Physicians-mediums Madam Countess de Clérambert, of whom we spoke in the preceding article, offered one of the varieties of the healing faculty that presents itself in an infinity of aspects and shades, appropriate to the special aptitudes of each individual. She was, in our opinion, the type that many doctors could be; that many will undoubtedly be when they enter the path of spirituality, opened to them by Spiritism, for many will see the development of intuitive faculties in them, that will be of precious help to their practice.
We have said it, and we repeat it, it would be a mistake to believe that healing mediumship comes to dethrone medicine and the physicians; it opens a new way for them, showing them resources and forces of nature that they did not know, and from which they can benefit science and their patients; in short, proving to them that they do not know everything, since there are people that outside the official science, obtain what they themselves do not obtain. There is no doubt, therefore, that there will one day be physician-mediums, as there are medium-physicians, who will add the gift of mediumistic faculties to that of acquired science.
Only, as these faculties have no effective value except by the assistance of the Spirits, who can paralyze their effects by withdrawing their assistance, who foil at will the calculations of pride and greed, it is obvious that they will not lend their assistance to those who would deny them, and would intend to use them secretly, for the benefit of their own reputation and fortune. Since the Spirits work for humanity, and do not come to serve individual selfish interests; that they act, in all that they do, with a view to the propagation of the new doctrines, they need courageous and devoted soldiers, and they have nothing to do with cowards who are afraid of the shadow of the truth . They will, therefore, assist those who will put, without resistance and without hidden motive, their aptitudes at the service of the cause that they strive to make prevail. Will selflessness, that is one of the essential attributes of healing mediumship, also be one of the conditions of the mediumistic medicine? How then to reconcile professional demands with absolute abnegation?
This requires some explanation because the situation is no longer the same.
The faculty of the healing medium has cost him nothing; it required of him neither study, nor work, nor expenditure; he received it for free, for the good of others, so he must use it free of charge. Since, before anything else, one does need to live, if he does not have by himself the resources that make him independent, he must seek the means in his ordinary work, as he would have done it before knowing mediumship; he will only give to the exercise of his faculty the time that he can materially devote to it. If he takes this time out of his spare time, and if he uses it to make himself useful to his fellows, something he would have devoted to worldly distractions, that is a true devotion, and he deserves all the merit for that. The Spirits ask for no more and do not require any unreasonable sacrifice. One could not consider dedication and abnegation the abandonment of one's condition in order to engage in less arduous and more profitable work. In the protection they grand, the Spirits, on which one cannot impose, know perfectly well to distinguish between the real from the fictitious devotions.
The position of the physician-mediums would be quite different. Medicine is one of the social careers that one embraces in order to make it into a profession, and medical science can only be acquired at a cost, through assiduous and often painful labor; the knowledge of the doctor is, therefore, a personal acquisition, that is not the case with mediumship. If the Spirits add their assistance to human knowledge, by the gift of a mediumistic aptitude, it is for the physician one more means of enlightening himself, of acting more surely and more effectively, for which he must be grateful, but he is nonetheless always a doctor; it is his profession, that he does not leave to become a medium; there is, therefore, nothing reprehensible in his continuing to live from it, and this with an additional reason that the assistance of the Spirits is often unconscious, intuitive, and that their intervention is sometimes confused with the use of ordinary means of healing.
For the fact that a doctor would become a medium, and would be assisted by the Spirits in the treatment of his patients, it would not therefore follow that he would have to renounce all remuneration, that would oblige him to seek the means of existence outside medicine, and by that fact to give up his profession. But if he is driven by the feeling of the obligations imposed on him by the favor granted to him, he will know how to reconcile his interests with the duties of humanity.
It is not the same with moral selflessness that can and must absolute in all cases. He who, instead of seeing in the mediumistic faculty one more means of being useful to his fellows, would only seek a satisfaction of self-esteem in that; who would take personal credit for the successes that he obtains by such means, by concealing the true cause, would fail in his first duty. Whoever, without denying the Spirits, only sees in their direct or indirect help, a means of making up for the insufficiency of his productive clientele, with whatever philanthropic appearance he covers it to the eyes of men, would use that as a means of exploitation; in either case, sad disappointments would be the inevitable consequence, because simulations and subterfuges cannot deceive he Spirits who read the depths of minds.
We have said that healing mediumship will not kill medicine or physicians, but it cannot fail to profoundly change medical science. There will undoubtedly always be healing mediums, because there have always been some, and this faculty is in nature; but they will be less numerous and less sought after as the number of physician-mediums increases, and when science and mediumship lend each other mutual support. We will have more confidence in doctors when they are mediums, and more confidence in mediums when they are doctors.
One cannot dispute the curative virtues of certain plants and other substances that the Providence has put in the hands of man, by placing the remedy beside the disease; the study of these properties is the responsibility of medicine. Now, as the healing mediums act only by the fluidic influence, without the use of drugs, if they were to one day supplant medicine, it would follow that by endowing plants with healing properties, God would have made an unnecessary thing, that is not admissible. We must therefore consider healing mediumship as a special mode and not as an absolute means of healing; the fluid, as a new therapeutic agent, applicable to certain cases, and coming to add a new resource to medicine; consequently, the healing mediumship and medicine, as having from now on to work concurrently, intended to help each other, to supplement and to complement each other. This is why one can be a doctor without being a healing medium, and a healing medium without being a doctor.
So, why does this faculty develop today almost exclusively among the ignorant rather than among scientists? For the very simple reason that, until now, scientists reject it; when they accept it, they will see it develop among themselves as among others. Whoever possesses it today, would he claim it? No; he would hide it with the greatest care. Since it would be useless in his hands, why give it to him? It would be like giving a violin to a man who does not know or does not want to play it.
Another fundamental point joins this situation. By giving the ignorant the gift of healing illnesses that scientists cannot cure, it is to prove to the latter that they do not know everything, and that there are natural laws apart from those recognized by science. The greater the distance between ignorance and knowledge, the more obvious the fact. When it takes place with someone who knows nothing, it is a sure proof that human knowledge has nothing to do with it.
But as science cannot be an attribute of matter, the knowledge of illnesses and its remedies by intuition, as well as the clairvoyance, can only be attributes of Spirit; they prove in man the existence of the spiritual being, endowed with perceptions independent of the bodily organs, and often with knowledge acquired previously, in a previous existence. These phenomena, therefore, both have the effect of being useful to humanity and of proving the existence of the spiritual principle.
