Chapter 11 

Healing Herbs 

We are told that there was an occasion in 1928 when Dr Bach had first insight into the way that his work might develop. He had long felt that underlying an illness was the mental outlook of the patient but until this time he had not recognised that the mental state might be classified and formally described. Then one night this famous dinner... was it, one wonders, a Masonic occasion? As Nora Weeks describes²⁸ it we know it changed the course of Bach's work. His thought for the seven bacterial nosodes which characterised seven personality types was reformed so that the grouping would be made not according to the physical landmarks (bacteria types) but the emotional and mental states. A new landscape was to open before him where the manner, mood and mentality of the person were to be seen as the points of reference, not the illness or products of illness. 

It was several years before Bach was to declare that he had completed his surveying in this new land. He began at once, however, to put his new ideas to work (never one to hang about) and it was later that same year that he found the first three of the 38 plants that are now so strongly associated with his name. He continued to work with the bacterial medicines meanwhile: his scientific training restrained any impetuosity. 

Imagine now his state of mind. He has seen something but as yet does not know what it really is. He knew that he had to follow where it led but this was quite outside the realms of previous research. It was as if he had seen a sketch of a new land but had now actually to draw the maps and plot the landscape. Once more he is starting out afresh and as before he is searching for a more refined system of medicine. Now, however, the laboratory bench must go. No more test-tubes and germ culture dishes. From now on the experiment and the experimenter are one and the same. He became the technician and he became the lab. He has before him the conviction that a new healing agent can be found in the trees and plants of nature and that it must be for the psychological state of human experience not the physical. For the first he went to walk in the fields and for the second he took himself. 

The first remedies Bach found were actually seen as equivalents to his bacterial types. He prepared them as he had his vaccines. Later they stayed in his repertory although they were prepared differently. The plants were Mimulus and Impatiens. These would now be seen as descriptive of two differing states: fear of known things and irritability. If the thought is correct that Bach discovered these healing herbs by relating them to the state of his own psyche then we should expect these two flowers to speak of his type. Do they? We can only guess now. But Bach certainly spoke of his own impatience and it is supposed that he was an Impatiens type. And the Mimulus? Perhaps he is not so likely as a candidate for fear, at least not when we read the description as it came to be in The Twelve Healers. But this description was refined and altered over a period and if we look at the earlier description in Free Thyself then we get clues: 

Are you one of those who are afraid; afraid of people or of circumstances: who go bravely on and yet your life is robbed of joy through fear; fear of those things that never happen; fear of people who really have no power over you; fear of to-morrow and what it may bring; fear of being ill or of losing friends; fear of convention; fear of a hundred things? 

Do you wish to make a stand for your freedom, and yet have not the courage to break away from your bonds; if so Mimulus, found growing on the sides of the crystal streams, will set you free to love your life, and teach you to have the tenderest sympathy for others, 

This description from 1932 reveals just the negative state of mind that might have held him back from his purpose. If he was thinking of leaving London and giving up his old work what would people think of him, how will he survive, what if he gets ill again and the cancer returns, what will happen to the well-respected Dr Bach? We know now that all would be well but he may have been anxious at the time. Mimulus would have helped him, no doubt. No true researcher would not first test his medicine upon himself and doubtless Bach took the Mimulus. It gave him a quiet courage, control and emotional stability so that he directed his purpose to the future work that he was to do. How beautiful - the first remedy he finds is the one that will give him freedom and help him to find the rest. And the Impatiens? Bach was coming to self-knowledge. 

Still the question might be there: how did he find these plants and know that they were the ones to use? If he had watched others at this dinner and seen that they had characteristic types he must have turned the question upon himself. He was watching closely at this time in order to find and evaluate the psychological types. He must have considered his own behaviour as part of that. Then, knowing that he was looking for a flower that was equivalent to that state he had simply to look. First he allowed himself to be drawn by intuition (go where you will), then by attraction he would have seen what he sought. 

This process is in fact a commonplace experience in other contexts. We do it with food by selecting from the market or menu, with clothes when we spot a garment that is just right or with gifts when we match the person to the present. Quite simply we carry an image of what we seek (we bear it in mind, have a picture of what we want) and go on matching it against what is available. When we see something we think, yes, that's quite like it or that's it exactly. We match image to object. 

For Bach the matching game started with the search for a flower that would bring a gentle, forgiving feeling to the sense of tension and impatience. To understand properly why this plant has such a feeling we need to look at the flower, just as he did. If we do so the true observations that we make of its image and quality are not really described in words. Bach was looking at the subtle form rather than the physical plant. Nevertheless we can observe certain things. Its growth is prolific and fast, it tends to colonise a particular area, amidst the dark foliage the flowers hang as small bursts of colour, delicate and mobile and in seed the pods explode to scatter their contents; all of which has a relationship to the remedy type. 

The poet Blake describes the beginning of the more subtle perception when he declares that a plant was outwardly a thistle but "inwardly 'twas an old man grey" (curiously Bach at one time was to think of Sow Thistle as one of the remedies but later abandoned it). Many such ideas are part of our popular folklore. Willows are gnarled and twisted, vengeful and not to be trusted and, as boys should know, are not safe to be climbed. Quite different the Oak, renowned for its stalwart strength, its dependability, the English emblem. Yet while they are strong the oak trees can rot from within and one day fall unexpectedly. Again with Gorse we know that when it's in flower it's kissing time - it's always in flower, it's always kissing time! Just so with hope it is eternal and ever present. A plant like Wild Rose has had a long association with man and in those sad places where tumbled walls mark an old dwelling place wild roses are often found marking the spot where human efforts have turned to resignation. 

The physical sight of the plant, however, is different to the metaphysical insight. To understand the nature of a particular flower we must spend time with it, allow its quality to spread into us and fill our being. By merging the inner and outer, realising the unity of things and opening ourselves to the flower we will know it. If, for instance, we stand with our back to an oak tree and allow it to speak to us it tells clearly of its being. It says: "I endure". Through wind and storm, through time and season, with patient purpose and constancy this tree endures. That is its thought. 

Going into the place where we may realise that, however, is not always helpful. So a word of warning. If we try this we may find that it is not altogether a healthy experience. In such situations it is possible to lose contact with ourselves, lose contact with the body and our ordinary experience of reality. There is little doubt but that Bach found this to be so. How do we know? Because the third remedy that he found was Clematis which helps those who 'go off' in this way. It helped him to remain earthed and in conscious reality at a time when his mind must have been rather considerably disassociated. Going out into the unity of life is a fine thing but we must be quite sure that we have got ourselves properly prepared for such a journey. 

It is not chance then that led Bach to find these first three flower remedies in 1928. Rather they were the ones that he needed to find, for himself. At this date he prepared them in a way that was less potent than his later techniques but the healing force of the plant was still present and still of the same kind. When Bach had found these three remedies he used them in his London practice. During 1929 he tested them on patients and found that they worked effectively. It is interesting to note that these remedies required no experimental testing on guinea pigs since they were in no way toxic. Towards the end of the year he decided to give up using the bacterial vaccines. He now concentrated his efforts on developing his new system of medicine. 

Two processes appear to work concurrently for Bach at this time. In one case he is examining and observing the quality of different plants, in the other he is developing his observation of the human states that will become the 'pictures' for the new remedies. We know that he began by looking for twelve remedies for twelve different states and these were to become the original Twelve Healers as they are listed in Free Thyself. In this booklet he lists the twelve great qualities that are characteristic of perfection as we see it in the 'Great Masters'. He suggests that these have each a negative condition, the antipathy of the condition that we need to find for the fulfilment of our life purpose on earth. In life we find that; the negative state may lead to illness because we are failing to learn the essential lesson of our existence: thus he reasons that it is negative emotional and mental states that cause disease. 

These original remedies were all kept when Bach extended the repertory in later years although the key words were slightly modified. The table that he gives in Free Thyself²⁹ has a strong sense of order in it. Here is the feeling of a theory that is going to be amplified. It is like a map with broad delineations: mountains in the north, river and forest in the south: a picture map without the details of contours.