Note:[1]
There is as much difference in the practice of medicine between science and art, as there is in the practice of music or painting. There are many people who are well experienced in all the technicalities of performing on a piano, but who nevertheless are not artists; they may produce tunes, but not music. There are painters whose pictures are made according to the rules of painting, yet lack soul. In the same way, there are physicians who will be able to treat their patients according to all the rules prescribed in their books, but who will nevertheless fail to cure them, because they lack one of the most essential elements in treating disease, one which cannot be found in the dispensary or in the apothecary-shop, but which is called by Theophrastus Paracelsus “the virtue of the physician.”
This term it is not to be understood as meaning to say that a physician ought to be only an honest, truthful, well instructed, and benevolent person; all this, of course, is desirable; but it means something more. It means that a physician ought to have within himself the power for curing disease; be it by means of his own “magnetism” of whose possession he may perhaps be fully unconscious himself, or by the influence of his benevolent thought, or owing to some occult power or capacity, such as is, for instance, shown by a certain class of people who are called “bonesetters,” and who even, without any medical-school education, are in possession of the power of instinctively or intuitively recognizing fractures and curing them.
Almost anybody of average understanding may become a scientific physician by attending a medical school and acquiring a certain amount of experience; but the medical art of which we speak cannot be learned in schools or from books; it is a natural gift with which certain persons are endowed from birth and which may be developed by practice, just as there are children born with a great talent for painting, and even musical prodigies, who astonish the world by their performances.
The possession of this “virtue” is most important for a physician; the scientific instruction is a very useful addition to it, but of minor importance; while a doctor possessing only medical erudition and no talent for the practice of his art is very poorly qualified as a physician, even if he be in possession of diplomas of the best medical colleges in the world. It has been repeatedly stated by Theophrastus Paracelsus, who was the great reformer of medicine during the Middle Ages, that it is rather the physician himself than the medicine which he prescribes that cures the patient. To ignore the natural qualifications of a physician, and to judge his standing in the profession only by the amount of theories which he has acquired, is to ignore that which is the most useful and of real importance in the practice of medicine. Such a proceeding is as absurd as if we were to refuse to listen to a beautiful performance of music, unless well assured that the performer was a graduate of a well-recognized establishment for manufacturing musical instruments, or of an academy where the mechanical part of making music is taught.
The existence of a power to cure disease by occult means, be it by the power of will or by spiritual power; by the action of faith or thought, by “magnetism,” “mesmerism,” “clairvoyance,” by a transfer of the life-principle, by the aid of invisible being, or by any other occult power, no matter by what name it is called, begins to be an universally recognized fact, in spite of a certain class of professional medical men, who, being themselves ignorant of the existence of such powers, try to prevent such knowledge being acquired. There may be some of them, no less conceited than ignorant, who fancy that the welfare of humanity is intrusted to the superior wisdom which they have learned in their books. Believing that there can be no salvation outside of the system which they follow, they try to prohibit the sick from getting well by any other than their own method, even if that method kills many more people than it cures.
No doubt there may be impostors, pretending to be in possession of powers which they do not possess, and such persons ought to be guarded against; but, also, no doubt there are very many practitioners of medicine without the least natural qualification for the art of medicine, whose ignorance is sheltered behind a diploma from some medical college, and whose professional homicides are safe from prosecution, they being legally authorized to cure or to kill. The former run a vastly greater risk than the latter by entering into medical practice; for, let a medical “artist” be ever so clever, as soon as a patient dies, while he is under his charge (even if that patient would have died under the treatment of any other physician) immediately the legally recognized profession will pounce upon him, cause him to be punished and tear his reputation to pieces; while if a regular member of their own school makes the greatest blunders, there will always be an excuse for him in “the will of providence” or in the “possibility of the fallibility of human judgment.” The difficulties in the way of a non-licensed medical artist are so much greater than those in the way of a legally protected theorist, that it may be supposed that comparatively very few people will practise the medical art, unless they are duly qualified for it by nature and intuitively driven to it; while, on the other hand, it is certain that a great many people without any natural qualification visit medical colleges for the sole purpose of obtaining a diploma, on the strength of which they may make money and lead a comfortable life.
It is not our intention to discredit medical science, but we would like to call attention to the fact that there is a difference between medical science and medical art, and that both ought to be combined. Art is as much superior to science as practice is superior to theory, and it would be well if only those who are endowed by nature with the necessary qualifications for curing disease would enter medical colleges for perfecting their education. For such naturally endowed persons, however, the attendance at colleges, in which nothing about the occult healing powers in the constitution of man is taught or believed, would be a useless waste of time, money, and energy. It would therefore be necessary that our medical colleges also should make a step forward in the higher direction, and learn something about the real nature of the constitution of man and his occult powers; but this knowledge can be practically acquired only when man himself becomes more elevated and spiritual. As long as gross materialism and the devilish practice of vivisection, which kills out all the finer feelings in man, and by its cruelty paralyzes his conscience, prevail in our medical colleges, such an elevation and refinement of the attending members is an impossibility, and serves only to make brutes out of men and to blind their eyes to the perception of truth.
The world abounds with facts that go to prove that man’s higher spiritual nature has endowed his physical nature with the germs of occult powers, which may be developed and bring vastly more benefit to suffering humanity than all our scientific medical observations in the realm of phenomena. Let, therefore, everyone live in accordance with the laws of his higher nature—the law of God—and he will become conscious of the wonderful powers which are slumbering in the depths of his soul. When mankind as a whole rises higher in the scale of perfection, the medical colleges will also be forced to advance, for the college is made by man, and not man by the college. But until this advance is obtained the only true standard for judging about the qualifications of a physician is his success in curing disease.
Franz Hartmann, M.D.
Note:
[1] Medical Science and Medical Art. Franz Hartmann, M.D. The Metaphysical Magazine 7, no. 1 (December 1897), 21-24. {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos, by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}