GIFTS OF TOUCH
NATURE AFFORDS A UNIVERSAL MEANS OF
HEALING AND PRESERVING MEN.
Anton Mesmer
The Gift of Touch is not limited, but spread widely throughout the populace. People in all manner of lives and work may discover that their hands can lift and aid, transmit vital force and heal others.  From The Modern Bethesda by A.E. Newton, 1879. James Rogers Newton was born in Rhode Island in September 1810. He was aware of having unusual powers from early age, but was occupied as a prosperous merchant for over twenty years. He began to regularly exercise healing powers at the age of forty-eight after an incident in 1853. “Dr. Newton was a passenger on the steamer ‘Golden Gate,’ from Panama to San Francisco. The second day the yellow fever broke out, and fear and consternation prevailed among the passengers, who numbered about thirteen hundred. Among them were several physicians, and all those not prostrated with the disease labored diligently for the sufferers. The fever raged for the period of eight days; seventy-four persons died and their bodies were consigned to the ocean. The surgeon of the ship lost every patient but one that he attended. Dr. N. lost none. Many lives were saved by his treatment.” Newton believed his powers to be due to his personal organism and character, but considered all persons to have the ability to heal to a greater or lesser degree through the hands. Newton did most of his healing in America but also in Great Britain. He typically worked at a residence with hundreds of the sick and lame lining up to spend a few minutes with him. But, he also did magnetic healing in churches, arenas and auditoria. The following comes from his lecture delivered in Dodworth's Hall, New York, on Sunday, May 13th, 1866, and gives a fairly clear sense of his work and his belief. My Friends, — I am happy to address you this morning on a subject which is important not only to each and every one of us, but to all mankind. It is in regard to healing the sick by touch, will-power, or the laying on of hands, as it was called by the ancients. There is a latent power of magnetic life in all. Some have it to greater and some to a less extent. The imparting of it depends somewhat on the individual organization. I will endeavor to elucidate this so clearly as to be perceptible, and, I think, practical to those that wish. In the first place, the fundamental principles are the same that Christ taught — “Love your neighbor. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And, as he says, if you believe on me, the works I do shall ye do also. Preachers that teach and practice what they teach are few, or else they would heal the sick, as did Jesus and the Apostles. It seems to me to be the highest calling and duty of the clergy to lay hands on the sick and heal them, and their want of practical faith is the reason they do not do it. It was not alone in Christ's time, but for three or four hundred years after, the same mode of cure was generally practised. What was good, and a law, eighteen hundred years ago, is good, and a law, to-day; Jesus came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill. Now if persons desire me to heal them, and come freely, of their own will, I am certain to heal them, if they have a curable disease; but if they are brought, or do not desire to come, I might not perhaps succeed, though I have sometimes done so. A person should come voluntarily. “Ask and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find.” Having a strong willpower, I feel that the power of God is with me. Each one is an emanation from the Divine Father; and knowing this, and that the spirit of God abideth within us, I endeavor to live such a life as to have confidence in myself, and I have the evidence that when I speak to an assembly I carry that magnetic force and principle with the words I speak, so that each one shall feel in the recesses of his individual soul that I practice what I teach. I would be ashamed, if I were a speaker or preacher, to address an audience and have some of them go to sleep because of the want of magnetic force. What and whence is the power of the orator and statesman in all ages? It is magnetic force that influences. The man must have faith in himself and his powers to have this controlling influence; and whoever has this faith, real and true faith, can control a nation with their individual forces. This is the power by which Napoleon and other heroes have controlled nations. With this faith in perfection one may say to the mountain, “Be thou removed into the sea!” and it shall obey. Not that it may, but it shall. This magnetic power— if any one has it to a great extent — all present shall feel its influence and effect; not only those present, but the city in which he is, and not the country only, but the universe itself feels the influence and power of one good man or magnetizer. Know ye not that God is within you, and that the internal or soul of man is God manifest in the flesh? You may have all the religion in the world, and without good works it is nothing; and you will never be developed in wisdom without a practical religion of good will to all and good works. Feed the hungry and clothe the naked. It will be of greater benefit to either of us to feed one hungry mortal than to spend a lifetime in prayer and fasting, and more acceptable to God; lift up those who are fallen. We who have the position and advantages of intelligence and education, who have enough to eat and drink, and luxuries as comforts, should go among the fallen, unfortunate and debased, and urge them to morality and virtue, and to come up to higher life. I heal a great deal by the garments of the sick which are brought to me, by the magnetic influence that attaches to them, and also by the influence of persons coming from their sick friends at a distance. I say I heal, but it is not me; it is the Father that dwelleth in me; and he dwelleth in you just the same as in me. We are one common brotherhood, children of one common Father, and how we ought to love one another! Would we could realize how we are spiritually connected. This magnetism of love passing from one to another is an influence that is felt by susceptible persons. There is not one here present but feels that I have love toward him; there is not one but feels there is in my expression sincerity. And I know that we are ever moulding our faces in expression by our thoughts, deeds and motives. These principles cannot be doubted by either sage or philosopher…. Any person that is sitting here may be a medium through which the higher power operates. I hold that the purer the life the better the healer will be. For instance, I believe I am controlled by guardian and controlling spirits, and that they possess the power to heal through me. And just as I live, in principle and truth, by just such powers shall I be controlled; the better life I live, day after day, the better the angels from the celestial spheres can come and operate to heal the sick. And if we live a debased or low life, low or unprogressed spirits only can control us. You cannot get pure water from a dirty fountain; to get clear water the fountain must first be pure. By throwing the will-force determinedly on the individual through the third person or garment, as a medium, the influence is thus imparted to the patient, though distant, and the sick one is healed…. I have been instrumental in curing more than one hundred and fifty thousand people. I say this not in egotism, but to prove that the power of God is still with us to heal the sick and suffering, the same as it was eighteen hundred years ago. Healing power is inherent in every one; and if you feel that you have that power, and that the Spirit of God is in you, you can go to work and heal the sick as I do. Should I go on to tell you all the power manifested through me, you would call me a fanatic. Now, my friends, it is the condition that is required to heal — not that the power has been lost. I am frequently asked if I do not feel a loss of power or magnetism, or become weakened by healing so many; on the contrary, I become strengthened; it is like the magnet, from which may be imparted the same properties to an indefinite number of pieces of iron, and yet without loss to the magnet; its power is increased thereby. The more we give the more we receive. Now I will speak of the power one individual has over another. Each one of you can sit down and think of a friend or foe, with kind thoughts and good will, and desire to do them good, and you will do them good and make them happy, or by thinking ill of them, make them unhappy. Each one of you has the power to throw off a bad magnetism of anger, hatred or revenge. Do not do this, for whatever you sow that shall you also reap; for these influences will all come back to you again with twofold bitterness. You may make persons almost frantic with grief; but let me warn you not to do it. If you sow to the flesh you shall reap corruption; but sow kindness, love, good will to all the human race; it shall be health and happiness to those that give, as well as those that receive. I would not dare to have a bad thought or feel evil-disposed toward any one. We should believe that all persons do about the best they know how: it is only their spiritual darkness that make men think and do evil. If there is any one here that wishes to be a healing medium, let him or her go to the sick and feel a good faith, with a strong, positive will-force, feel that all are your brothers, sisters and children, and they will be healed by the touch; when conditions are right they will be cured. This is the power that Jesus taught; all is subject to your will, all is yours. I can heal any one in this room just as well without touching as with (if it is not an organic disease). Sometimes I must come in contact with the patient, and at others it can be done by will alone…. The religion that Jesus taught was good and glorious, and professing Christians are doing good, and could do a great deal more, if they would only practice what they profess — “clothe the naked,” “feed the hungry,” “for inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these ye do it unto me.” Let us struggle to do good, and when we cross the River of Life we shall not be asked what we believe, but what have we done. If we can show good works, then the angels will say, “Come, ye blessed of my Fa ther, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” I believe in the ministration of angels, and that they are ever present to help us, and that not only our works but our thoughts are known to them. This belief will make men lead better lives; and there is a time coming when there will be a power, a controlling will-force, to compel mankind to lead better lives, through mediums, and the Millennium, that I believe is coming, will be in this way. Angels, or spirits, control us all, more or less. Live right ourselves, and then the bright angels can control in love to good works and faith, which are the controlling principles of all healing, either of body or mind. Then let us go forward from this hour, and improve not only ourselves, but our neighbor, and the best way to improve our neighbor is to reform ourselves.  Lewis Thomas was an American physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher – just to cover part of his resume. From The
Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine-Watcher by
Lewis Thomas, 1983.
What did the man do, when called out at night to visit the sick for whom he had nothing to offer for palliation, much less cure! Well, one thing he did, early on in history, was plainly magic. The shaman learned his profession the hardest way: he was compelled to go through something like a version of death itself, personally, and when he emerged he was considered qualified to deal with patients. He had epileptic fits, saw visions, and heard voices, lost himself in the wilderness for weeks on end, fell into long stretches of coma, and when he came back to life he was licensed to practice, dancing around the bedside, making smoke, chanting incomprehensibilities, and touching the patient everywhere. The touching was the real professional secret, never acknowledged as the central, essential skill, always obscured by the dancing and the chanting, but always busily there, the laying on of hands. The doctor’s oldest skill in trade was to place his hands on the patient. Touching with the naked ear was one of the great advances in the history of medicine. Once it was learned that the heart and lungs made sounds of their own, and that the sounds were sometimes useful for diagnosis, physicians placed an ear over the heart, and over areas on the front and back of the chest, and listened. It is hard to imagine a friendlier human gesture, a more intimate signal of personal concern and affection, than these close bowed heads affixed to the skin. The stethoscope was invented in the nineteenth century, vastly enhancing the acoustics of the thorax, but removing the physician a certain distance from his patient. It was the earliest device of many still to come, one new technology after another, designed to increase that distance. The doctor can set himself, if he likes, at a distance, remote from the patient and the family, never touching anyone beyond a perfunctory handshake as the first and only contact. Medicine is no longer the laying on of hands, it is more like the reading of signals from machines…. The doctor seems less like the close friend and confidant, less interested in him as a person, wholly concerned with treating the disease.  Richard Selzer was a general surgeon and author who wrote fiction and non-fiction. His writings shed light upon the beauty as well as the absurdity of modern medicine. From Down
from Troy: A Doctor Comes of Age by Richard
Selzer, 1992.
In addition to his practice, Father was the doctor at the Renssalaer County Jail. The jailhouse was a yellow brick building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Congress Street. Inside, behind a receiving area, there were several long corridors lined on either side with cells. For years I died to be taken into that forbidden place with its hint of violence, the animal reek of confinement. It wasn’t so much crime that filled the jail as public drunkenness. To Father, that was hardly a crime but the last resort of incompletely housebroken men in hard times. “That is, if you don’t count prayer,” said Mother. “Which I certainly do not,” he replied. Toward drunks, Father had something of the generosity of the Japanese. Their presence made him lighthearted. He could not resist playing with them. To him they were holy fools. “I don’t nag them. It’s a matter of temperament, the booze, something passed on from father to son. Either you have it or you don’t. If you do, it’s in your tissues. Try to stay away from it and you can’t.” There were always a few vagrant women at the jail, charged with “lascivious carriage.” They weren’t held overnight but were carted to the House of the Good Shepherd. Most of the time, I was tethered to the guard’s desk outside the locked area. It was not until my twelfth birthday that Father invited me along. Once admitted by the latchkey, Father paused in the doorway for a few moments. One by one the prisoners became aware of his presence and stepped slowly to the bars of their cages like zoo animals coming forward to receive handouts from visitors. In addition to acute alcoholism, tuberculosis and the staggers of end-stage syphilis, the various degrees of delirium tremens, from the shakes to outright hallucinations, were what we saw there, along with the lacerations and contusions and broken bones that resulted from brawling, falling down or being hit by the enthusiastic billy clubs of the police. Feverish, filthy, trembling, the prisoners were docile and even good-natured. Had it not been for the bravado of whiskey, not one of them would have resisted arrest. Slowly Father worked his way down the aisle, entering each cell in turn, greeting the inmates with familiarity. With each, he enjoyed the same courteous little joke. “A bit of a relapse, hey, Pat?” and “What! Dominic? You again?” It never failed to bring forth a shame-faced smile. Toward these men he was infinitely scrupulous, scrubbing his hands with soap and water between each examination, warming the cold metal disk of the stethoscope with his breath before applying it to a chest or belly, palming the disk so that his fingers and the heel of his thumb rested directly on the patient’s skin. “You want to touch them,” he said. “Sometimes it’s all you can do.” Those suspected of having tuberculosis were asked for a sample of sputum and went under armed guard for a chest X-ray. Once the diagnosis had been established, Father would try to coax the man into the Pawling Sanatorium in Albia, where bed rest, fresh air and milk were the only treatment…. It did not surprise Father whenever one of his “lungers” walked out of the sanatorium after a week or two. “It is the spiritual calling,” he said wearily. |
The Great Physician
Love Heals
“Even as there is only one nature, one life, one health,
there is, only one disease, one remedy, one healing.”
Mesmer
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