THE SPIRITUAL HEALER.

 

 In all mesmeric or hypnotic phases, the operator may be assisted by spirit-friends and his power indefinitely augmented.

 

Healing by magnetic or spiritual methods, if the operator is not careful to guard himself, is exhaustive of vital force. In some cases there is an interchange of magnetism, and the operator takes on the symptoms of the subject or patient. Often the demand is so great that the operator has not time for recuperation, or most unwisely thinks that he has not, and thus by attempting to heal too many patients, he really enters on a career of deception.

 

The operator learns by direct and constant practice. He will thereby gain all-important self-confidence and versed in the endless diversity of character, which must be treated with subtle tact, according to the indicated requirements.

 

THE HEALER CANNOT HEAL HIMSELF.

 

The magnetic healer, however successful in healing others, may not be able to heal himself, because be cannot produce the changes in himself he can in others. He is not as successful with those with whom he is in immediate contact, as a wife or children, for these already are sustained by his magnetism all the time. Hence the necessity of a foreign influence. It is the same with a spirit control which is constant and whatever illness may come to the medium proves superior to the control, and thus calls for another to master it.

 

This does not hold when remedies are prescribed by spirits claiming to have knowledge, and mediums who sell that knowledge to others, and do not trust it themselves, are witnesses proving the falseness of their own pretensions.

 

SHOULD GUARD AGAINST EXCESSIVE USE OF THEIR POWERS.

 

Once vitally depleted, the restoration is not easily gained. The healer is of that temperament which gives and does not readily receive. He must look mainly to hygienic methods for recovery. First carefully guard against every drain of vital force. A chaste life is the foundation of restoration. At least eight hours of sleep in a room thoroughly ventilated, pure water and wholesome food are the essential conditions.

 

Wheatlet, oatmeal, bread in various forms, with fruits, form the best diet. Exercise not to reach weariness, and rest as long as the feeling of exhaustion and lassitude remains. It is far easier and more desirable to keep vitality normal, than to restore it after it is lost.

 

OBSERVATION.

 

From immemorial time spiritual healing has been believed to be a miraculous interference of some god in mortal behalf, and the healer as endowed with a special gift. The evidences of religion—even of Christianity, are drawn from the so-called miracles of curing the sick and restoring the so-called dead. There was a complete union of the offices of the physician and the priest.

 

As disease was considered by savage man to be inflicted by the wrath of God, or by evil spirits, there was little use of attempting a cure, except by appeasing the vengeful deities. Hence medicine in the earliest times fell into the hands of the priests—the most artful and cunning of their tribe or clan, and consisted almost entirely of exorcism, beseeching prayers and sacrifices. The first noted physician was Esculapius, whose birth is so remote that its date is lost in myths. He, however, lived before Homer who alludes to him, and Herodotus places Homer 850

 

B.C. He was the son of Apollo, God of Light, according to mythology, and was so successful in treating the diseased that it is said he derived his knowledge from Chiron, the fabled Centaur, and so displeased Pluto that Jove struck him with a thunderbolt. He became the god of medicine. Temples were erected where he was worshiped. His sons were immortalized in the verse of Homer. The temples were located in healthy places and were purified by burning incense and remedies. The sick were brought for treatment, as to sanitariums at present. Baths were used, mineral waters, unctions and rubbing. Prescriptions were made by the oracle and by the priests.

 

Hippocrates was born 460 years before Christ, and is known as the "father of medicine." He founded the first medical school, and taught the beginnings of medical knowledge by observation and dissection of animals. He relied on diet and vegetable remedies.

 

The priests serving in the Temple of Esculapius, introduced medicine into Rome about 200 years before Christ.

 

In the year A. C. 130 Galen was born at Pergamos, and when of age came to Rome and practiced medicine, and such was the fame and authority he acquired that for twelve centuries he was regarded as infallible. He studied at the famous Alexandrian school, by observation and dissection of animals, yet the ignorance of the best informed "doctors" of that day, after so many centuries of study and pretension, is shown by his fanciful division of the causes of disease into blood, phlegm, and black bile. There was a better knowledge of the virtues of plants than of the causes of disease, and the followers of Galen performed wonderful cures.

 

This is reversed at the present time, for the diagnosis of disease is more perfect than the knowledge of the means of cure. The benefit of this accrues to the doctors, for the masses strangely conclude that if a doctor can tell what ails a patient, he can cure him.

 

The practice of medicine, during the Dark Ages was taken out of the hands of the doctors by the priests, who claimed that it was defying God's designs to help the suffering. Even so late as the introduction of anesthetics, the preachers denounced their use, especially in the palliation of woman's sufferings, as the instigation of the Devil, to prevent her from receiving the just reward for yielding to the temptation in the Garden of Eden.