In the Cauldron of Disease

The work that Mr. Are Waerland has produced is one which fulfils a great purpose. It at once instructs the reader in matters of vital importance to his health and happiness, clothing the information afforded in a most attractive manner.The author aims chiefly at making knowledge a living and integral part of the reader's mind by appealing not only to the intellect and the reasoning faculty but also to the great 'cantilevers' of human activities, the love of truth, the creative intuition and the enthusiasm, as the most powerful promoters of progress, without which much information, however valuable would not be converted into deeds or become a reality in life.

Excerpt:

The following pages contain in twenty-seven chapters on various health subjects, the record of a thirty year's search for health.

Though having for a life-time been a lecturer in these subjects, the author has persistently refused to submit his views to publication until he was able to take a 'bird's eye' survey of the whole field of his research and had a full certainty that the conclusions he had arrived at were inevitable and that they represented the most practical and effective solutions of the great problems involved.

The book is revolutionary. It constitutes in its essence the most serious and comprehensive attack hitherto published on the present-day system of treating disease, and consequently on the representatives and supporters of that system. But it is by no means an attack upon medical science and its foremost pioneers and leaders, in so far as they have arrived at the same conclusions and realised the necessity of fundamental and thorough reform in the prevailing established outlook upon disease and health.

It is obvious that an attack of this kind, provided that it is founded upon facts, sincerely written and fair to all the many excellent qualities, the integrity of character and the great devotion of the majority of medical practitioners to their profession and their patients, for which the author himself is unable to find a better word than 'noble', cannot but contribute to the solution of all the many problems concerning the greatest assets of any nation - the health of its citizens and the future of its race.

The author is firmly convinced that no reader will lay this book aside without admitting that it has brought forward a very strong case against the prevailing system, of which, from the author's point of view, the bulk of the doctors themselves are victims no less than their patients.

It will also be obvious to every reader that medical science, as it stands to-day, is by no means an exclusive product of the efforts of the doctors, but to a very large extent the result of the thinking and research work done by outsiders - men in other branches of science and interested laymen. The failure of medical science to obtain health and immunity from ailments is, without doubt, due chiefly, on the one hand to the art of healing being monopolised by professional healers operating as a trade union, and on the other to the laymen having been led to believe that their own endeavours and contributions would not only be unnecessary but futile and unwelcome.

One of the author's chief aims in writing this volume has been to convince his readers of the great disaster this view has brought about, and of how heavily we laymen have bad to pay for it. Also to show how necessary it is to establish an exclusive research by laymen into these matters, at least for the present, and in the future a co-operation on new lines with an entirely reformed staff of medical practitioners.

The bitter experience the author has himself had may excuse him largely for occasional sarcasm and severity of criticism, and also for his taking the view that cooperation with the medical profession would not be advantageous at present and would in all probability result in a speedy return to the old state of affairs.

Effective co-operation can only be established by bodies of workers - of no matter what calling - who have attained positive, irrefutable health results and are, as the author of this volume is, well aware of the means and methods by which they can be obtained.It was unavoidable that this volume should be to some extent a record of the author's own life. While regretting the necessity of referring to himself and his own endeavours, he begs to be excused by his English readers for having recorded, especially in the first chapter, what must be obvious to most people in England, but was by no means so on the continent in his childhood. Still, without having recorded these more or less trivial experiences, the great issues to which they have led would not have been properly understood.

"Look here, my boy," my uncle said, "there is a lecture at X-village to-night, on 'Our Constitutional Rights'. The lecturer has just wired to say he is in bed with a cold. I cannot go myself and there is no one else to be found, so I think you had better go."

I was still in my teens, with little knowledge of life and still less about myself, and I thought my uncle was joking, but when he repeated his request in the tone peculiar to him when he did not wish to be contradicted, I simply answered: "Good gracious, you know I have never delivered a lecture in my life!"

"I know, I know," he said, "but I really think you should try. I have a feeling that you would do well as a speaker; any facts bearing upon our constitutional rights you certainly have at your finger tips, judging from our conversations. So please say no more, but get yourself ready and go."

My uncle was an authoritative person, and a good judge of men and matters. His confidence in me had an electrifying effect. Besides, I had always longed for an opportunity to make an attempt at lecturing. I hurried upstairs, changed, put a block of note-paper and some pamphlets in my pocket and was off by the next train.

An eventful journey!

How I got through that lecture Heaven alone knows. However, neither words nor arguments failed me. And the audience!... When I had finished, there was no end to the applause. I met grateful, enthusiastic eyes everywhere. My success seemed to be decided. The news of it spread like lightning to all the political associations in the district.

When I returned home the next day my uncle seemed more than pleased. He looked at me, embraced me, and shook me by the shoulders. "I always considered you a good talker," he said, "but who would have dreamt that you would reveal yourself as an accomplished speaker at your very first attempt? Your career is made!"

That night I went to bed with a strange feeling. Evidently there was something in me of which I had not been aware until a few hours ago. And now I suddenly saw before me a future I could not have dreamt of yesterday. I could not help smiling.How little we know ourselves!...

The following weeks were like a wild dream that had suddenly come true. I was plunged into work - lecture-halls, audiences, stations, villages, towns and scenery of all sorts followed each other like a phantasmagoria. It all impressed my youthful mind. I felt for the first time that I was fully alive with all my senses, with all my heart, mind and soul. But alas, all this was doomed to come to an abrupt end.

Suddenly one evening, right in the middle of my lecture, I saw, as it were, a clammy hand moving towards me. I felt a strange grip on my throat. My voice gradually failed me. I had to summon all my strength to try to make myself heard, but in vain. There was nothing for it but to apologize and leave the platform. Still, everyone was kind to me and, seeing how upset I was, assured me that it could not be anything serious ... only a temporary indisposition.

But it was not!

Two or three throat-specialists declared, in the days that followed, that I was suffering from an incurable catarrh of the throat and that I should have to say 'goodbye' to public speaking for ever.

My throat was subsequently cauterized and I had to take all kinds of medicine.Gradually my voice returned, though for weeks I could not speak above a whisper.However, my uncle advised me to choose a profession that "suited my throat". "It is no use kicking against fate," he said.

Fate... fate... fate...! I repeated to myself. Philosophy was my chief study. To be a philosopher had been my dream ever since my dear father, himself a born philosopher, had explained that word to me.

Well, I thought, I do not need a voice to be a philosopher.

To begin with, I started philosophizing about my own fate. I could not help it. Was that unseen hand, which seemed to have caught me by the throat in the middle of my lecture, really the hand of fate, I asked myself? ... Was fate something outside or inside us? ... Were we our own destiny, or was destiny, as it were, written in a book, the 'Book of Life'? ...

I visualized for the first time the great question modern materialism had brought to the fore: Was life a mechanism and were we ourselves only puppets like Punch and Judy, moved by the wire-pullers of blindly-acting physical forces, or were we endowed with free-will, and was life a continuous creation in which everything, including atoms, protons and electrons, had their share, their work to do and their task to accomplish? ...

Upon the answer to that question hung my future. For if life was a blind unfolding of forces without purpose or meaning, and if our thoughts and actions were the result of the play of atoms whose positions were determined for all time, all my efforts to alter my own destiny and to fight my own fate would be in vain.