Another lecture from A.A. Sulcer after a few more years of practice in his role on the Board of Lectureship. This one is pretty wordy and I found it hard to wade through. From the January 1895 issue of The Christian Science Journal, available at http://journal.christianscience.com/issues/1895/1/12-10/true-therapeutics on June 26 2015
TRUE THERAPEUTICS
By A. A. Sulcer
The following is a lecture recently delivered by Dr. A. A. Sulcer of Riverside, Cal., before the regular quarterly meeting of the Riverside County Medical Society —only slightly abridged to conform to our space.
“Mr. President and Gentlemen:— It has been suggested to me that my subject is one of extreme delicacy to place before this body, since a medical society, of all societies, is best justified in being conservative and is strongly inclined to exercise its just prerogative. But “the world moves.” With swift recurring years new theories appear upon the stage, play their parts, and make their exit, and modes of treatment of disease have been no exception to the rule. Untiring zeal and self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of humanity have not been confined to the exposition of old doctrines and the practice of old methods, but have been brilliantly marked in steps of progress; the most resplendent names of medical history are the names of discoverers and innovators; the profession has ever sought such knowledge as seemed to it applicable to the amelioration of morbid conditions whether physical or mental, and I, therefore, consider this society quite the proper one to have its attention called to a field of inestimable therapeutic value.
It has been further suggested that as medical practice is founded upon a materialistic basis, and that as nothing could be more absolutely the antithesis of materialism than the field just alluded to, its tenets and even many of its terms must seem empty to a large majority of the association. But recent years have witnessed a growing belief that even spiritual things are not beyond scientific proofs and uses. The fact that Spirit is utterly beyond the province of the most delicate metrical device, and has eluded the magnifying-glass, the retort and the spectroscope, has been deemed sufficient to consign the nature, the power, the very existence of Spirit, to the region of the Unknowable.” Now, however, data is multiplying which leads even radical materialists to wonder whether that hypothetical region may not be triumphantly invaded. “We are unable to cast a measuring-line over the infinite”: nevertheless, the conviction is growing that infinity of knowledge, wisdom, and will, exist, and are superphysical, though the partially developed man may not be aware of them. In illustration of existent yet unseen potentialities, one of the * Upanishads relates that, a father, whose son was frivolous and skeptical, commanded him to bring a fruit of the sacred fig-tree. ‘Break it,’ said the father” ‘what do you see?’ ‘Some very small seeds,’ replied the son. ‘Break one of them: what do you see in it?’ the father asked again. ‘Nothing,’ answered the son. ‘My child,’ said the father, ‘where you see nothing, there dwells a mighty banyan-tree.'” Professor Tyndall, materialist though he was, is quoted to have said regarding certain lines of research, “It was found that the mind of man is capable of penetrating far beyond the boundary of his free senses; that the things which are seen in the material world depend for their action upon things unseen:— in short, that besides the phenomena which address the senses, there are laws and principles and processes which do not address the senses at all, but which need be and can be spiritually discerned.”
Alexander Fullerton says: “The Universe is One, its varied life the manifestation of a single force, and he who would truly expound the nature of any part must know the unity of the law which reigns alike in all, determining the fall of the sparrow no less than the action of the conscience in the soul. Modern science is steadily advancing towards that conception of unity, and even now hints that but one substance underlies the matter of its experiments, but one force thrills through the thousand activities of nature. And this force, as the keen-eyed are perceiving, is no mere physical potency developing in matter, but an outcome of the ultimate home of Being, diffusing itself as it penetrates more deeply the material universe, but ever changeless in its nature and ever showing that the root of natural law is spiritual law.”
Further, the modern materialist has been forced to ascribe such breadth and depth of feeling, such comprehensive intelligence, such dominant will, such infinities of creative and executive power to material substance, as to completely justify the assertion made some years ago by a well-known writer, who. said, “Notwithstanding many an honest confession on the part of our specialists, —physicians, physiologists, and chemists, —that they know nothing of matter, they deify it.” Certain it is that they ascribe to it omnipresence, omnipotence, and all godlike qualities and powers.
The latest research along psychic and superpsychic lines is rapidly making such quests of interest to the most radical materialists. I do not mean you to understand me that the searchers thus far instanced have solved the marvellous phenomena to which the western world seems just awaking, but in view of the interest already aroused in such subjects, I do assert that no matter what spiritual height a therapeutic doctrine may reach, it should not be considered above or beneath the profoundest study of this assembly.
Christian Science, like other radically advanced and unfamiliar teachings, has been met with hostile opposition on every hand; has been assailed by misrepresentation,— the fruit, doubtless, rather of ignorance than malice, —and made the subject of bitterest satire and merciless ridicule, while those presuming to practise it have not only been grossly maligned, but branded as criminals and prosecuted in the courts as enemies of the public health; but neither abuse nor railing constitute a logical, convincing, or even legitimate arraignment of any thought, doctrine, or system of practice, and should be indulged in neither for attack nor for defence.
It would be impossible for a single paper or for a book to convey to the brightest mind the full relations and import of a doctrine which at the least must require weeks to comprehend and years to build into one’s character, especially as many of its terms and statements convey to the experienced student a very different meaning from the apparent contradictions which first strike the mind.
I began my own investigation of this subject more with a view to finding out what kind of a God this “peculiar people” worshipped than with the idea of studying their system of therapeutics, and without a thought of adopting it in my practice. I must confess, however, that in my long experience in the practice of medicine I have more than once lost faith not only in my own skill and that of my confreres, but also in the claims of the therapeutic agents at our command, and many a confidential chat with brother physicians has assured me that I was not alone in this feeling. I have found many troublesome facts quite familiar to the most “regular” of the regulars. Cures are daily being made by every conceivable kind of “irregular” treatment, in apparently as large a percentage of eases as can be brought in evidence by the old school. Homœopathists, with their infinitesimal high potency attenuations, prove their percentage by hospital” satisfies. The case of the paralyzed tongue cured by the mere introduction of the thermometer because of the patient mistaking it for that which was intended to cure, is a matter of undisputed record; the curing of warts by the mysterious manipulations of the traditional yet ever present old lady is beyond doubt; and drugs held in the hand of the hypnotized patient get in their work with the same astonishing facility as that shown by the homoeopathic attenuation or the heroic dose of my own much loved school, (and I have been nothing if not “regular;) and to-day, when I review the field of the past with its defeats and drawn battles, I greatly doubt that doctors can, by the mere administration of drugs, cure anybody. Surgery accomplishes something, but medicine seems much like a failure. I was once told that one of the most successful practitioners of Buffalo said to a gentleman as he approached death, that for twenty years the larger proportion of his cures had been effected by a secret remedy consisting of a liquid, a certain number of drops of which were to be followed in a definite number of minutes by a pill, and the dose repeated at definite intervals. He had incurred censure for his persistent refusal to divulge the formulae and his reason for the refusal was this: if he had given the formulae the remedies would have lost their effect, for the pills were largely bread and molasses, wholly unmedicated, and the liquid was aqua pura slightly colored by the same sweet viscosity which gave adhesiveness to the pill. A firm belief in the efficacy of a remedy, supplemented by the trust and confidence of friends does much to subtly clothe the prescribed potion with its power. Every veteran in medicine knows that the influence of the physician is of itself no small factor in a cure. We have all seen the marvellous psychological effect of the long looked for presence of the family physician at the bedside of the patient when not the slightest change has been made in treatment previously resorted to by the attending but unfamiliar Æsculapian. None of these ideas are new to you. How many times, too, have you heard these results attributed to an effect upon the mind of the patient? And that without being disputed by the hardest headed physician of your set? And yet, acknowledge but this, and you have paved the way for the broadest possibilities.
Every physician will acknowledge, too, that however strong he may believe the effect of bodily conditions to be upon the mind, mind has, at least, a reciprocal power over the body. A lifelong habit of promptness of action coupled with great responsibility in command may develop the unflinching dominancy and readiness written in the face of a Sheridan; a continual contemplation of the infinite attributes of Deity may develop the wonderfully spiritual face of a Swedenborg; the brigand, the bruiser, and the sneakthief become as plainly marked; and in each case the markings are not merely of the face— they enter into the attitude and into the very fibre of the man. A continued contemplation of sensual gratification quickly shows itself to the practised eye in the generally lowered tone of the bodily functions and indeed, nothing so tends to physical destruction as intense immorality of thought and action and nothing so assists in building up as a strong, broad, cheerful and fearless mind of unsullied purity.
We have then, I claim, even outside the generally supposed field of Christian Science, proofs innumerable of one of its basic doctrines the doctrine that Mind is potency; that immorality or wrong thought of any nature is a breeder of disease manifestations; and that the highest conditions can be attained only as we free ourselves from error.
President Bonney, in opening the Christian Science Congress at the World’s Parliament of Religions, said “When science becomes Christian, then, indeed, the world advances towards the millennial dawn. No more striking interposition of Divine Providence in human affairs has come in recent years than that shown in the raising up of the body of people known as Christian Scientists, who were called to declare the real harmony between religion and science, and to restore the waning faith of many in the verities of the sacred scriptures. The common idea that a miracle is done in contravention of law is wholly ignorant and wrong. As Christian Science teaches, every miracle recorded in the Bible was wrought in conformity to the laws which the divine Creator established.”
Christian Scientists teach that these laws have never been repealed: that they are not a dead letter upon the divine statutes as we have been led to believe through the popular theologies of the day, but that, on the contrary, they are still in full force and effect; that when Jesus assured his true followers of their power to heal through him, the assurance was not qualified by restriction to certain ones belonging to a certain historical epoch, but that divine health-giving was to be equally operative in all epochs, the laws of the divine Health-giver being neither fluctuating nor capricious. He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever, hence no powers nor privileges have ever been specially bestowed; the established order is unchanged and unchangeable.
As defined in Christian Science, God is the only Life, Substance, Soul, Intelligence, of the Universe, including man. He is Truth, Love, Spirit, Mind, and the term Divine Mind is often used to include all that in reality exists. His goodness being infinite leaves no room for evil. As God is All, evil is a delusion of sense evil does not exist. All that we think we see is also delusion and non-existent.
At the threshold of our study, then, we are met by an apparently absurd proposition, i. e. that the very existence of those things which it has been most apparent to us do exist, is denied. It is this abrupt announcement of the major propositions of Christian Science which often repels investigation, because of seeming puerility in its first utterances. But let us loosen the hinges of those propositions a little so that they may swing open and disclose the real meaning.
When the Christian Scientist asserts the non-existence of certain evident manifestations of nature, he does not, if sufficiently advanced, mean quite what he is misunderstood to mean. You are walking along the street with the glare of the electric light behind you; before you is a shadow as visible to the passer-by as you are yourself, and it moves as rapidly and as truly as yourself, and, in a sense, is as much a fact as is yourself: yet, is it something or is it nothing? is it existent or non-existent substance? There it undoubtedly is, yet, just as undoubtedly, it is absolutely nothing. It is, rather, the mere absence of something that which is lacking is light. Still it is a manifestation of something to material sense. The one All-Good, the Divine Mind, is the only permanent Reality, and it is ever life and health to all who earnestly, persistently, and intelligently strive for it with purity of heart.
To ignore this truth of the One Eternal Good as the only Reality and to seek for causation in inert clay, is, in the eyes of the Christian Scientist, to mistake effects for causes; the temporal and transitory and powerless, for the real and eternal; the shadow for the substance; the shadow to be the thing itself: the disease to be the reality instead of ‘the absence of the only Reality;— Reality which Jesus taught stands ever ready to supplant the substanceless evil with the substance-Good.
It is taught that the seeker may bring himself to a clear knowledge of this only Reality, the Good, to a perfect reliance upon it, to a harmonious life in relation to it, to an atonement with it, and thus not only abolish disease in one’s self, but attain to the healing of others as promised to his true followers by the “Great Exemplar” of the Good, Jesus of Nazareth. Herein is the essence of Christian Science, and who can justly say it deserves vilification?
It is now, I think, evident why Christian Scientists are not all equally successful, and equally evident why it is asserted over and over again that one cannot at once or perhaps in many years reach the power of demonstration which is well within one’s vision as a reasonable possibility. Ignorant experimenters in Christian Science, as elsewhere, must fail there must, too, be more than a mere correct apprehension of its teachings;— for its perfect demonstration there must be a daily application of it in one’s life, a steady, unswerving effort for a spiritual elevation consonant with the divine.
The nature of the treatment given is so keyed upon this that it can now be expressed simply, and in a few words, while its perfect attainment leaves room for continual growth. It lies in the power of right thought. We have already seen, in common practice, the power of Mind under adverse conditions it becomes incalculably more potent under right conditions. No human being can think a thought which does not exert a subtle influence upon that which is outside of himself. The faith which may remove mountains and cast them into the sea is not wholly mythical. The demonstrator of Christian Science effects cure through understanding the allness of Mind and the unreality of the apparent evil to be overcome, and upon the certainty that the living Reality of Good, and therefore of conscious health, may replace the abnormal appearance. Here, again, in a nut-shell, is the rationale of the treatment: all thought, though unspoken, affects our surroundings.
Mind, and mind only, can produce an effect upon the body. Medicines can be efficient as therapeutic agents only in seeming; they are effective only in the degree of the power of thought —local, or general,— brought to bear upon them.
For myself I wish to say that I have found the study of ever-increasing interest, satisfaction and profit, and I have seen many proofs of the efficacy of its principles in the treatment of disease; thousands rejoice to-day in their freedom from maladies previously pronounced incurable by the most skillful physicians, and are living witnesses to the higher power. As the morning sun lights up the mountaintops before the lower hills and plains have felt its refulgent rays, so these truths were first caught by the spiritual heights of a rare nature, but the lower hills and valleys are now feeling the beneficent influence of the rays which first lighted Reverend Mary Baker Eddy, and I do not feel like disputing the profoundest belief of Christian Scientists that it will yet illumine the entire human race.”
* One of the Hindu Scriptures, pronounced oop-in-ish-ads.
