INTRODUCTION TO DR BACH'S HEALING REMEDIES (part 1)

The following is an excerpt from a talk given by Nora Weeks who was a loyal, steadfast and devoted helper to Dr Bach. She dedicated most of her life to his work, upholding his principles and the most fundimental essence of all, its simplicity.

"Will you for the next half hour or so, turn your thoughts from healing of the sick body to the healing of the sick person, for Dr Edward Bach, after many years of research, gained the knowledge that our physical health depends on our way of thinking, our feelings and emotions.
Good health is harmony, rhythm, when we think positively, constructively, happily. Ill-health is when we think negatively, unhappily, destructively.
Such is the power of thought, the power man has over his body which is, after all, only the vehicle, the car he uses on his journey through life on earth.
As some of you may not know anything about the Dr Bach Remedies, I would first of all like to tell you about Dr Bach himself and how he developed this method of treatment and found the Flower Remedies.
The family came originally from Wales. Edward Bach trained and qualified at University College Hospital and gained the Diploma of Public Health (D.P.H.) at Cambridge in the early 1900's. He was rather an unusual medical student, for he soon became more interested in the patients themselves than their diseases. He would sit by their bedsides and let them talk to him, and listening to them he found out the real cause of their ill-health. For instance, the woman with severe asthma was a very frightened woman. She told him her only son had taken a job in the north of England over three months ago and she had had no word from him in all that time. She was terrified that he had met with an accident, was badly injured, even that he had died. But one day he came to see her and told her he had found a job nearer home. Within a few days she lost her asthma completely. She no longer needed to hold her breath for her son.
The man with a suspected duodenal ulcer was a very worried man. He had lost his job, his wife was unable to work and he had two young children. Later, when he heard he had been reinstated in his work, he regained his health. He gained his job and lost his ulcer. The medical profession these days says that worry is often the cause of gastric and duodenal ulcers, but it was quite a new idea in those days.
Dr Bach began to feel then that treating the physical symptoms was not enough. The body was a mirror reflecting the thoughts in the mind. It was the sufferer himself, the person, who needed treatment and help to overcome his worries, fears, depressions, hopelessness. He felt that a completely new method of treatment was needed, a practical one, for words were not enough, it was of little use to say to a worried man,  "Don't worry, be happy". But first of all the doctor wanted to prove and test for himself other methods of orthodox medicines and he became a bacteriologist.
 He was well-known for his research work in this branch of medicine, but it did not satisfy him. He was treating bodies, not people, and he much disliked the injection of the products of disease back into the human body. However, these years were not wasted, for he was studying his patients, his friends, everyone he came across, and watching their reactions to all the experiences of daily life; at work and at play, in good health and ill-health; and this knowledge of human nature was to stand him in good stead later on.
Then it was he came into contact with homeopathy, and was delighted to find that Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, has said, "The patient is the most important factor in his healing". Also, that homeopathic remedies were prescribed for the peronality of the patient, his characteristics, his idiosyncrasies as well as the physical symptoms.
Dr Bach worked for some time in the laboratories of the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, and it was there that he became interested in the relationships between intestinal toxaemia and chronic disease. I want to tell you about this briefly because the result of this research brought him a big step forward to his final work.
He isolated seven groups of intestinal flora and prepared nosodes from them homeopathically, giving them to his patients by mouth. Their purpose is to cleanse and purify the intestinal tract. I say "is", for those nosodes, are still being used today. They were so successful.
Then he made a most important and significant discovery. It was this: all the patients suffering from the same emotional difficulties needed the same nosode, irrespective of the type of physical disease. Those patients who were subject to violent emotional outburst, brain storms, all needed the same nosode. Those who were nervous, apprehensive, again all needed another but same nosode, no matter from what physical complaint they suffered.
From then onwards he prescribed those nosodes according to his patients' temperamental difficulties only. There was no need for physical examination of the patient, laboratory tests were unnecessary and treatment could begin at once without delay. The results were excellent.
This confirmed his opinion that physical disease was not of physical origin, but that it was, as he said, 'the consolidation of a mental attitude'...... to be continued