Chapter 9 

The Medical Discoveries of Dr Bach 

In February 1931 Dr Edward Bach had published his book Heal Thyself. The title alone was a challenge to the establishment since his invitation is to patients “so that they may assist in their own healing”. In an earlier piece of writing he declared his intention to show “how each of us may become our own doctor”.⁴ His medical discoveries or rather his discoveries about life patterns and the states of being that humans experience at this time do indeed offer just that: the opportunity for each of us to become our own doctor and to heal ourselves. 

When we consider the complexity of scientific medicine and the dangers of modern methods of treatment would we not be wiser to leave matters of health to the experts? Well yes, if we are thinking of using only such methods we would do well to leave them to those who are trained to use them. But there are other ways to health. Dr Bach was quite clear on this. Speaking to a group of homoeopaths at Southport in 1931 he begins: 

I come to you as a medical man: yet the medicine of which one would speak is so far removed from the orthodox views of today, that there will be little in this paper which savours of the consulting room, nursing home or hospital ward as we know them at present.⁵ 

or again in his book Free Thyself 

Health is listening solely to the commands of our souls; in being trustful as little children; in rejecting intellect (that knowledge of good and evil); with its reasonings, its ‘fors’ and ‘againsts’, its anticipatory fears: ignoring convention, the trivial ideas and commands of other people, so that we can pass through life untouched, unharmed, free to serve our fellow-men.⁶ 

And further on in the same chapter: 

Truth has no need to be analysed, argued about, or wrapped up in many words. It is realised in a flash, it is part of you. It is only about the unessential complicated things of life that we need so much convincing, and that have led to the development of the intellect. The things that count are simple, they are the ones that make you say, “why, that is true, I seem to have known that always,” and so is the realisation of the happiness that comes to us when we are in harmony with our spiritual self, and the closer the union the more intense the joy.⁷ 

Bach did not dwell upon the issue of his disagreement with contemporary medicine but we know for sure that his ideas had led him far away from the authoritarian outlook of science and the authority of specialists. Rather he wanted each of us to take responsibility for our life and for our health and happiness. 

It would be some time before people understood what he was trying to convey, that he knew. So he spoke to the future: 

The prognosis of disease will no longer depend on physical signs and symptoms, but on the ability of the patient to correct his fault and harmonise himself with his Spiritual Life.⁸ 

And speaking of the future for medicine he said: 

The patient of tomorrow must understand that he, and he alone, can bring himself relief from suffering, though he may obtain advice and help from an elder brother who will assist him in his effort.⁹ 

Lest we think that only medically trained people can be such an “elder brother” he points out: 

We are all healers, and with love and sympathy in our natures we are also able to help anyone who really desires health. Seek for the outstanding mental conflict in the patient, give him the remedy that will assist him to overcome that particular fault, and all the encouragement and hope you can, then the healing virtue within him will of itself do all the rest.¹⁰ 

By this mention of mental conflict we come upon the essential message of Dr Bach’s work - that it is mental conflict that causes illness. We might equally say it is the emotional state or the mental state: it doesn’t help to bicker over words for the essential truth of this is to be perceived by the heart and not by the intellect. We can also see from this last quotation that Bach recognised an inherent “healing virtue” that could act within each of us: what we have termed the life force. 

All of this, however, shows what came towards the end of Bach’s life when he had fashioned the ideas upon which he was to base his new medicine. It is interesting to see how he came to this position where he declared that we must forget the intellectual approach, break free from orthodox ways of working and return to the simplicity of little children. For that we must look back over his life and observe the influences that shaped his ideas. 

As a boy Edward Bach was apparently careful and imaginative while being very determined and strong in character. He took great care of his younger sister and was altogether very caring for the weak and those in need. He no doubt saw medicine as a caring profession and determined to become a doctor. He also had a great love for the natural world and the countryside, he was fond of long solitary walks and had a passion for fresh air (he even removed his bedroom window so that it might not become shut!). Strange then that at 16 he left school and went to work in his father’s factory: a brass foundry in Birmingham. 

For 3 years he was employed in the family business (1903-1906). We may suppose that he learned much. An engineering firm works with strong elemental forces; forging, casting and machining metal has its own poetry and truth. In the furnace of our hearts we forge the cast of our character. A brass foundry is no bad place to see passion fire the cold metal of inherited forms so that they may be melted down and cast into a new shape. Bach witnessed materials changing state, an experience that he was unlikely to forget. But while this and the many other subtle influences of working with people may have formed his character we can see how Bach needed to break free from the assumptions that family karma had put upon him. 

It was three years before Edward had finished with his father’s business. Ostensibly he worked in the factory because he felt a request for money to train as a doctor would be difficult. Whether we call this pattern false modesty, pride, fear, lack of confidence or indecision is of no consequence - he clearly needed time to grow to be his own man. Family obligations hold many people in the shell of inappropriate behaviour throughout their life. That this issue was important to Bach we can have no doubt for he continually refers to the need to give other people the freedom to choose their course in life: 

We must earnestly learn to develop individuality according to the dictates of our own Soul, to fear no man and to see that no one interferes with, or dissuades us from, the development of our evolution...¹¹ 

Think of the armies of men and women who have been prevented from doing perhaps some great and useful work for humanity because their personality had been captured by some one individual from whom they had not the courage to win freedom; the children who in their early days know and desire their ordained calling, and yet from difficulties of circumstance, dissuasion by others and weakness of purpose glide into some other branch of life, where they are neither happy nor able to develop their evolution as they might otherwise have done...¹² 

Thus the child should have no restrictions, no obligations and no parental hindrances, knowing that parenthood had previously been bestowed on his father and mother and that it may be his duty to perform the same office for another. 

Parents should be particularly on guard against any desire to mould the young personality according to their own ideas or, wishes, and should refrain from any undue control or demand for favours in return for their natural duty and divine privilege of being the means of helping a soul to contact the world. Any desire for control, or wish to shape the young life for personal motives, is a terrible form of greed and should never be countenanced, for if in the young father or mother it takes root it will in later years lead them to be veritable vampires...¹³ 

The gaining of freedom, the winning of our individuality and independence, will in most cases call for much courage and faith.¹⁴ 

He could not tell us more plainly: he is speaking out of personal experience. If it was the idea of the expense that held him back from training as a doctor we can easily understand the problem. He was the eldest son, however, and one suspects that was closer to the heart of the difficulty. But Bach was not a man to be held in the thrall of an idea, especially an idea that was preventing him from achieving what he wanted to do. He made his way to medical school and after many years of study (in 1912) he was ‘qualified’ - well, he was M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P., M.B., B. S., and D.P.H. It had taken eight years. He was constantly under pressure of work as he had insufficient financial support and was obliged to earn his living as well as work and study. It cost a lot to qualify - it nearly cost him his life. 

In 1913 Dr Bach was appointed Casualty House Surgeon at the National Temperance Hospital. He was 27 years old. As a boy his health had been a matter for concern and now he had to give up his post after only a few months owing to illness. As house surgeon he would have been on call day and night working under great pressure where life was often at stake in the casualty department. It may have been exciting but it was also certainly exhausting and nerve-wracking. He could not sustain it. Nora Weeks, who perhaps knew Bach better than anyone, comments in her biography¹⁵ that he had little use for accepted theories which he had not tested and proved for himself. Bach had seen how surgery worked and knew first hand what it was capable of and also its limitations. To many he was in the top rank of his profession where reputation and fame were found but he could not continue. Perhaps surgery did not come easily to him and he was later to eschew even the use of hypodermic needles in the treatment of illness. However it may have been, this was a turning point in the outward progress of Bach’s career in medicine. 

When he recovered from his “breakdown in health” he set up in practice in Harley Street. Having gone along the path of working in an institutional set-up (hospital) he tried the same medical principles when applied from his own consulting room. It was not much better. He still found orthodox medicine failed to give sufficient lasting benefit to his patients. Bach was not a person to sit back and wait for answers: when one avenue was explored and found to be a blind lead he started upon the next. Looking at contemporary medical research he thought he might find better results and a more sympathetic methodology in the Immunity School. In bacteriological research many interesting discoveries had been made since the pioneering work of Pasteur and Koch. It was a form of research that was demanding in terms of time and experimentation. But it was in the forefront of medicine and offered new possibilities to Bach. 

He took up a post as Assistant Bacteriologist at University College Hospital, London. While he continued in practice he began research. Basically he searched the body tissues and blood of people both healthy and sick to find what bacteria characterised their condition. At its most basic bacteriology searches for the physical organism that causes illness (germ theory). Bach was later to declare that such findings were merely results of illness not the cause. But at this stage it was a more subtle and delicate form of medicine than the use of surgery and was the next step upon his path of realisation. 

This was a time of great intensity in Bach’s life. At the outset of the World War he had tried to enlist but was considered unfit for service. Bach was disappointed. As for us we might afford a smile for had he been stronger physically he could well have died in Flanders. Instead he tended the wounded in the hospital and was in charge of over 400 “war beds”. He also took on more work in the medical school as Demonstrator and Clinical Assistant. He worked and worked. In his researches he came upon a form of intestinal bacteria that were found to be more plentiful in the gut of the chronically ill. He was to prepare a vaccine from these and begin a new form of treatment for such things as arthritis and rheumatism. The results were encouraging. 

Yet in all this he cannot have been happy. “We can judge our health by our happiness, and by our happiness we can know that we are obeying the dictates of our souls”¹⁶ he was to write later. Whatever else was happening in his life at this time he was personally in crisis. In July 1917 he began to bleed and fell unconscious. He had cancer. 

Many speculations might now be made. But we do not know many of the facts of what was taking place at this time. What of Bach’s family, his love-life, his mental state? We do not know what pressures he was working under. War was ravaging Europe and he had been very anxious to fight. Was he finding that his assumptions were being beaten about by reality? It is more likely that this illness was rooted in his personal life. Bach’s ideas were forged in the reality of his own experience and later he wrote that: 

Disease is the result of wrong thinking and wrong doing, and ceases when the act and thought are put in order. When the lesson of pain and suffering and distress is learnt, there is no further purpos i its presence, and it automatically disappears.¹⁷ 

Bach was told that he had no more than 3 months to live. He was given surgery and no hope. What actually happened next we do not know. Again there is the temptation to speculate. He went back to his work with renewed vigour we are told, and as he toiled at it he found that the deadline was passed. But he was working like this before and he had developed the cancer. So work alone would not explain his recovery. Something fundamental must have changed for him during this time. Some new beginning. Some shell of constriction, some mental state that had enslaved him must have given way so that he was able to revivify his body and walk out from the shadow of death. There was some kind of healing. 

It is significant that Bach should have met with this difficulty - he now knew from personal experience what it was to be terminally ill and what it was to regain health. He could now speak with the authority of reality, with the knowledge of one who has been there. He was no mere theorist. So he could write: 

In true healing there is no thought whatever of the disease: it is the mental state, the mental difficulty alone, to be considered: it is where we are going wrong in the Divine Plan that matters.¹⁸ 

The sense of Divine Plan must have begun to figure strongly for Bach at about this time. He was a Freemason and strongly committed to the Masonic philosophy and inner teachings. What may his teachers have shown him at this time? Was this the moment when he struck out for freedom that he had previously failed to find? We cannot tell. But again we find in his later writings he speaks quite emphatically on such matters: 

Disease of the body, as we know it, is a result, an end product, a final stage of something much deeper. Disease originates above the physical plane, nearer to the mental. It is entirely the result of a conflict between our spiritual and mortal selves. So long as these two are in harmony, we are in perfect health: but when there is discord, there follows what we know as disease. 

Disease is solely and purely corrective: it is neither vindictive nor cruel: but it is the means adopted by our own Souls to point out to us our faults: to prevent our making greater errors to hinder us from doing more harm and to bring us back to that path of Truth and Light from which we should never have strayed. 

Disease is, in reality, for our good, and is beneficent, though we should avoid it if we had but the correct understanding, combined with the desire to do right.¹⁹ 

If we dwell upon this issue it is not in order to question Bach’s greatness as a man or the genius of his medical discoveries. It is rather to illustrate how exactly he knew what he was talking about. It is too easy for one who has never had such troubles to tell others how to be free of them. But the realities of common human experience are always recognisable. 

At this time too Bach’s problems were not merely concerned with his research work and his own health. His first wife, Gwendoline, whom he had married early in 1913, died from diphtheria in April 1917. He remarried in the following month and his illness appeared in July though we may suppose that it had been developing for some time. It is not really very important that we know exactly what was happening at this time. Bach’s married life was and can remain a personal matter. What is important is to recognise the emotional pressure that he was experiencing and that he was not merely a medical bystander witnessing the life difficulties of other people. 

Bach continued his work as he was convalescing from the operation but in fact he was parting company with conventional bacteriological research. In the spring of 1919 he joined the staff of the London Homoeopathic Hospital. He became involved with a yet more subtle approach to medicine and through his reading of the work of Hahnemann began to see new prospects for reaching to a level of treatment that might truly relate to the causes of disease not merely deal with the effects. He was looking for something we may be sure but it was not going to be found in conventional science: 

The science of the last two thousand years has regarded disease as a material factor which can be eliminated by material means: such, of course, is entirely wrong.²⁰ 

At this time one suspects that Bach’s reading and thinking widened to take in things other than medical research. He had a strong interest in the traditions of the east and like many others in the years between the wars he learned from ancient thought a new way to approach the problems of his day. This is certainly evident in the ideas that he puts forward though he is discreet in referring to our western religious teachings and the example of Christianity. His own words, however, evidence his real interest: 

But the times are changing, and the indications are many that this civilisation has begun to pass from the age of pure materialism to a desire for the realities and truths of the universe. The general and rapidly increasing interest exhibited to-day for knowledge of superphysical truths, the growing number of those who are desiring information on existence before and after this life, the founding of methods to conquer disease by faith and spiritual means, the quest after the ancient teachings and wisdom of the East - all these are signs that people of the present time have glimpsed the reality of things.²¹ 

It is often noticed that Bach’s thinking is very modern and we may feel that those words have an expression that is more contemporary to our time than his. Bach was working for the future. It might be argued that the ways of technology carried the future, then and now, but ultimately we will come to see that truth is simple and that there is simplicity in truth. At a certain level everything is complex and the more we see the more complex it becomes. But beyond all the complexity there are the simple truths of the heart, the simple truths of life. It was these simple truths that Bach was seeking. 

Ten years of research and application in bacteriology and homoeopathy ended one day when he closed his laboratory, his clinic and his consulting rooms and left London for good. It was a drastic change and left his friends and colleagues amazed. He had made such advances in his work apparently, he was a famous and respected man, he had money, status and reputation. All the things that people set in conventional life patterns would wish for. And he threw them all over. What kind of reason might he give for the decision? 

Be captains of your Souls, be masters of your fate (which means let yourselves be ruled and guided entirely, without let or hindrance from person or circumstance, by the Divinity within you, ever living in accordance with the laws of, and answerable only to the God Who gave you your life.²² 

It is strong stuff. We might ask - did he live by it himself? The answer must be “yes”. Bach was a man of vision, guided by a vision and everything he encountered was measured against it in a search for what would answer his need. If he chose to call that ‘living according to the guidance of the Divinity within you’ he is just trying to keep it simple. He is using the word imagery of his time and the traditions that he knew and loved. We may choose our own. 

The guidance that he received in his work had led him to try many different things. He had progressed through conventional medicine from surgery, to bacteriology, he had worked in homoeopathy and looked at many of the novelties of his day like X-rays and even Abram’s Black Box. He had researched into diet and its effect upon cancer treatment. But in every case he turned to look forward to new possibilities. Guidance does not necessarily mean that we are taken by the hand and led directly to the realisation. Rather we search through the opportunities that life offers and find always a deeper understanding that will lead to realisation. 

For some people homoeopathy is the realisation of the search, the end of the road. It is said that could we but understand it homoeopathy has a remedy for everything -every problem has its pattern; we have only to recognise it, potentise it (prepare it by homoeopathic principles) to the right degree and as “like cures like” all will be well. Bach studied homoeopathy and used homoeopathic techniques in the preparation of some of his early medicines but he was to search further. Why? His writings answer us clearly: 

It is obviously fundamentally wrong to say that “like cures like”. Hahnemann had a conception of the truth right enough, but expressed it incompletely. Like may strengthen like, like may repel like, but in the true healing sense like cannot cure like... 

Do not think for one moment that one is detracting from Hahnemann ’s work, on the contrary, he pointed out the great fundamental laws, the basis.. we are merely advancing his work, and carrying it to the next natural stage.²

Bach greatly admired Hahnemann ’s work and followed his intimation that we should look to the personality of the patient rather than the disease. At first, too, Bach followed with the principles of potentising from the material of the substance that characterised the illness: he followed Hahnemann in that he reversed the action of the damaging bacteria by giving them back to the patient in potentised form. But he was to come to see this as fundamentally inappropriate. After all, at what point does the poison become a healing agent? If it is a matter of reversing the action then it would be better to start with the substance that was already the true antidote to the problem. Bach explains the matter like this: 

And if we follow on this line of thought, the first great realisation which comes upon us is the truth that it is disease itself which is “like curing like”: because disease is the result of wrong activity... it is the very disease itself which hinders and prevents our carrying our wrong action too far and at the same time, is a lesson to teach us to correct our ways, and harmonise our lives with the dictates of our Soul... 

Another glorious view then opens out before us, and here we see that true healing can be obtained, not by wrong repelling wrong, but by right replacing wrong: good replacing evil: light replacing darkness. 

Here we come to the understanding that we no longer fight disease with disease: no longer oppose illness with the products of illness: no longer attempt to drive out maladies with such substances that can cause them: but, on the contrary, to bring down the opposing virtue which will eliminate the fault... 

True, hate may be conquered by greater hate, but it can only be cured by love: cruelty may be prevented by a greater cruelty, but only eliminated when the qualities of sympathy and pity have developed: one fear may be lost and forgotten in the presence of a greater fear, but the real cure of all fear is perfect courage.²

Taking his instruction from the natural world Bach saw that homoeopathic action was not the way of nature. Darkness is replaced by the light of the sun not by any form of darkness; dryness is refreshed by rain not by any form of drought. 

Although homoeopathy has its greatness Bach was guided to the possibility of healing more directly. For this he was to search in nature for the plant forms that held a clear pattern that is the positive antidote to the negative pattern. He had drawn inspiration from the homoeopathic school and his later work was not running counter to homoeopathy. As he put it he wanted only to walk a little further along the road, as indeed we may now be called upon to do. 

So Bach left London and began a new life one might say. He had completed his theoretical research and from now onwards in his remaining years of life he was to put into practice the ideas that he had formulated. The shift that took place at this time is more than the assembly of dates. But dates help to put it into perspective: 

In his search for this new medicine Bach gave up everything he had worked for as a medical doctor. He returned to the instinct of his childhood and roamed the countryside. As a boy of 10 or 12 he had spent whole days walking alone; now a man in his forties he returned to his source. We say he searched for and found the remedies by intuition, often without a realisation of what that means. Bach was clear on the matter: “what is called intuition is nothing more or less than being natural and following your own desire absolutely”. For him it was like being a happy child left to live without interference and not interfering, free to be simply alive. Intuition functions automatically when we are in a balanced and harmonious state within ourselves and in relation to our surroundings. 

4 

Ye Suffer From Yourselves, Dr Edward Bach; 1931, p. 1 [See Vlamis ibid p. 117 seq] 

5 

ibid p. 7 

6 

ibid pp.7-8 

7 

ibid p.8 

8 

ibid p.9 

9 

Free Thyself: opcit p. 25 

10 

Heal Thyself: opcit p. 25 

11 

Endnote Text 

12 

ibid p.25 

13 

ibid p.26 

14 

ibid p.28-9 

15 

Medical Discoveries of Edward Bach, Physician, Nora Weeks; C.W.Daniel Co.; 1973, p. 17 

16 

Free Thyself: opcit p. 7 

17 

Ye Suffer from Yourselves: opcit p. 3 

18 

Free Thyself: opcit p.24 

19 

Ye Suffer from Yourselves opcit p. 5 

20 

ibid 

21 

Heal Thyself: opcit p.7 

22 

Ye Suffer from Yourselves: opit p.14 

23 

ibid p.4 

24 

ibid p.2 ff