Force in the universe—and even outside the universe—which brought me into being and which created all things. This view brought me later to the writings of the Chinese mystic, Lao Tsu. He found the Divine to be the Mother of the Ten Thousand Things, and just as much of a mystery. These few words, however, from the Tao Te Ching2 helped me feel more in touch with that which I could not truly explain:
Something, in veiled creation, came to be
Before the earth was formed, or heaven.
In the silence, apart, alone,
It changes not, is ever present, never failing—
Think of it as the Mother of the Ten Thousand Things.
It seems to me now that we need a basis from which to start understanding the mystery of the body and that which brought it into being. I didn’t look at life in exactly that way during my formative years, but what was happening inside my unconscious mind was the adoption of the idea of God as the Creative Force, the Beginning of all things, the Wisdom that created me with His potential and made the path clear for the return voyage. And I accepted Jesus as the Christ, the Anointed One, who had already made the trip back to His beginning and who had performed something mystical here in the Earth that is still difficult to understand. Another experience for me, another step.
Communication has always been important to me. When I was in the eighth grade, my teacher told me I would some day write a book—she apparently saw that in my writing. From the time I was eleven years old until I finished college, I worked in some capacity with newspapers. Paperboy, printer’s devil (they had those in the ‘30s), reporter, typesetter, printer, and—for a period of several months when the editor of the small-town newspaper was down with a heart attack—I was the acting editor of the paper—at age eighteen.
In college I took part in writing, helping to create a literary publication, writing poetry and short stories, and helping with the college newspaper, editing it in my final year. It seemed that writing was something that had to be part of my destiny, wherever I found myself. The experiences that came about during those years taught me how to communicate, but one cannot communicate unilaterally. To write a story for the newspaper, I had to ask questions and listen to those who knew what was happening. Then I put my talents to work.
It must be that way, to some extent, as we work with our physical body. If we pay no attention to what our body is telling us, we may end up with a perforated ulcer of the stomach instead of the earlier overacidity. Listening will tell us that something is wrong, something is burning in our stomach. Why not listen and give the communication a response—change our diet, our life style a bit, and introduce some antacid preparation?
One of the most frequent criticisms I hear about today’s physicians is that they don’t listen. Patients tell me this, their voices ringing with resentment and anger, for they all believe they know something about their own body. It is, after all, their body. They know how they feel. And to them, how they feel is important. If their doctor won’t listen, frustration results and there is further disruption of the physical body because of the emotional upheaval.
Communication is always a two-way street. Knowledge of our body requires a sensitivity to what is going on and a response to that need. It doesn’t always take a doctor to know when something is happening inside, and then what our conscious response brings about in the way of correction.
Sometimes, like a rumor that a reporter catches on the fly, there is a hint of something going wrong inside the body that comes in an instructive dream. Both the rumor and the dream need investigation. Once investigated and interpreted, the rumor may become fact that can be published in the paper and the dream may become a therapy that can be instituted in the body. The key is to listen, appraise, then act.
Chapter Two
Medical School and Early Practice Years
Experts abound in all medical schools, and my classmates saw them as the fountainhead of all knowledge—gurus, in a sense. Much knowledge, but little philosophy. Philosophers are rare indeed in medical halls of learning. They are present, but their voices are outnumbered, unheard, or discounted. Existence of a Higher Power, a Creative Energy, a God, was not acknowledged in my four years of medical schooling. Except, perhaps, in the form of profanity.
I recall clearly a particularly wild argument I had with John Miley, one of my classmates. He was saying, “That’s what the experts say in the textbooks.” I was telling him why their statements did not make sense to me, and questioning why I should accept their point of view. Common sense—philosophy—does not often find its way into medical literature.
Early in my practice of medicine, a pathologist was looking at a section of the appendix which had been removed. He told me it showed appendicitis. I looked at the specimen and asked the doctor how many lymphocytes had to be there to designate it as appendicitis instead of a normal appendix. He shrugged off the question, but I persisted because normally the appendix does have lymphocytes present when nothing is wrong. Such a presence is, in fact, a part of the immune system, which encompasses all the lymphatic tissue in the body. It appeared to me that the number of lymphocytes present simply gave the pathologist an opportunity to make an educated guess. His guess was “appendicitis.” My pathologist was unhappy with me, but he didn’t know that I used to smell dandelions.
I found out from these two experiences that all things are not really as they seem. The experts are not always right, as we often assume, and disease is not an on/off phenomenon, but rather a process found active within the physiology of the human body.
Medical school did teach me, however, about the structure of the body, about physiology, something about the various specialties, a great deal about pharmacology, much about pathology—the end point of a disease process—but most significantly we were taught about diseases, how to recognize them when they appear (sometimes as if by magic), and how to do battle with them. We were not taught that the body frequently has amazing abilities to overcome the beginning stages of a disease process, if given a bit of help here and there. And we were not given any instruction about nutrition, dietary practices, or the effect of these upon the health of the body. Nor were emotions and their direct effect upon the functioning of the body given credence.
I was impressed by the work which Richard Vilter, one of my professors, had done in the field of vitamins, and I could not understand why the use of vitamins as an aid to the body was not more widespread. I tested vitamins early in my medical school career, and I found that I had more energy and simply felt better when I used them. Another insight—something good might be happening within the body tissues when you simply feel better. But arguments still rage about what vitamins do and do not accomplish.
A good night’s sleep will often make one feel better. Seeing someone you love will do the same. A good hug—or a bunch of hugs—will enhance that same feeling. Recent work has shown that one feels worse when one frowns, feels better if one puts a smile on one’s face—no matter how “down” the person may feel prior to the smile. And, if things get worse, laugh! That’s another way to move toward happier, feeling-better times. To a degree, those happier times spell healing of the body.
It was shortly after I began my practice of medicine in my home town of Wellsville, Ohio, that I discovered another way to gain an insight into myself—another way to smell the dandelions. It was a very busy time, and house calls were still a way of life in that mid-Western town.
After an especially busy day including house calls, surgery in the morning, and a full day at the office, I finally climbed into bed. When the phone rang shortly after midnight, I groaned. I was summoned on another call, and I grumbled all the
