Recently, a magazine writer who sat through a series of my talks asked, “Where are the doctors for this new approach to health care you’ve been talking about?”
This new profession is not yet in existence. Or, if it exists, it exists in embryo form–growing, developing, receiving nourishment from the ideas and experiences of thousands of men and women in many health arts who are finding out how to get healthy and stay healthy in a world where disease – not health – is the norm. The new profession is yet to be born.
Schools teach us to go to the doctor when we have symptoms. That may be too late. The dictionary defines malignant as, “Evil in nature …extremely malevolent or deteriorating…to infiltrate, metastasize and terminate fatally.” Malignancy is bad news. We primarily identify it with cancer, and when we go to the doctor with cancer symptoms, it is very late.
The great need of the average citizen of planet earth today is to know how to live a healthy, productive life, free from disease. Very few doctors practice preventive health care today, but I would not advise going to any other kind. The doctor who is interested in keeping you well is of infinitely greater value to you personally than the doctor who says he can’t do anything until you are sick.
Yet what kind of profession is it that thrives and grows wealthy on sickness and disease, but shows so little interest in maintaining health? Somehow its rightful priorities have become topsy turvy.
My late friend, Dr. Alan Nittler, M.D. once wrote a book titled, A New Breed of Doctor, in which he discussed the tremendous role nutrition will play in the therapeutic approach of doctors in the future. Dr. Nittler was speaking from personal experience he used the wholistic healing art in his practice and knew the healing properties of foods. The future doctor will be one who is aware of all the healing techniques and approaches and who selects exactly the right program or therapy for each patient.
In our time, medical practice is becoming increasingly depersonalized and drug oriented. Norman Cousins, former editor of Saturday Review, has suggested that America is on the verge of becoming a nation of hypochondriacs, partly because of massive exposure to TV and magazine ads pushing medication and urging people to “see your doctor if symptoms persist.” Most doctors are now incorporated, either individually or through a clinic or partnership. There are no more home visits. Free treatment of the poor is almost unheard of. This, obviously, is far from even the old breed of doctor, the compassionate professional who took care of all who needed help. Now it is time for a new breed of doctor.
I believe that most physical examinations today are very crude and not particularly revealing to the doctors who make them. Laboratory tests are often ambiguous and inconclusive. Diagnoses are often tentative, founded on very little solid evidence incomplete. They seldom offer much of a profile of what is going on in the whole body, particularly if drugs are being taken.
Iridology analyses, in my view, offer much more information about the state of the body than do the examinations of Western medicine, and I feel they are much more reliable. Because of this, I believe the new breed of doctor will want to know iridology.
Who Will Be the Patients?
We find that most people are so accustomed to present-day medicine, so dependent upon drugs, surgery and the idea of the “quick cure,” that it will be difficult to persuade them to go to a different kind of doctor, a doctor who works with nature and not against it.
A doctor, no matter how brilliant, well-trained and wise in the ways of healing, is no doctor at all without patients. The new-day doctors are going to have to touch a responsive chord in people to persuade them to try the “new” approach. It will take a good deal of education before we will see this change.
People who are demanding “instant” results from powerful prescription drugs are going to have to learn that nature’s way is slow but sure. Drugs don’t heal anything; they block symptoms. People are going to have to learn that they must change their lifestyles before they will see changes in their body. Until they are willing to follow the teaching of the new-day doctor, nothing will change. No true healing will take place. We need to see a new breed of patient.
What the New Breed of Doctor Must Know
Today people are wearing nylon and polyester clothes, walking on rubber-soled shoes, wearing glasses that cut out 95% of the ultraviolet light, watching color TVs that emit X-radiation, cooking food in microwave ovens. Every home has at least a half-dozen electrical appliances. In many ways, we have changed or increased our exposure to electromagnetic vibrations, without knowing how they affect our bodies. We can be certain of one thing: these finer forces do, in fact, affect us.
Many people work under fluorescent lights, around high levels of noise, in the buildings where the chemical fumes from the rugs, office equipment and drapes are breathed along with the air. There seem to be harsh colors that increase the level of accidents in factories and soft colors that reduce it. These are things of which most people including doctors are unaware, and they affect us emotionally and physically.
I believe most Americans are aware that health problems are increasing and that present-day doctors seem unable to stem the tide. I believe we are coming to the place where people realize there must be a change, there must be a new way.
Cancer continues to claim hundreds of thousands of lives each year despite the fact that billions of dollars have been spent over the past several decades to find cures for it. How much time and money have been spent on prevention? According to the American Cancer Society, it takes twenty years or so for some types of cancer to develop. Where was the doctor 20 years ago? One cancer, one major heart operation, one severe chronic disease can wipe out a lifetime of savings. Where are the doctors who can help us stay healthy and avoid all this unnecessary suffering?
How many patients are ready to take the time and make the effort to get well? How many patients want to continue to live in the dark ages thinking that doctors can cure, that doctors understand the mysteries of life, that doctors have a secret that is going to get them well? People want to get well overnight; they want a magic pill. How many patients know that it takes time for the body to make changes: To make the proper tissue changes, you have to have a doctor who knows how to work with the body and he can work only as fast as the body will go.
It is not a matter of stimulation: it is not a matter of sedation. It is not a matter of tranquilizing the body and finding ways to bring the organ back to health without involving the rest of the body. How many patients know that the body works as a whole organism? We find that this body is something like a machine that works according to a definite plan, and we have to get back to this God-created plan to know how to operate it. We don’t go out and buy oil for our joints or hinges; we don’t go out and buy a new valve; we are trying to treat the body like a machine, but we still haven’t learned how to do it. Most of us have problems like that of a carbon-clogged exhaust muffler, unable to get rid of toxic fuel wastes. Our elimination is very poor. Usually, that is because our eating habits are very poor. We don’t know how to treat this machine.
How many have tried putting the body’s chassis up on a shelf for a couple of days to give it a rest? Have you had a checkup lately? Do you know what kind of a checkup we need? Do we have the right fuel, the chemical elements we need? How many patients know we have to have calcium when we have bone troubles? That we need phosphorus when the brain has become slow and unresponsive? That we need lecithin in order to have a good memory, good concentration? How many people know that we need certain chemical elements for the glands, for the lungs to get rid of catarrh? We don’t know these things, so in the future, what we have to have is a new breed of patients.
The Patient Must Walk in Harmony with the Doctor
It is when the doctor and the patient walk as one in agreement that we’re going to have the true healing coming in the future. This idea of having the doctor just pleasing the patient constantly, getting rid of a pain or two so the patient thinks he is getting better is not real healing.
The doctor that I feel is going to lead the way in the future is the one with a higher consciousness. He is going to be interested in the soul growth of his patients. He is going to be interested in seeing that you have the best there is from the soil; the best from the sea; the best the sun can produce for you. He is going to know about your living habits; he is going to tell you about your pantry; he is going to tell you about your elimination and you are going to listen.
He is going to have the right training and education to go this new way. Unless he gets that path straightened out, the doctor and the patient will remain as far apart as they are today.
We don’t even know what kind of doctor to seek out for a particular problem these days. We seek out chiropractic help when we need nutrition. We take a doctor “on faith” because he says he can help us. But, a doctor should never tell a patient he can help him unless he means it. Disappointment breeds doubt, doubt breeds cynicism and cynicism breeds disease.
If a patient’s symptoms indicate a need for a therapy such as chiropractic, and the doctor can’t take care of the problem, he should refer the patient to someone who can. The patient should be sent to a doctor who will teach him as well as treat him. The new breed of doctor should be more interested in keeping his patients well and happy than in treating them for ailments and diseases. He should be interested in preventing disease. He should recognize how wonderfully we are made, that our body is a “loaned instrument” and that we must take care of it.
Patients Should Be Taught How to Stay Healthy
There is a new orientation to health care coming in our schools, one that will emphasize prevention of disease. People are going to find that there are many things that hinder health mentally, physically and spiritually, and we’re going to have to become aware of these things. But, it’s not until we have a new breed of doctors, the kinds of doctors who can recognize that the patient must be involved in the therapeutic process, that we will see a complete healing. This, when it happens, is going to raise patient confidence and consciousness. It will raise our educational consciousness. What is taught in our schools, colleges and universities will make hospitals unnecessary. We will be developing institutions to promote health instead of institutions to fight disease and sickness. People will learn how to build and maintain health and high-level well-being.
We have doctors now waiting for “waiting room” patients. We’re going to have a new doctor who is interested in checkups to see that patients are perfectly well, that they have all the chemical elements they need, that problems are taken care of before the symptom develops. He is going to take care of you ahead of time.
It’s Time for a Change
The doctor of the future will influence the political process, the food and drug laws. He is going to see that restaurants are not allowed to serve foods that bring on degeneration in our physical bodies. He is going to have a voice in food processing, manufacturing and packaging. We will have hospitals that are not going to allow patients to check out before they know how to change their habits and prevent future recurrences of their condition. They’re going to teach us how to cook right.
Couples should not get married until they know how to take care of themselves so the next generation will be stronger and healthier for what their parents are doing in this life. There is no reason for raising children as future doctor bills. There is no reason for us to have most of these health problems. We need doctors who will walk ahead of whatever man is doing to make sure we remain in good health, strong and mentally alert.
The new breed of doctor will have a complete understanding of how all environmental conditions affect the chemistry and physiology of man. He will understand what lighting conditions are needed in our factories and work places; and will know what role sunlight plays in our health. He will know about air quality, radiation, noise, climate, jet lag, freeway stress all the everyday factors that affect human health. He will know how to use color, music, fasting, foods, juices, mechanical therapies and vibratory processes to restore homeostasis in the body.
Perhaps the new breed of doctor will oversee the development of video tapes that make people laugh and speed up the healing. Or, tapes that release stress, resentment and resistance. Perhaps he will teach breathing exercises that balance left side and right side body energies. Perhaps he will teach color visualization exercises to raise the metabolic rate in particular organs.
The most important thing to take care of in man is the soul, and the new breed of doctors and patients must understand that the soul comes into life for the purpose of expressing and growing. This can only be done when both doctor and patient come to work together for the higher values in life, seeking the higher path. Man deserves to discover the best that God has for him.
