Nora Weeks - The Medical Discoveries Of Edward Bach Physician

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Epub ISBN 9781446489741

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The Dr. Edward Bach Healing Centre 1973

ISBN 9780852070017

BACH, DR. EDWARD BACH, BACH FLOWER REMEDIES, the Flower logo, The Bach Photograph, 39, RESCUE and RESCUE REMEDY are trade marks of Bach Flower Remedies Ltd, Oxfordshire, England

This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2004 by Vermilion an imprint of Ebury Press

The Random House Group Ltd

Random House

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

London SW1V 2SA

Eager and ardent, like a living flame,

Without a thought of self, desiring ever

Nor wealth nor power nor influence nor fame

Except as those might forward his endeavour

To help mankind. So swift to understand

All doubts and fears and failures, yet so slow

To judge or to condemn, he set his hand

Alone to heal, to help those powers to grow

That make for fellowship and cast out hate

And aim to help the whole wide world to gain

Touch with the Infinite. Darkly we wait

So long for light, so oft it seems in vain,

But here was a life that sped too swiftly by

Yet kindled fires that will be slow to die.

The physicians high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure Hahnemann.

EDWARD BACH. EARLY YEARS

E DWARD B ACH was born on September 24th, 1886, at Moseley, a village about three miles outside Birmingham in Warwickshire, and was the eldest of a family of two boys and a girl.

He was a delicate baby, and was only with much care brought through the difficult first years of his life, though as he grew older his health improved.

As a boy his determination and intensity of purpose were outstanding; he possessed such power of concentration that he became absorbed in anything that interested him, allowing nothing to distract his attention or to interfere with his purpose.

He was full of vitality and love of adventure, good at games and ready for any mischief and, thanks to the Welsh strain in his blood, acutely intuitive and sensitive.

All that pertained to Wales had a great attraction for him; his own family, as the name Bach implies, came from that land many years ago, and his intuitive, idealistic nature, his love of all beauty, his beautiful speaking voice marked him a true son of that mystic land.

Howard Fisher, the Head of Winterloe School, Moseley, where he was educated, was a Welshman, and for him Edward Bach had a great affection which lasted in after years. He would often tell of the half-holiday he had earned as a reward for spelling Caernarvon with an e, and the joy it had given to his Welsh master.

This love of Wales drew Edward Bach to her again and again. When he was a schoolboy he would spend his holidays tramping through the Welsh villages and over the mountains, sleeping each night where he could, happy in the company of his friends the birds and trees and wild flowers, for his love of Nature showed itself at a very early age.

Later on he was to find, near one of the mountain rivers, the first of the herbal remedies for which he is famous; and later still, in the peace and quiet of a Welsh village, he was to work out the principles of the new system of herbal medicine.

His was a many-sided nature. Independent and positive from his earliest years, endowed with a great sense of humour and fun, he would at times become silent and meditative, roaming the countryside alone, or sitting and gazing at the wonders of a few yards of grassy bank or the bark of some big tree for hours at a time.

Any human being, bird or creature in pain or distress aroused in him such compassion and desire to help their suffering that he determined, whilst still a boy at school, to be a doctor.

This overwhelming compassion for others, which gave him so great an understanding of their distress, was one of his most striking qualities, and one which made him beloved by all who came in contact with him.

He would oftentimes sit in the school classroom and dream of the time when he might begin his work. He would dream that he had found some simple form of healing which would cure all forms of disease. He would also dream that healing power flowed from his hand and that all whom he touched were healed; and these were no schoolboy flights of imagination, but the inner knowledge of what was to come to pass, for he found that simple healing amongst the wild flowers of the field; and in after years he came to know he did indeed possess the power to heal, and many were the sick folk who were cured by his touch.

His ideal of a simple way to heal all disease persisted, and as he grew older it became a conviction and the activating force behind his whole lifes work, for throughout the years he practised as pathologist, bacteriologist and homopath his one aim was to find pure remedies, a simple form of treatment to replace the complicated scientific means which gave no certainty of cure.

But the boy, Edward Bach, was no mere dreamer. His certainty, his intensity of purpose, his interest in all things, however small, combined to make a character of great genius; though, as is usual with genius, he was destined to stand alone, for few could follow and understand the determination of one who knew his lifes work from the start, and would allow nothing to interfere with that great aim.

There were two great interests in his lifeoverwhelming compassion for all who suffered, whether human being, bird or beast, and love for Nature, for Her trees and plants. These two combined to lead him to the knowledge of the healing that he sought. The one love helped the other, for he found in Natures store-house the flowers of the field which heal all those in sickness and in pain.

1903-1906. EXPERIENCE IN THE BACH BRASS FOUNDRY

O N leaving school at the age of sixteen, Edward Bach, although still determined to enter the medical profession, decided first of all to work in his fathers brass foundry, for he felt he could not ask his parents to stand the expense of the long medical training. So for the next three years, from 1903 to 1906, he worked in the Bach factories in Birmingham.

These years, although long and difficult for one of his free, sensitive nature, he considered were not wasted, for there amongst his fellow-workmen he gained an insight and understanding of human nature which was to be the basis of all his future work.

He had no liking for the indoor life and regular hours of the factory, but as was his nature he set himself to learn the work thoroughly, working at the lathes in the workshops, in all the various departments, and trying his hand for a while as commercial traveller for the firm.