The physician-mediums.

— Madame the countess of Clérambert, of whom we spoke in the preceding article, offered one of the varieties of the faculty of healing, which presents itself under an infinity of aspects and nuances, appropriate to the special aptitudes of each individual. In our opinion, she was the type of what many physicians could be; of what many will no doubt come to be, when they enter upon the path of spirituality that Spiritism opens to them, because many will see develop in themselves intuitive faculties, which will be to them a precious aid in practice.

We have said and repeat: it would be an error to believe that healing mediumship will come to destroy Medicine and the physicians. It comes to open a new path to them, to show them, in Nature, resources and forces they were ignorant of and with which they can benefit Science and their patients; in a word, to prove to them that they do not know everything, since there are persons who, outside official science, achieve what they themselves cannot achieve. Thus, we have no doubt that one day there will be physician-mediums, as there are medium-physicians, who to acquired science will join the gift of special mediumistic faculties.

Only, as these faculties have effective value only through the assistance of the Spirits, who can paralyze their effects by the withdrawal of their concurrence, who thwart at their will the calculations of pride and cupidity, it is evident that they will not lend their assistance to those who deny them and intend to make use of them secretly, to the profit of their own reputation and of their fortune. As the Spirits work for Humanity and do not come to serve egoistic and individual interests; as, in all that they do, they act in view of the propagation of the new doctrines, courageous and devoted soldiers are necessary to them, having nothing to do with cowards, who are afraid of the shadow of truth. Thus, they will assist those who, without resistance and without preconceived thought, place their aptitudes at the service of the cause they strive to make prevail.

— Will material disinterestedness, which is one of the essential attributes of healing mediumship, also be one of the conditions of mediumistic medicine? How, then, to reconcile the demands of the profession with an absolute abnegation?

This requires some explanations, because the position is no longer the same.

The faculty of the healing medium cost him nothing; it required of him neither study, nor labor, nor expense; he received it gratuitously, for the good of others, and he must use it gratuitously. As before all else one must live, if the medium does not have, of himself, resources that make him independent, he must find the means in his ordinary work, as he would have done before knowing mediumship; he must give to the exercise of his faculty only the time he can materially devote to it. If he takes that time from his rest, and if he employs in making himself useful to his fellow beings what he would have devoted to worldly distractions, he practices true devotion, and in this he only has more merit. The Spirits ask no more and demand no senseless sacrifice. One could not consider as devotion and abnegation the abandonment of one's work to give oneself over to a less painful and more lucrative condition. In the protection they grant, the Spirits, upon whom we cannot impose ourselves, know perfectly how to distinguish real devotions from factitious devotions. Completely different would be the position of the physician-mediums. Medicine is one of the social careers that one embraces in order to make a profession of it, and medical science is acquired only at a cost, by assiduous, sometimes painful labor; the physician's knowledge is, therefore, a personal conquest, which is not the case with mediumship. If, to human knowledge, the Spirits join their concurrence by the gift of a mediumistic aptitude, for the physician it is one more means of enlightening himself, of acting with more security and efficacy, for which he ought to be grateful, but he does not thereby cease to be always a physician; it is his profession, which he does not abandon in order to become a medium. There is, therefore, nothing reprehensible in his continuing to live by it, and this with all the more reason as the assistance of the Spirits is often unconscious, intuitive, and their intervention is at times confounded with the use of the ordinary means of cure. By the fact that a physician has become a medium and is assisted by the Spirits in the treatment of his patients, it does not follow that he must renounce all remuneration, which would oblige him to seek the means of subsistence outside Medicine and, thus, to renounce his profession. But if he is animated by the sentiment of the obligations imposed on him by the favor that is granted to him, he will know how to reconcile his interests with his humanitarian duties.

— It is not the same with moral disinterestedness which, in all cases, can and must be absolute. He who, instead of seeing in the mediumistic faculty one more means of making himself useful to his fellow beings, sought in it only a satisfaction to self-love, and who considered as a personal merit the successes obtained by this means, dissimulating the true cause, would fail in his first duty. He who, without denying the Spirits, saw in their concurrence, direct or indirect, only a means of supplying the insufficiency of his productive clientele, whatever be the philanthropic appearance with which he hides it from the eyes of men, would, by that very fact, perform an act of exploitation. In one case and the other, sad disappointments would be their inevitable consequence, because semblances and subterfuges cannot deceive the Spirits, who read in the depths of thought.

— We have said that healing mediumship will kill neither Medicine nor the physicians, but it cannot fail to modify medical science profoundly. No doubt there will always be healing mediums, because there have always been, 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. People will have more confidence in physicians when they are mediums, and more confidence in mediums when they are physicians.

One cannot contest the curative virtues of certain plants and of other substances that Providence has placed within the reach of man, placing the remedy beside the malady; the study of these properties is within the province of Medicine. Now, as healing mediums act only by fluidic influence, without the use of medicines, if one day they were to supplant Medicine, it would result that, in endowing plants with curative properties, God would have done a useless thing, which is not admissible. One must, therefore, consider healing mediumship as a special mode, and not as an absolute means of cure; the fluid, as a new therapeutic agent applicable in certain cases, and which comes to add a new resource to Medicine; consequently, healing mediumship and Medicine as having, from now on, to march simultaneously, destined to aid each other mutually, to supplement, and to complete one another. This is why one can be a physician without being a healing medium, and a healing medium without being a physician.

— Why, then, does this faculty today develop almost exclusively among the ignorant, instead of among men of science? For the very simple reason that, until now, men of science repel it. When they accept it, they will see it develop among themselves, as among the others. He who possessed it today, would he proclaim it? No; he would conceal it with the greatest care. Since it would be useless in his hands, why give it to him? It would be the same as giving a violin to a man who does not know how or does not want to play.

To this state of things, there is another capital motive. In giving to the ignorant the gift of curing maladies that the learned cannot cure, it is to prove to the latter that they do not know everything, and that there are natural laws beyond those that Science recognizes. The greater the distance between ignorance and knowledge, the more evident is the fact. When it is produced in one who knows nothing, it is a certain proof that human knowledge had no part in it.

But, as Science cannot be an attribute of matter, the knowledge of the malady and of the remedies by intuition, as well as the faculty of vision, cannot be attributes except of the 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 preceding existence. These phenomena have, therefore, at the same time, the consequence of being useful to Humanity, and of proving the existence of the spiritual principle.