Edward Hays ~ Author, Artist & Storyteller
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The Doctor Will See You—Anytime!

9/11/2013

 

The Doctor Will See You—Anytime!

Dear old and new friends,

    A slight cut to your finger does not require a trip to your local ER. From personal experience we know our body mysteriously has its own Emergency Room that immediately will begin to treat the injured finger. We may use a little Hydrogen Peroxide or a Band-Aid, but regardless it slowly will heal and new skin will cover the wound. Yet a physician was invisibly involved in this healing!

    Doctor Albert Schweitzer spoke of that physician: “Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves.” Medical drugs and physicians heal by working with that personal physician who dwells within us. One way to visualize this inner healer is to reflect on this quote by Jonathan Swift, “The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet and Doctor Merryman.”

    Doctor Good Diet, in concert with your personal trainer Daily Exercise, cooperates with your inner physician in maintaining your wellness. While the curative skills of Doctor Quiet are legendary, being his patient requires patience! It also demands the self-discipline to stop and be still so that silence can work its remedial medicine. Tranquil quietness aids digestion, strengthens the body’s immune system and restores an ailing soul and body to health.

    The Doctor Merryman’s healing is shown in a story about the first century A.D. Greek physician Galen whose practice was in Rome. He was called to attend to the wife of a Roman aristocrat whose doctor had unsuccessfully been treating her for an organic complaint. While taking her pulse Galen mentioned the name of an actor with whom gossip had linked her name—at once her pulse rate increased! Leaning down Galen whispered in her ear, and she broke into laugher…and that merry laughter commenced the healing of her affliction. It’s been said that this was an early instance of psychiatric treatment for a psychosomatic illness.  

    Whimsical Doctor Merryman says a major benefit today of your inner physician is that he or she doesn’t charge a fee! Then he’d tell a story about King George III of England who suffered from a variety of afflictions (besides his disloyal rebel American colonists) and who also disliked the court physician, Reverend Francis Willis. On one of his visits King George, noticing Willis was in black attire and referring to his previous time in the clergy, asked him, “Do you prefer medicine to preaching?” When Willis answered, “Your majesty, our Savior himself went about healing the sick.” King George retorted, “Yes, yes, but he did not get seven hundred pounds a year for doing it.”

The Healing Disease

9/4/2013

 

The Healing Disease

Dear old and new friends,

     Swiss mercenaries serving in France and the Lowlands in 1669 suffered from a mysterious disease that caused fainting, depression, high fever, indigestion, stomach pains and even death. The physician Johannes Hofer discovered its source, naming it mal du Suisse or Scherizerheimweh, “Swiss homesickness.” The sickness of those Swiss soldiers was being away from the beautiful towering mountains of their homeland. So detrimental was this sickness that they were forbidden to sing the Kuhreihen that Alpine herdsmen sang when driving their cattle to or from pasture. Seventy some years later this malady was renamed “nostalgia,” derived from the Greek nostos, for return.

    Records show early Jamestown colonists yearning for England suffered it, and in the 1850’s toughened Californian gold miners were reduced to tears upon hearing “Home, Sweet Home.” Doctors in the Civil War discharged soldiers with nostalgia from the army. By the early 20th century, while nostalgia was still a medical term, it soon disappeared from medical terminology—but homesickness didn’t! Haven’t each of us at some time, in some way, not suffered from it?

    Nostalgia, the longing for a former period of time, is especially common in periods of social upheaval and historical change. Fifty years ago after the major changes of the Vatican Council, a wave of nostalgia swept over Catholics (and for some it continues) for the old Latin Mass, Gregorian chant and certain pious devotions. Yet those longing for the “good old days,” as they say, have poor memories!

    The disease of nostalgia is healing when experienced as the adjective “nostalgic,” reminiscing former good times. Studies have shown recalling and savoring happier occasions wards off loneliness and anxiety. Reminiscing can magnetically draw marriage partners, friends and family closer to one another since by remembering we are re-membered together. Memories of special life moments reassure us we are living meaningful lives. Recollections of happy moments, adventures or joys of younger years, are therapeutic and also act as pungent spices to season with pleasure new memories being birthed today.

    Some religions observe rituals of remembering past acts of divine interventions. Yet the power of a memory that is historical or legendary instead of personal has little real energy to inspire. Does then the Christian Last Supper Ritual, “Do this in memory of me,” today now millenniums later fail to have the clout to create martyrs and saints, unlike it did for Jesus’ first followers?

    So create remembrance rituals of your own personal sacred visitations. Also, frequently celebrate past life events and feel the mystical power of reminiscing.


    Edward Hays


    Picture
    Haysian haphazard thoughts on the
    invisible and visible mysteries of life.

    Picture

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