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If medical opinion is now coming to the support of the
anti-vivisection societies, then possibly the vilification of the
" accredited " medical practitioner will cease. It will not be
necessary in future to hold Medical Freedom Conferences under the
auspices of the movement at which representatives of such bodies as
the Natural Healers' Defence Union, National Association of
Medical Herbalists, Nature Cure Association, "spiritualist"
healers and so forth dilate on the inferiority of men who have had
the instruction in anatomy, physiology, materia medica, and so
forth, and in the hospitals, which forms the training of a medical
man, in comparison with the superiority of their untrained selves.
At the meeting of a " Progress and Freedom in Medicine Conference
" reported in the April/June, 1935, number of "Progress
To-day," the usual "Murdered by Surgery" and by the doctor, views
were expounded, and it was stated as regards medical men that
"quite fifty per cent, of their diagnoses are wrong." The references
to the qualified medical profession can be gauged from the
actual words used by the Chairman in calling upon the President
of the Clapton and District Anti-Vivisection Society : —
"One representative of the accredited medical profession
who has patiently listened to acrimonious criticism of that
profession will now speak to us."
The President of the Clapton and District Anti-Vivisection
Society was called on to speak at the conclusion of an address in
which 100 per cent, success was claimed for "Spirit Doctors." For
instance, it was stated that patients who had failed to gain relief
from ordinary doctors were cured by means of an entranced medium,
"a bricklayer in his early life who was one of the mediums through
which a great spirit known as 'medicine man' was working to cure
humanity." The Chairman explained as regards this method of
healing that "the practice of spiritual healing is partly based on the
existence of a second body, the etheric body, on which the
physical body is moulded; spiritual healing can restore the etheric,
thereby making the physical vehicle whole."
It is apparently on the same principle that the President of the
Clapton and District Anti-Vivisection Society bases his opposition
to the suppression of epidemic diseases such as smallpox and diphtheria
since he considers infection is not due to harmful microorganisms
but is due to damage of the etheric body. These views
will be found at length in Volume No. LI of the "Vaccination
Inquirer" in his address on "The Problem of Infection," from
which the following extracts have been taken
"It will be sufficient to realise that this finer interpenetrating
etheric body of ours, to which the name 'Etheric Double'