“Arthur’s surgery was another middle-of-the-night call, but I got into scrubs in time to walk along beside the gurney as he was wheeled into the elevator and taken down to the fourth-floor operating rooms for cardiac and neurosurgery. … He went under the anesthetic easily, and before he was draped and the sterile field created, I had time to send energy to his kidneys and to his pericardium by touching points on his feet and hands.”
“As Dr. Oz made the incision along the sternum, I leaned over and told Arthur to relax and feel the surgeon’s love entering his body. … When Arthur’s heart was out of his chest, I felt in him a sense of abandonment, as if he were a lost child. I reached my arms down under his back to hold him physically and told him to fill the space in his chest with light and energy.”
“When the new heart came into the room, I slipped out from my position at Arthur’s head and sidled over to the ice chest. Resting my hands lightly on top of it, I acknowledged the heart’s fear of the unknown and its sorrow about the death of its old body. Returning to Arthur…I told him that his new heart would make it easier for him to take in love, because he would be able to protect it.”
This remarkable account comes from energy healer Julie Motz, and is told in her book Hands of Life.1 She worked initially with patients undergoing heart surgery at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York with Dr. Mehmet Oz, later author of the best-seller YOU: The Owner’s Manual.2 In the course of her work at Columbia and other institutions, Motz was present at dozens of surgeries: mastectomies, cardiac procedures, and cancer operations. She sensed the energy of the patient, especially unresolved emotional issues linked to the conditions for which they were being operated on, and helped the patients release the feelings pent up in their bodies. Often the results included instant and dramatic improvements right in the middle of the surgical procedure. Motz is one of the few energy healers who has been permitted in the operating room. Nurses, surgeons, anesthetists, and other staff members had a difficult time adjusting to her presence. There was no institutional role for her, and she was not paid for her work, even though she was clearly having a significant impact on the well-being of the patients with whom she worked. Many members of the medical bureaucracy misunderstood her work, and some actively opposed her.
Yet energy and spiritual work has not always been so separate from medicine. For most of history, medicine and spirituality were inseparable. It is only in our modern era of technological medicine that the presence of an energy healer during surgery might elicit gasps of amazement. For most of medicine’s history, the relationship of treatment to spirituality was implicit.
Medicine in Ancient Greece
We consider Hippocrates (approximately 460-370 B.C.), the best-known Greek healer, to be the Father of Medicine. Even in the time of Hippocrates, it appears that scientists who had the greatest political clout had the most influence on medical beliefs in their areas of expertise. For example, Alcmaeon extensively dissected human bodies. He established the connection between a human’s sense organs and the brain. He concluded that the brain serves two purposes: it is the “organ” of the mind responsible for thought and memory, and it is a sensation preceptor. A century later, Aristotle vehemently disagreed with Alcmaeon, declaring the heart to be the center of sensation. Aristotle’s theory won out and was accepted for many centuries.
At the time of Hippocrates, the Greeks believed illness could be explained in terms of four basic humors: water, air, fire and earth. Each had corresponding qualities: moist, dry, hot and cold. Basic body fluids were believed to be composed of varying proportions of blood (warm and moist), phlegm (cold and moist), yellow bile (warm and dry) and black bile (cold and dry). Deficiency of these humors would cause diseases. Changes in humors could be caused either by external or internal forces.
Treatment generally consisted of diet, exercise and moderation in such habits as eating, drinking, sleeping and sexual activity. Wounds and sores were cleaned and sprinkled with various herbs. Drugs were taken to induce vomiting. Manipulation was used to reduce dislocations and fractures, and techniques for bandaging were extremely well developed. The Greeks used cautery (singeing of flesh) to treat infections, wounds and tumors, as well as the juice of the opium poppy. As part of the diagnosis, there seems to have been an extensive evaluation of an individual’s emotional state, habits, surroundings, behavior and customs.
Some seventy-nine books and fifty-nine treatises make up the Corpus Hippocraticum. Though the writings are attributed to Hippocrates, a variety of individuals are believed to have completed the work. Of particular note, the treatises insist physicians should look healthy and well nourished, and have a “worthy appearance.” Decent clothes should be worn, and the healer was directed to exhibit friendliness. Hippocrates is best known for the Hippocratic Oath:
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art—if they desire to learn it—without fee in covenants; to give a share perhaps of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but to no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefits of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and justice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief, and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment, even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
Despite the fact that some American medical schools offer this oath, many aspects of modern medicine are in conflict with it.
The idea of sacred healing appears not to have been a part of Hippocratic medicine. The treatises constantly comment about and devote attention to anatomy in great detail. But no actual spiritual connection is noted.
Healing in Ancient Rome
The physician Galen (circa 129-200 A.D.) had a great influence on medicine for about 1,500 years. He reinforced and elaborated on the four fundamental humors mentioned above as the roots of health and illness. Basically, his lasting contribution was to translate the humors into four personalities (phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric and melancholic)—terms still used today. He also dissected extensively, primarily animals and abandoned human corpses. Because he mixed a wide variety of medicinal plants, Galen may deserve recognition as the father of pharmacology.
The introduction of Christianity into the Roman culture gave a strong overlay of religious mysticism to healing. As early as 395 A.D., the Church emphasized healing as being proof of God’s grace. Many early hospitals were established by the Church. The Church used numerous icons from its early days in healing ceremonies. Later, the names of various saints—or supposed bits of their bodies or clothes—were also used. The emanations or vibrations from these materials were in themselves believed to initiate healing. Many early Christian writers believed that disease was cured only through prayer and divine intervention.
Christianity extrapolated and incorporated an earlier Judaic principle that disease was a sign of punishment for a sin, or of divine anger. From this religion’s beginning, the concept of “the healing mission of Christ” was clearly articulated. In each of the major four gospels of Matthew, Mark, John and Luke (the latter himself a physician), there are numerous instances of Christ acting as a healer in curing paralysis, the inability to speak, blindness, leprosy and fever. Exorcism or “tearing out” of an unclean spirit is also referenced. Throughout the Gospels, no clear-cut differentiation exists between faith healing, exorcism and miracles. The means of healing was always considered to be supernatural. Even in those early days, however, touching was extremely important. Christ often reached out to touch the afflicted or allowed them to touch “the hem of his garment.”
St. Benedict, an early Christian saint, actually forbade the study of medicine. That left the concept of divine healing as the only accepted method for about five hundred years. Surgery and pharmacology regressed during this time. Healing practices consisted of prayer, the laying on of hands, exorcism, the use amulets of sacred engravings, holy oil, and the relics of saints. Very little that would be considered either Hippocratic or scientific survived.
The concept that holy individuals could have intercessory powers was fully developed during this period. Indeed, proof that an individual was a saint required the performance of healing miracles. Toward the year 1000 A.D., the intercessory powers of the Virgin Mary also began to be an important part of the healing ritual. To a large extent, Christian healing ignored the scientific discoveries of Greece and the rest of the ancient world.
Ancient Islamic Healing
As the Western world was abandoning the principles established in the Greek and early Roman days, the Islamic world markedly improved the pharmaceutical repertory by developing such methods as distillation, crystallization, solution, supplementation and reduction. Despite these scientific advancements, the Islamic attitude toward the origin of disease remained similar to the Christian idea: Allah caused illness and punished people for their sins. In the Islamic tradition, one could hope for miracles or cures through prayer, and one could also seek divine help through a physician.
Ratzen, a Persian physician and healer, achieved recognition in Islamic culture to a degree similar to that of Hippocrates a millennium earlier. He wrote approximately 237 books integrating earlier Greek medicine into the Arabic world. A Jewish physician, Maimonides, was another healer influential in the Islamic world. Through him and various Arabic physicians, the condition of hospitals was considerably improved, providing better sanitation, care, facilities and medication than Western Christian society had achieved at that time.
The Renaissance and Healing
As the Dark Ages came to an end, Western medicine began to recover, primarily through the establishment of university medical schools. Until about 1500 A.D., folk healers probably treated a far greater number of patients than did physicians or saints. As the Dark Ages merged into the Reformation, surgeons were separated from academic medical practitioners, who held them in disdain.
The concept of medicine as art and science dominated during the Renaissance, with physicians and artists belonging to the same guild. Perhaps the best-known physician of all was the artist Michelangelo. As was common in those days, individuals often had a broad education and might study medicine but not practice it.
During the Renaissance, the average person was more interested in earthly rewards than heavenly rewards. Gradually, control of hospitals and healing transferred from the Church to the City. Physician training began to be regulated and certified. Ideas of contagion and infectious diseases were organized. Public health institutions were established to care for the hopelessly ill and infirm.
However, physicians were not readily available to the general population. In the thirteenth century in Paris, for instance, only a half-dozen doctors served the public. Drugs reappeared and were heavily used throughout the Middle Ages, along with digestive assistants such as laxatives, emetics, diuretics, diaphoretics and styptics.
Mysticism was widespread. Symbolic procedures, such as chants, were widely used. Astrology was believed to play a role in healing. Demons and devils were thought to be causes of illness, and exorcism by a priest was the only prescription. Amulets were commonly used, and various animal parts, especially the genitals, were thought to possess great power.
Attempting to wrest control from the Church and saints, royal healers promoted the concept of the king as the great healer, bestower of the royal touch. Bloodletting, which had been popular even in the earliest days, again became widespread in the Middle Ages.
Perhaps the most famous Renaissance physician was Paracelsus (1493-1541), or Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenhein. A Swiss physician, he was interested in various mystical and occult sciences and was extremely hostile toward his contemporaries. He believed the influence of the stars and planets upon the “astral body” of the patient was the major cause of disease.
Paracelsus is credited by many for creating modern medicine when he proposed substitutes for the concepts of Galen, which had dominated the profession for so long. He went back to the Hippocratic Corpus. His blending of theological and popular thought integrated mysticism and neoplatonism, and urged a new way of knowing. Jan Baptista van Helmont sought to give form and dimension to Paracelsus’s cosmology. During the same period, Frances Baker also established an “alternative path to knowledge of nature.”
A French physician, Ambroise Pare, became the leading surgeon of the time. He initially insisted on treating gunshot wounds with boiling oil. Fortunately, he found that it was less efficacious than simple debridement of the wound. He reintroduced cautery, and the use of ligatures (tying off) on bleeding blood vessels.
The Scientific Revolution and Healing
When the Scientific Revolution began in the 1600s, people started asking how instead of why things happen. At this time, the major medical treatments were bleeding, purging, dietary restrictions, exercise and the use of various herbs and minerals. Any aberrant medical activity was considered to be “witchcraft.” A most important drug, quinine, was introduced for the treatment of malaria.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, electricity was introduced to medicine, and during much of the nineteenth century various and sundry electrical apparatuses influenced the practice of medicine.
The advent of science did much to discourage or displace the earlier practices of sacred healing, the royal touch, laying on of hands, prayer, and so on. Scientific advances in the twentieth century have virtually wiped out reliance on mysticism, saints and sacred healers. Despite this, the failure of drugs and surgery to cure many illnesses, especially chronic ones, has allowed some institutions and “old ways” to remain popular. For example, Lourdes maintains its attraction for those seeking miraculous healing. Folk medicine and various forms of laying on of hands and therapeutic touch continue to be passed down through generations, enjoying a revival of sorts today. And the stream of research studies, books, television shows, and magazine articles at the junction of spirituality and medicine today bears ample testament to the beginnings of the return of the soul to medicine.
While in many previous eras, scientific medicine and soul medicine were in conflict, today they are allies in healing. Science is gradually demonstrating the principles and mechanics behind those forms of spiritual healing that are effective, while soul medicine increasingly turns to science to identify the most reliable and consistent methods of healing.