From long- experience I discovered that the remedies I prepared myself, and conveyed personally to the patients, invariably produced beneficial results, while the remedies entrusted to others and conveyed by another hand frequently failed. This led to observation as to the psychological influence of personal presence; and the true physician or true healer, if he occupy the position that society entrusts to him, should also be the adviser, the counselor, the friend. I make no doubt that the time will come when the spiritual teacher will also be the healer, since spirit and body will no longer be separated; and since, as in the olden time when Christ and his Apostles performed the miracles, as they were termed, of healing, it was the result of the spirit and body combined in the art of healing.

Separated as the science of medicine is at the present day from all that pertains to man's spiritual nature, and so steadily have the schools of medicine drifted toward materialism, that it would shock not only the sensitive nature, not only the religionist, but any candid and careful mind to witness the skepticism that belongs to the different schools of materia medica, more especially in the clinical department and the dissecting room, and where there is free access to the physical body of man. That science cannot discover the source of man's mentality when the body is dead, and cannot trace the spirit when the spirit is no longer there, is to them the deplorable kind of evidence (that such minds invariably seek) that man has no spirit. As though when the body is no longer required the spirit would linger for the dissecting knife or the jest to reach; as though the failure to discover that which, like the incense of the flower, flies away since the blossom is no longer there, proves man to have no spirit whatever.

If such is the kind of reasoning, how illv fitted is the graduate of such a school to heal the bodies of living men and women. It is not the external that the Great Healer is striving to reach, and that the real science of medicine wishes to touch, but the well-springs of life that have their secret sources far within the realm of the spirit. The nerve that vitalizes the hand may be paralyzed by sorrow, doubt or fear, that no remedy of materia medica can reach.

I charge you, therefore, if you consider this discourse less scientific than spiritual, that you will remember that the access which the speaker has to the spiritual sources of suffering is the cause of his turning from the more external department of human science to the broader and grander realm of spiritual healing. As the pure air of heaven, the bright sunshine and the health-giving waters contain the essential elements of vitality to man's frame; as the food that he partakes of must be appropriated by him according to his need for sustaining the body, so unless the body be in the right condition, made so by the mind and spirit to receive food, no healing or nourishing power can be imparted.

To illustrate this: I have known a person in deep grief to be unable to partake of any food, and if food is partaken of there is no assimilation of it in the human system. Under such circumstances it is useless to force food into the system that naturally rejects it. The reason of this lack of assimilation is, that all the forces of the body, even the gastric juices, are turned to bitterness by the presence of grief, and you might as well go down upon the sands of the sea-shore and attempt to force the tide backward when it is going out, as to force the system in this ebb-tide of sorrow to receive food or medicine; nor can any stimulus applied to the body affect the source of the difficulty.

What, then, is the physician to do? Give an opiate, an anaesthetic, a tonic? By no means; that only produces a correspondingly lower ebb-tide; and the great development of nervous diseases in the nineteenth century is owing to this mistake of physicians trying to reach an immediate result regardless of the eventual condition of the patient. All effects of stimulants, whether in the bromides or chlorals or any other compounds stated to be harmless remedies, must be intended for a superficial result merely.

Now, the true source of healing is to reach the mind of the individual; and I claim that no one has the right to call himself a physician unless he is able to do this. If he can find out the source of the sorrow, apply the healing balm to the spirit, the body will respond and clamor for food, cry out for nourishment, and ask for strength. But to attempt to force that which the spirit does not claim or require is simply a barrier instead of a life-giving and health-giving agent.

I charge the present school of medical science with developing in the recent generation that love of stimulants, that claim upon and necessity for stimulants, which is so prevalent in the world.

I charge all who administer anaesthetics, (even though they are called harmless,) excepting in extreme cases of surgical operation, with tampering with the tide of human health-fnlness; and the more that an immediate remedial effect is claimed, the more I charge them with trifling with the human system. Chloral, all kinds of bromides and especially those baleful hypodermic applications of morphine are the bane of the present system of materia medica. Under these practices women are rendered nervous and helpless or dependent upon these " slight " stimulants, as they are called. Under these practices the whole of the human family is subject to a system of treatment which, if not submitted to, is at once brought before the courts of justice, and if the conscience of the individual will not allow this school of medicine to be applied to them, it is pronounced unlawful. Man has not the right to die according to the dictates of his own conscience. The schools of medicine and the laws of some of the States forbid this; he must die according to the rules of the Schools of Physicians. 1 claim that every step that has been taken outside of the ancient regime of the allopathic school is a step of human redemption. I claim that the homeopathic system, which in its application is not only less rigorous but more true to nature, is a step in the right direction; that hydropathy and its various applications, though sometimes exceedingly heroic and sometimes very severe, still is a step also in the right direction. I claim that the dietary methods which have been variously adopted, although many times they may appear, perhaps, to be trilling with the human system, are less dangerous than the direct application of mineral poisons; nay, are helpful. I claim still farther that the less you have of extraneous substances in the shape of medicine or food introduced into the system, except when the system requires the latter, the more health-giving and vitalizing will you find the healing process of nature. Pure air, fresh water, and a response to the actual demands of the patient, however seemingly preposterous they may be, is the only correct system of healing. I mean by this that under the ancient regime the fever of a patient was to be quelled by medicines, usually mineral poisons such as mercury, and the system reduced by violent cathartics and by the actual absence of fresh air, pure water, or anything that the patient craved. In other words, if you are sick with a fever you must be punished with added fever, like some of the moral systems prevalent in the world for treating moral disorders. Of course I do not think, in the usual sense of the term, that it would be any more unreasonable to hang a man for having the smallpox than for being a murderer; but it would seem we have been accustomed to suppose that one who is sick needs healing, and the usual method of treatment would certainly be a scourging instead of a healing process.