Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/322

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318
DISEASE AND HEALING

gratification of man's desires embraces all there is of him, and these vary according to circumstances. All men have a desire for happiness, and this desire creates an appetite, and the desire wants to be gratified. This brings up this feeling [activity] called will, and then it is forced on by wisdom to accomplish a desire. The wants of the animal are limited, therefore it is lively and happy, for it acts according to its will. It is often said that the beasts are sick. Granted, but man takes their freedom from them as well as from the human species. Let both be wild and you see a bold race.

Look at the uncultivated savage and you will not see him creeping around as though he had done some mean, dirty act, like the civilized man. Of all mean looking things a human being completely under the medical faculty is the lowest, he is as much a slave as the negro at the South, and in fact more so. Look at a sick woman suffering from some opinion that the doctors have made her believe, see the mind completely under the doctor, she is not allowed to eat or drink or even walk or think except as the family physician gives direction. The sick have given their souls to the priests and their bodies to the physicians. They then tell about the good doctor, how much he has done for them, showing that he has deprived them of all noble manly feelings, left them sick, feeble in mind and body, while the doctor struts around like a slave-driver, and the sick curl under the lash of their tongue, as the negroes under the lash of their masters. This may seem strange, but it is God's truth, that the sick are a mere tool in the hands of the medical faculty, to be treated just as they please. It never will be any better till the sick rise in their wisdom and declare their independence. You may say I am making war for my own gain, but I think I can convince any one who is out from under these slave drivers, that I could make ten dollars where I now make one. My object is to raise my fellow man to his original state. I am a white abolitionist. The blacks it is true are slaves, but their slavery is a blessing compared with that of the sick. I have seen many a white slave that would change places with the black. The only difference is that white slavery is sanctioned by public opinion. But make the slave know that he is one, and you will see a difference in the result. It is hard for me to keep myself in bounds when I think of the groans