downward passes mean sleep, therefore every time the subject feels the downward passes he thinks of sleep and goes to sleep (?), or is in hypnosis, with the sense of feeling keen and acute, waiting for the upward passes. When the upward passes are made, he awakens, because that is associated with and forces the thought of awakening.

A thought consists of two or more associated sense-impressions.

My dear reader, you love your mother, your father, your brother, your sister and wife (if you have one), and children if you are so blessed. Just think of the all-wise provisions that the “scientific” world has made for your welfare.

You or I knew a young man, a boy. We knew him playing in the street and going to school. His father possessed a little money and did not wish the boy to perform manual labor, so at eighteen or nineteen years of age he is sent to a medical college. Now, mind, this boy has no practical knowledge of anything. He has had no experience, whatever, in the world. He is a suckling, and spends four years in this college listening to words, watching the professors of anatomy demonstrate (feeling-sense), watching operations by old men, visiting the hospital and watching the doctors prescribe. His actual experience consists of cutting up one cadaver, perfunctorily; the proper dissection of one cadaver would have taken him at least four years. It would be necessary for him to dissect at least a dozen before he could properly become familiar with the structure of the human body.

At the end of the fourth year, being still a boy, he graduates by answering a lot of questions—words associated with words, necessarily carrying with them no comprehension—and this boy, after taking the oath to be honorable, which as yet he is too young to comprehend, is given a parchment which entitles him to assume the treatment of the most vicious diseases, to reduce the most intricate dislocations, to assist “nature” in bringing new beings into the world; to have entrée to our homes under all of the most delicate circumstances, and thus come into possession of the skeletons in our closets; to be sent for when our dearest relative is likely to pass away. This boy—inexperienced as to all things worldly—is entitled by law to this right. Is it sensible, is it just?

To further strengthen this injustice, the law designates to whom (experience not being a factor) we shall go when we are sick; failing to do so, we shall be punished. All other contracts, to stand before a court of law, must be equitable; a just consideration must be given. What consideration do we get in return for being forced to go to this man with a parchment? Does he guarantee to cure us? Will he cure us? Does he cure us? Can he cure us? If he fails, why should we not have redress?

Again, we know of a person who is of mature age, who knows life, who knows from experience right from what the world calls wrong, and through the proper senses, how to treat disease; who is capable of handling diseases—proving his capability by past deeds,—and why should we not go to him? Why should he be punished for treating us? Why should we be punished for accepting his treatment?

If the graduates, at the end of four years, were possessed of any actual knowledge, if they could demonstrate any other than an ocular one of displaying their diplomas, I would have nothing to say. I do not believe that the Supreme Court of the United States will sustain any such law, inasmuch as the Constitution gives us the right to choose whom we shall have dealings with. The wise (?) legislators, knowing nothing of medicine, and little of farming, unhesitatingly dictate to the world to whom the sick shall go for relief.

The Nazarene cured by suggestion. The Christian Scientists cure by suggestion; the Mental Scientists cure by suggestion; the so-called Faith Curists cure by suggestion; the Hypnotist cures by suggestion, and what cures the physician accomplishes are by suggestion; but a wise medic whispers into the ear of the farmer legislator—who is another of the modern superstitions, as we believe him to be a representative man, a maker of laws for the good of men,—this medic whispers in his ear, “These other people do not cure.” Then who does? It is passing strange that, with all his curing, he has to force the people to patronize him while all the other scientists fall under the ban of the law.

In this country of alleged freedom, let the curists fight their own battles, let them live by the deeds they do. In all other affairs that is the law, but a man’s life is so dear to the legislators—who are always standing around the lobbies with their hands behind them—that they cannot allow man to care for his own life, it is not precious enough to him; he is not capable of “choosing” to whom he shall go; he must be saved from himself; he must go to a man with a parchment and have that man pour a serum—the putrefaction of disease of horses, cows, dogs, goats and rabbits into his blood, to kill a poor little bug. If the patient dies, and a post-mortem is held, the doctors state that the bug was there; other doctors state that they are right, the diagnosis was correct, the bug was there. The doctors put it there. The taking of human life is nothing.

Now, dear reader, I am not railing at the doctors personally, but at their pseudo philosophy. They mean well, poor, helpless creatures, they learned (?) what their tutors taught (?) them. They saw surgical operations, they obtained (?) through the eye that which should have been acquired through feeling. Their wise preceptors had a law made; and now, as they have listened four years and can answer questions, they are given diplomas which entitle them to go forth to fight the mighty hosts of bugs. They are fortified with the “jaw-bone of an ass,” and the world looks on and says, “Hallelujah!” For some reason they accept what old Doc. So and so said, take it for granted, fail to investigate and try to succeed. They have no true knowledge with which to work. To show how false the present theory of medicine is, when a man is suffering from indigestion he is given pepsin, which merely digests the food in the stomach, failing to reach any cause whatever. A bucket has been filled with water; the water is thrown out and the bucket again placed under a spout, with the expectation of its remaining empty. They do nothing but attempt to remove effect, never once reaching cause.

The “rational” school of medicine is the most irrational; purely attempts at drug suggestion without any certainty as to the result, contradicting their own consciences every day, deceiving the general public by asserting that they produce disease through inoculation with germs; and right here I unhesitatingly deny that they ever produced a tubercular lung in a rabbit or guinea-pig with any germ they inoculated him with, and assert that they kill him with septicemia or blood-poisoning, by introducing into his blood foreign matter. They know the exact manner in which he will die, they find his lungs full of bugs; his entire body is full of bugs because they filled him with them. Allow me to furnish the rabbit and my doctors to watch the experiment, and I will give one thousand dollars to any doctor who will produce the disease, per se, in my rabbit or guinea-pig through inoculation with his bugs. They must produce a tubercular lung, not a sound lung filled with bugs.

I know of dozens of cases of diphtheria (?) where the membrane, when examined by the bacteriologist of the Board of Health of Brooklyn, N. Y., and pronounced true diphtheria, were not diphtheria in any shape or form, and dozens of cases where they pronounced it not diphtheria, that were, beyond all question, notwithstanding the test (?), true diphtheria. This wrangling over the word “true” is all “tommy-rot”; whether it is true or not, the patient dies, no need of wrangling over whether it is true or pseudo.

If I were a doctor, not merely a man with a “sheep-skin,” but a real doctor, a man who had goods to deliver, a man who could say, “I will cure, or accept no pay,” I would have an office of three rooms and have all my skeletons in the first room; reversing the usual arrangement of our present wise doctors, it should be a gloomy room and I would hire sick people—awfully sick people—to sit around the room so that when a patient entered he would have sickness suggested very strongly, and would know that he was sick; and after the sick people had told him how awfully sick they were, their “minds” being full of sickness, and he had that thought of sickness thoroughly emphasized, I would have him step into another room that had minor surgical instruments on display and lesser suggestions of sickness. Then I would invite him into my office where I would be sitting in the shadows so that he could not readily perceive the involuntary and unconscious expressions that would appear in my face as he told me of his illness. My office would be bright and full of flowers, and birds, and pictures of health; no stuffed animals, but live ones; I should try to have a smile on my face, and the moment he took a seat, responding to the suggestion of the present environment, he would say to me, “Why, doctor, I feel better already.” And he would feel better, because from every suggestion of sickness I should have carried him into a room that was full of every suggestion of health. No drugs, no odor of drugs, no instruments, no death’s head calendars; but life, in expression, in plants, in flowers, in birds, in animals; I would have surrounded him with health. And, good reader, he could go away with no drugs, but with a memory of that office that would make him feel better.