disease

76:4.7The body cells of the Ma­te­rial Sons and their progeny are far more re­sis­tant to dis­ease than are those of the evo­lu­tion­ary be­ings in­dige­nous to the planet. The body cells of the na­tive races are akin to the liv­ing dis­ease-pro­duc­ing mi­cro­scopic and ul­tra­mi­cro­scopic or­gan­isms of the realm. These facts ex­plain why the Uran­tia peo­ples must do so much by way of sci­en­tific ef­fort to with­stand so many phys­i­cal dis­or­ders. You would be far more dis­ease re­sis­tant if your races car­ried more of the Adamic life.

10:7.5The mor­tal mind can im­me­di­ately think of a thou­sand and one things—catas­trophic phys­i­cal events, ap­palling ac­ci­dents, hor­rific dis­as­ters, painful ill­nesses, and world-wide scourges—and ask whether such vis­i­ta­tions are cor­re­lated in the un­known ma­neu­ver­ing of this prob­a­ble func­tion­ing of the Su­preme Be­ing. Frankly, we do not know; we are not re­ally sure. But we do ob­serve that, as time passes, all these dif­fi­cult and more or less mys­te­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions al­ways work out for the wel­fare and prog­ress of the uni­verses. It may be that the cir­cum­stances of ex­is­tence and the in­ex­pli­ca­ble vi­cis­si­tudes of liv­ing are all in­ter­wo­ven into a mean­ing­ful pat­tern of high value by the func­tion of the Su­preme and the over­con­trol of the Trin­ity.

10:7.6As a son of God you can dis­cern the per­sonal at­ti­tude of love in all the acts of God the Fa­ther. But you will not al­ways be able to un­der­stand how many of the uni­verse acts of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity re­dound to the good of the in­di­vid­ual mor­tal on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds of space. In the prog­ress of eter­nity the acts of the Trin­ity will be re­vealed as al­to­gether mean­ing­ful and con­sid­er­ate, but they do not al­ways so ap­pear to the crea­tures of time.

• most disease-causing bacteria are renegade parasitic fungi

65:2.3The bac­te­ria, sim­ple veg­etable or­gan­isms of a very prim­i­tive na­ture, are very lit­tle changed from the early dawn of life; they even ex­hibit a de­gree of ret­ro­gres­sion in their par­a­sitic be­hav­ior. Many of the fungi also rep­re­sent a ret­ro­grade move­ment in evo­lu­tion, be­ing plants which have lost their chloro­phyll-mak­ing abil­ity and have be­come more or less par­a­sitic. The ma­jor­ity of dis­ease-caus­ing bac­te­ria and their aux­il­iary virus bod­ies re­ally be­long to this group of rene­gade par­a­sitic fungi. Dur­ing the in­ter­ven­ing ages all of the vast king­dom of plant life has evolved from an­ces­tors from which the bac­te­ria have also de­scended.

• healing chemicals in treatment of injuries

65:4.5When Uran­tia sci­en­tists know more of these heal­ing chem­i­cals, they will be­come more ef­fi­cient in the treat­ment of in­juries, and in­di­rectly they will know more about con­trol­ling cer­tain se­ri­ous dis­eases.

• most disease-causing bacteria are renegade parasitic fungi

65:5.2But through­out all of this bi­o­logic ad­ven­ture our great­est dis­ap­point­ment grew out of the re­ver­sion of cer­tain prim­i­tive plant life to the prechloro­phyll lev­els of par­a­sitic bac­te­ria on such an ex­ten­sive and un­ex­pected scale. This even­tu­al­ity in plant-life evo­lu­tion caused many dis­tress­ful dis­eases in the higher mam­mals, par­tic­u­larly in the more vul­ner­a­ble hu­man species. When we were con­fronted with this per­plex­ing sit­u­a­tion, we some­what dis­counted the dif­fi­cul­ties in­volved be­cause we knew that the sub­se­quent ad­mix­ture of the Adamic life plasm would so re­in­force the re­sist­ing pow­ers of the re­sult­ing blended race as to make it prac­ti­cally im­mune to all dis­eases pro­duced by the veg­etable type of or­gan­ism. But our hopes were doomed to dis­ap­point­ment ow­ing to the mis­for­tune of the Adamic de­fault.

• cooking food avoids sickness

66:5.18Its mem­bers taught much that was lost dur­ing the con­fu­sion of sub­se­quent ages, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. They taught man­kind that cook­ing, boil­ing and roast­ing, was a means of avoid­ing sick­ness; also that such cook­ing greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity and fa­cil­i­tated early wean­ing.

70:2.10At one time physi­cians be­lieved in blood­let­ting as a cure for many dis­eases, but they have since dis­cov­ered bet­ter reme­dies for most of these dis­or­ders. And so must the in­ter­na­tional blood­let­ting of war cer­tainly give place to the dis­cov­ery of bet­ter meth­ods for cur­ing the ills of na­tions.

101:3.84. Ex­hibits in­ex­pli­ca­ble poise and sus­tain­ing tran­quil­lity not­with­stand­ing baf­fling dis­eases and even acute phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing.

90:4.1The en­tire life of an­cient men was pro­phy­lac­tic; their re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure a tech­nique for dis­ease pre­ven­tion. And re­gard­less of the er­ror in their the­o­ries, they were whole­hearted in putting them into ef­fect; they had un­bounded faith in their meth­ods of treat­ment, and that, in it­self, is a pow­er­ful rem­edy.

90:4.2The faith re­quired to get well un­der the fool­ish min­is­tra­tions of one of these an­cient shamans was, af­ter all, not ma­te­ri­ally dif­fer­ent from that which is re­quired to ex­pe­ri­ence heal­ing at the hands of some of his later-day suc­ces­sors who en­gage in the non­sci­en­tific treat­ment of dis­ease.

147:3.3In speak­ing to those as­sem­bled, Je­sus said: “Many of you are here, sick and af­flicted, be­cause of your many years of wrong liv­ing. Some suf­fer from the ac­ci­dents of time, oth­ers as a re­sult of the mis­takes of their fore­bears, while some of you strug­gle un­der the hand­i­caps of the im­per­fect con­di­tions of your tem­po­ral ex­is­tence. But my Fa­ther works, and I would work, to im­prove your earthly state but more es­pe­cially to in­sure your eter­nal es­tate. None of us can do much to change the dif­fi­cul­ties of life un­less we dis­cover the Fa­ther in heaven so wills. Af­ter all, we are all be­holden to do the will of the Eter­nal. If you could all be healed of your phys­i­cal af­flic­tions, you would in­deed mar­vel, but it is even greater that you should be cleansed of all spir­i­tual dis­ease and find your­selves healed of all moral in­fir­mi­ties. You are all God’s chil­dren; you are the sons of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The bonds of time may seem to af­flict you, but the God of eter­nity loves you. And when the time of judg­ment shall come, fear not, you shall all find, not only jus­tice, but an abun­dance of mercy. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you: He who hears the gospel of the king­dom and be­lieves in this teach­ing of son­ship with God, has eter­nal life; al­ready are such be­liev­ers pass­ing from judg­ment and death to light and life. And the hour is com­ing in which even those who are in the tombs shall hear the voice of the res­ur­rec­tion.”

55:3.21The great hand­i­cap con­fronting Uran­tia in the mat­ter of at­tain­ing the high plan­e­tary des­tiny of light and life is em­braced in the prob­lems of dis­ease, de­gen­er­acy, war, mul­ti­col­ored races, and mul­ti­lin­gual­ism.

90:3.41. Ghosts—di­rect spirit in­flu­ences. The ear­li­est hy­poth­e­sis ad­vanced in ex­pla­na­tion of dis­ease and death was that spir­its caused dis­ease by en­tic­ing the soul out of the body; if it failed to re­turn, death en­sued. The an­cients so feared the malev­o­lent ac­tion of dis­ease-pro­duc­ing ghosts that ail­ing in­di­vid­u­als would of­ten be de­serted with­out even food or wa­ter. Re­gard­less of the er­ro­neous ba­sis for these be­liefs, they did ef­fec­tively iso­late af­flicted in­di­vid­u­als and pre­vent the spread of con­ta­gious dis­ease.

52:5.9Dur­ing this era the prob­lems of dis­ease and delin­quency are vir­tu­ally solved. De­gen­er­acy has al­ready been largely elim­i­nated by se­lec­tive re­pro­duc­tion. Dis­ease has been prac­ti­cally mas­tered through the high re­sis­tant qual­i­ties of the Adamic strains and by the in­tel­li­gent and world-wide ap­pli­ca­tion of the dis­cov­er­ies of the phys­i­cal sci­ences of pre­ced­ing ages. The av­er­age length of life, dur­ing this pe­riod, climbs well above the equiv­a­lent of three hun­dred years of Uran­tia time.

148:2.1In con­nec­tion with the sea­side en­camp­ment, El­man, the Syr­ian physi­cian, with the as­sis­tance of a corps of twenty-five young women and twelve men, or­ga­nized and con­ducted for four months what should be re­garded as the king­dom’s first hos­pi­tal. At this in­fir­mary, lo­cated a short dis­tance to the south of the main tented city, they treated the sick in ac­cor­dance with all known ma­te­rial meth­ods as well as by the spir­i­tual prac­tices of prayer and faith en­cour­age­ment. Je­sus vis­ited the sick of this en­camp­ment not less than three times a week and made per­sonal con­tact with each suf­ferer. As far as we know, no so-called mir­a­cles of super­nat­u­ral heal­ing oc­curred among the one thou­sand af­flicted and ail­ing per­sons who went away from this in­fir­mary im­proved or cured. How­ever, the vast ma­jor­ity of these ben­e­fited in­di­vid­u­als ceased not to pro­claim that Je­sus had healed them.

141:4.4At this same time Je­sus be­gan to teach the twelve more fully con­cern­ing their mis­sion “to com­fort the af­flicted and min­is­ter to the sick.” The Mas­ter taught them much about the whole man—the union of body, mind, and spirit to form the in­di­vid­ual man or woman. Je­sus told his as­so­ciates about the three forms of af­flic­tion they would meet and went on to ex­plain how they should min­is­ter to all who suf­fer the sor­rows of hu­man sick­ness. He taught them to rec­og­nize:

141:4.51. Dis­eases of the flesh—those af­flic­tions com­monly re­garded as phys­i­cal sick­ness.

141:4.62. Trou­bled minds—those non­phys­i­cal af­flic­tions which were sub­se­quently looked upon as emo­tional and men­tal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­tur­bances.

141:4.73. The pos­ses­sion of evil spir­its.

166:4.10“In the mat­ter of sick­ness and health, you should know that these bod­ily states are the re­sult of ma­te­rial causes; health is not the smile of heaven, nei­ther is af­flic­tion the frown of God.

3:5.149. Is plea­sure—the sat­is­fac­tion of hap­pi­ness—de­sir­able? Then must man live in a world where the al­ter­na­tive of pain and the like­li­hood of suf­fer­ing are ever-pres­ent ex­pe­ri­en­tial pos­si­bil­i­ties.

• cured by porous rocks

85:1.4The an­cients had a pe­cu­liar re­gard for holes in stones. Such porous rocks were sup­posed to be un­usu­ally ef­fi­ca­cious in cur­ing dis­eases. Ears were not per­fo­rated to carry stones, but the stones were put in to keep the ear holes open. Even in mod­ern times su­per­sti­tious per­sons make holes in coins. In Africa the na­tives make much ado over their fe­tish stones. In fact, among all back­ward tribes and peo­ples stones are still held in su­per­sti­tious ven­er­a­tion. Stone wor­ship is even now wide­spread over the world. The tomb­stone is a sur­viv­ing sym­bol of im­ages and idols which were carved in stone in con­nec­tion with be­liefs in ghosts and the spir­its of de­parted fel­low be­ings.

• produced by magic; the enemy

86:3.3All hu­man dis­ease and nat­u­ral death was at first be­lieved to be due to spirit in­flu­ence. Even at the pres­ent time some civ­i­lized races re­gard dis­ease as hav­ing been pro­duced by “the en­emy” and de­pend upon re­li­gious cer­e­monies to ef­fect heal­ing. Later and more com­plex sys­tems of the­ol­ogy still as­cribe death to the ac­tion of the spirit world, all of which has led to such doc­trines as orig­i­nal sin and the fall of man.

• shamanic theories

90:2.1Spirit con­jur­ing was a very pre­cise and highly com­pli­cated pro­ce­dure, com­pa­ra­ble to pres­ent-day church rit­u­als con­ducted in an an­cient tongue. The hu­man race very early sought for super­hu­man help, for rev­e­la­tion; and men be­lieved that the shaman ac­tu­ally re­ceived such rev­e­la­tions. While the shamans uti­lized the great power of sug­ges­tion in their work, it was al­most in­vari­ably neg­a­tive sug­ges­tion; only in very re­cent times has the tech­nique of pos­i­tive sug­ges­tion been em­ployed. In the early de­vel­op­ment of their pro­fes­sion the shamans be­gan to spe­cial­ize in such vo­ca­tions as rain mak­ing, dis­ease heal­ing, and crime de­tect­ing. To heal dis­eases was not, how­ever, the chief func­tion of a shamanic med­i­cine man; it was, rather, to know and to con­trol the haz­ards of liv­ing.

90:3.1Since an­cient man re­garded him­self and his ma­te­rial en­vi­ron­ment as be­ing di­rectly re­spon­sive to the whims of the ghosts and the fan­cies of the spir­its, it is not strange that his re­li­gion should have been so ex­clu­sively con­cerned with ma­te­rial af­fairs. Mod­ern man at­tacks his ma­te­rial prob­lems di­rectly; he rec­og­nizes that mat­ter is re­spon­sive to the in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of mind. Prim­i­tive man like­wise de­sired to mod­ify and even to con­trol the life and en­er­gies of the phys­i­cal do­mains; and since his lim­ited com­pre­hen­sion of the cos­mos led him to the be­lief that ghosts, spir­its, and gods were per­son­ally and im­me­di­ately con­cerned with the de­tailed con­trol of life and mat­ter, he log­i­cally di­rected his ef­forts to win­ning the fa­vor and sup­port of these super­hu­man agen­cies.

90:3.2Viewed in this light, much of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble and ir­ra­tional in the an­cient cults is un­der­stand­able. The cer­e­monies of the cult were prim­i­tive man’s at­tempt to con­trol the ma­te­rial world in which he found him­self. And many of his ef­forts were di­rected to the end of pro­long­ing life and in­sur­ing health. Since all dis­eases and death it­self were orig­i­nally re­garded as spirit phe­nom­ena, it was in­ev­i­ta­ble that the shamans, while func­tion­ing as med­i­cine men and priests, should also have la­bored as doc­tors and sur­geons.

90:3.3The prim­i­tive mind may be hand­i­capped by lack of facts, but it is for all that log­i­cal. When thought­ful men ob­serve dis­ease and death, they set about to de­ter­mine the causes of these vis­i­ta­tions, and in ac­cor­dance with their un­der­stand­ing, the shamans and the sci­en­tists have pro­pounded the fol­low­ing the­o­ries of af­flic­tion:

90:3.52. Vi­o­lence—ob­vi­ous causes. The causes for some ac­ci­dents and deaths were so easy to iden­tify that they were early re­moved from the cat­e­gory of ghost ac­tion. Fa­tal­i­ties and wounds at­ten­dant upon war, an­i­mal com­bat, and other read­ily iden­ti­fi­able agen­cies were con­sid­ered as nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences. But it was long be­lieved that the spir­its were still re­spon­si­ble for de­layed heal­ing or for the in­fec­tion of wounds of even “nat­u­ral” cau­sa­tion. If no ob­serv­able nat­u­ral agent could be dis­cov­ered, the spirit ghosts were still held re­spon­si­ble for dis­ease and death.

90:3.6To­day, in Africa and else­where may be found prim­i­tive peo­ples who kill some­one ev­ery time a non­vi­o­lent death oc­curs. Their med­i­cine men in­di­cate the guilty par­ties. If a mother dies in child­birth, the child is im­me­di­ately stran­gled—a life for a life.

• produced by magic; the enemy

90:3.73. Magic—the in­flu­ence of en­e­mies. Much sick­ness was thought to be caused by be­witch­ment, the ac­tion of the evil eye and the magic point­ing bow. At one time it was re­ally dan­ger­ous to point a fin­ger at any­one; it is still re­garded as ill-man­nered to point. In cases of ob­scure dis­ease and death the an­cients would hold a for­mal in­quest, dis­sect the body, and set­tle upon some find­ing as the cause of death; oth­er­wise the death would be laid to witch­craft, thus ne­ces­si­tat­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of the witch re­spon­si­ble there­for. These an­cient coro­ner’s in­quests saved many a sup­posed witch’s life. Among some it was be­lieved that a tribesman could die as a re­sult of his own witch­craft, in which event no one was ac­cused.

• punishment for sin, personal or racial

90:3.84. Sin—pun­ish­ment for taboo vi­o­la­tion. In com­par­a­tively re­cent times it has been be­lieved that sick­ness is a pun­ish­ment for sin, per­sonal or racial. Among peo­ples travers­ing this level of evo­lu­tion the pre­vail­ing the­ory is that one can­not be af­flicted un­less one has vi­o­lated a taboo. To re­gard sick­ness and suf­fer­ing as “ar­rows of the Al­mighty within them” is typ­i­cal of such be­liefs. The Chi­nese and Mes­o­po­ta­mi­ans long re­garded dis­ease as the re­sult of the ac­tion of evil demons, al­though the Chaldeans also looked upon the stars as the cause of suf­fer­ing. This the­ory of dis­ease as a con­se­quence of di­vine wrath is still preva­lent among many re­put­edly civ­i­lized groups of Uran­tians.

90:3.95. Nat­u­ral cau­sa­tion. Man­kind has been very slow to learn the ma­te­rial se­crets of the in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of cause and ef­fect in the phys­i­cal do­mains of en­ergy, mat­ter, and life. The an­cient Greeks, hav­ing pre­served the tra­di­tions of Adam­son’s teach­ings, were among the first to rec­og­nize that all dis­ease is the re­sult of nat­u­ral causes. Slowly and cer­tainly the un­fold­ing of a sci­en­tific era is de­stroy­ing man’s age-old the­o­ries of sick­ness and death. Fever was one of the first hu­man ail­ments to be re­moved from the cat­e­gory of super­nat­u­ral dis­or­ders, and pro­gres­sively the era of sci­ence has bro­ken the fet­ters of ig­no­rance which so long im­pris­oned the hu­man mind. An un­der­stand­ing of old age and con­ta­gion is grad­u­ally oblit­er­at­ing man’s fear of ghosts, spir­its, and gods as the per­sonal per­pe­tra­tors of hu­man mis­ery and mor­tal suf­fer­ing.

90:3.10Evo­lu­tion unerringly achieves its end: It im­bues man with that su­per­sti­tious fear of the un­known and dread of the un­seen which is the scaf­fold­ing for the God con­cept. And hav­ing wit­nessed the birth of an ad­vanced com­pre­hen­sion of De­ity, through the co-or­di­nate ac­tion of rev­e­la­tion, this same tech­nique of evo­lu­tion then unerringly sets in mo­tion those forces of thought which will in­ex­orably oblit­er­ate the scaf­fold­ing, which has served its pur­pose.

• diagnosed by animal entrails

90:4.3The more prim­i­tive tribes greatly feared the sick, and for long ages they were care­fully avoided, shame­fully ne­glected. It was a great ad­vance in hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism when the evo­lu­tion of shaman­craft pro­duced priests and med­i­cine men who con­sented to treat dis­ease. Then it be­came cus­tom­ary for the en­tire clan to crowd into the sick­room to as­sist the shaman in howl­ing the dis­ease ghosts away. It was not un­com­mon for a woman to be the di­ag­nos­ing shaman, while a man would ad­min­is­ter treat­ment. The usual method of di­ag­nos­ing dis­ease was to ex­am­ine the en­trails of an an­i­mal.

• treated by chanting, howling, laying on hands, breathing on patient

90:4.4Dis­ease was treated by chant­ing, howl­ing, lay­ing on of hands, breath­ing on the pa­tient, and many other tech­niques. In later times the re­sort to tem­ple sleep, dur­ing which heal­ing sup­pos­edly took place, be­came wide­spread. The med­i­cine men even­tu­ally es­sayed ac­tual surgery in con­nec­tion with tem­ple slum­ber; among the first op­er­a­tions was that of trephin­ing the skull to al­low a headache spirit to es­cape. The shamans learned to treat frac­tures and dis­lo­ca­tions, to open boils and ab­scesses; the shamanesses be­came adept at mid­wifery.

90:4.5It was a com­mon method of treat­ment to rub some­thing mag­i­cal on an in­fected or blem­ished spot on the body, throw the charm away, and sup­pos­edly ex­pe­ri­ence a cure. If any­one should chance to pick up the dis­carded charm, it was be­lieved he would im­me­di­ately ac­quire the in­fec­tion or blem­ish. It was a long time be­fore herbs and other real medicines were in­tro­duced. Mas­sage was de­vel­oped in con­nec­tion with in­can­ta­tion, rub­bing the spirit out of the body, and was pre­ceded by ef­forts to rub med­i­cine in, even as mod­erns at­tempt to rub lin­i­ments in. Cup­ping and suck­ing the af­fected parts, to­gether with blood­let­ting, were thought to be of value in get­ting rid of a dis­ease-pro­duc­ing spirit.

148:0.1From May 3 to Oc­to­ber 3, A.D. 28, Je­sus and the apos­tolic party were in res­i­dence at the Zeb­e­dee home at Beth­saida. Through­out this five months’ pe­riod of the dry sea­son an enor­mous camp was main­tained by the sea­side near the Zeb­e­dee res­i­dence, which had been greatly en­larged to ac­com­mo­date the grow­ing fam­ily of Je­sus. This sea­side camp, oc­cu­pied by an ever-chang­ing pop­u­la­tion of truth seek­ers, heal­ing can­di­dates, and cu­rios­ity devo­tees, num­bered from five hun­dred to fif­teen hun­dred. This tented city was un­der the gen­eral super­vi­sion of David Zeb­e­dee, as­sisted by the Al­pheus twins. The en­camp­ment was a model in or­der and san­i­ta­tion as well as in its gen­eral ad­min­is­tra­tion. The sick of dif­fer­ent types were seg­re­gated and were un­der the super­vi­sion of a be­liever physi­cian, a Syr­ian named El­man.

167:3.1Ab­ner had ar­ranged for the Mas­ter to teach in the syn­a­gogue on this Sab­bath day, the first time Je­sus had ap­peared in a syn­a­gogue since they had all been closed to his teach­ings by or­der of the San­hedrin. At the con­clu­sion of the ser­vice Je­sus looked down be­fore him upon an el­derly woman who wore a down­cast ex­pres­sion, and who was much bent in form. This woman had long been fear-rid­den, and all joy had passed out of her life. As Je­sus stepped down from the pul­pit, he went over to her and, touch­ing her bowed-over form on the shoul­der, said: “Woman, if you would only be­lieve, you could be wholly loosed from your spirit of in­fir­mity.” And this woman, who had been bowed down and bound up by the de­pres­sions of fear for more than eigh­teen years, be­lieved the words of the Mas­ter and by faith straight­ened up im­me­di­ately. When this woman saw that she had been made straight, she lifted up her voice and glo­ri­fied God.

167:3.2Not­with­stand­ing that this woman’s af­flic­tion was wholly men­tal, her bowed-over form be­ing the re­sult of her de­pressed mind, the peo­ple thought that Je­sus had healed a real phys­i­cal dis­or­der. Al­though the con­gre­ga­tion of the syn­a­gogue at Phil­a­del­phia was friendly to­ward the teach­ings of Je­sus, the chief ruler of the syn­a­gogue was an un­friendly Phar­isee. And as he shared the opin­ion of the con­gre­ga­tion that Je­sus had healed a phys­i­cal dis­or­der, and be­ing in­dig­nant be­cause Je­sus had pre­sumed to do such a thing on the Sab­bath, he stood up be­fore the con­gre­ga­tion and said: “Are there not six days in which men should do all their work? In these work­ing days come, there­fore, and be healed, but not on the Sab­bath day.”