Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/297

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
DISEASE AND HEALING
293

suppose that God made the remedies before the disease, and if He made all the remedies these quacks say He did, He certainly is the greatest enemy to mankind. Absurd as this sounds we believe it and are affected by our beliefs and this makes man the most dependent of all God's creatures. He is merely a target to be fired at by every person's opinion. I can show by facts that every person will admit that no kind of medicine has any more effect of itself than almost any kind of food or drink that we use daily, but our ignorance places some kind of virtue in the medicines as we place wisdom in some one's opinion. The truth which places all disease in the mind can explain the operation of remedies. God is Wisdom and man is opinion, therefore man cannot live in Wisdom and be diseased. To show that there are diseases according to the belief of man is to show that they are made by circumstances which cannot be controlled except by correcting the error that brought them about, while ignorance would prescribe some medicine that God had made from the foundation of the world.

OUTLINES OF A NEW THEORY FOR CURING DISEASE

All medical practice claims that their mode of treatment is the best; yet no one has even hinted or dares to risk his reputation on the ground that disease is an invention of man and ought to be treated as an error or deception forced upon mankind by ignorance and superstition as slavery has been forced upon this country, and with all the attendant evils. My theory is that all phenomena called disease are the result of false beliefs originating in the darkness of Egyptian superstition. African slavery is a disease of ignorance and superstition and is the cause of the present misery in this country, but it is merely the figure of white slavery which has riveted its fetters on the minds of men, while the world of mind lies crushed and humbled by the tyranny of superstitious belief. Disease is what follows a belief and a belief is like an atmosphere so universal that every one is liable to be affected by it as by chilly winds. God never made the wind to injure any person, nor has He put any intelligence into it so man should be afraid of it, but man does not “see it in this light.” How often we hear this remark, “Don't expose yourself to the damp, cold air.” This belief that God made the air an enemy to man is a part of the clouds that rise in the mind of every person, and when this cloud is seen and felt all