Paris, October 25
th, 1866 – medium Mr. Desliens
What is man? … A compound of three essential principles: the Spirit, the perispirit and the body. The absence of any one of these three principles would necessarily entail the annihilation of the being in the human state. If the body is no more, there is the Spirit and no longer the man;
if the perispirit is missing or cannot function, the intangible cannot act directly on to matter, and thus being unable to manifest itself, there may be something like the cretin
[1] or the idiot, but there will never be an intelligent being. Finally, if the Spirit is missing, we will have a living embryo of animal life, and not an incarnate Spirit. If we then have the three principles present, these three principles must react one upon the other, and health or disease will follow, depending on whether there is perfect harmony or partial disharmony between them. If the disease or the organic disorder, as one would like to call it, proceeds from the body, the material medicines, wisely employed, will suffice to restore the general harmony. If the disorder comes from the perispirit, if it is a modification of the fluidic principle that composes it, that is altered, it will take a medication corresponding to the nature of the disturbed organ, so that the functions can resume their normal state. If the disease proceeds from the Spirit, nothing can be used to combat it other than spiritual medication. If, finally, as the most general case, and we can even say that it presents itself exclusively, if the disease proceeds from the body, the perispirit and the Spirit, the medication will have to combat all the causes of the disorder, by various means, to obtain cure. But what do doctors generally do? They treat the body, and they heal it; but do they cure the disease? No. Why? Because since the perispirit is a principle above matter, properly, it can become a cause relatively to that; and if it is hampered, the material organs, that are connected with it, will also be affected in their vitality. By healing the body, you destroy the effect; but since the cause resides in the perispirit, the disease will return when the care ceases, until it has been realized that it is necessary to turn the attention elsewhere, by fluidically treating the morbid fluidic principle. If, finally, the disease proceeds from the mind, from the Spirit, the perispirit and the body, placed under its dependence, will be hindered in their functions, and it is neither by treating one nor by treating the other that one will remove the cause. It is therefore not by putting the straitjacket on a madman, or by giving him pills or showers, that we will succeed in putting him back into his normal state; we will only appease his rebellious senses; we will calm his attacks, but we will not destroy the germ unless by fighting it with its similar, by doing homeopathy spiritually and fluidically, as we do materially, by giving the patient, through prayer, an infinitesimal dose of patience, calm, resignation, depending on the case, as he is given an infinitesimal dose of brucine, digitalis or aconite.
To destroy a morbid cause, one must fight it on its ground.
Dr. Morel Lavallée
[1] With the disease of cretinism (T.N.)
