December 1935

Does he have an immediate intuition or does he hear voices ?

Well, he believes in his intuition and his faith justified itself. I never heard that he hears voices.

If he doesn't know that, his self-confidence, however strong and enormous, can't make him commit himself to such an extent. It would be foolish in some places.

Why can't it? How dreadfully downright and sweeping you are in your demands! What ground had Mustapha Kemal for his strong and enormous confidence when he defied all Europe and all the probabilities and possibilities and undertook to save three-quarters dead Turkey?

What does that matter if it succeeds in some places? Napoleon's self-confidence and intuition tripped him up at Waterloo, but before that it had won him Marengo, Jena, Austerlitz.

Was there some extraordinary power behind R before he came here that was responsible for the marvellous results?

Certainly. It was because the Mother saw a great force in him that she accepted him in the Asram.

I hear he is a very good medium and is a tower of vital strength.

Which means of course full of a massive vital force which can be used by the Yoga-force for its purposes and being massive can produce striking results.

Is the strength then the real cause of his success and medicine negligible? But I don't understand how a tower of vital strength can cure a dying man! If that were possible, whatever medicine he might have administered, would have been equally successful.

Why the flabbergasts not? What's the use of strength if it can't do things?

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You are very much behind the times. Do you not know that even many doctors now admit and write it publicly that medicines are an element but only one and that the psychological element counts as much and even more? I have heard that from doctors often and read it over reputable medical signatures. And among the psychological elements, they say, one of the most important is the doctor's optimism and self-confidence, (his faith, what? it is only another word for the same thing) and the confidence, hope, helpful mental atmosphere he can inspire in or around his patient. I have seen it stated categorically that a doctor who can do that is far more successful than one who knows Medicine better but cannot.

You said in S's case that the Force has to count on right medicines for rapid effects.

I did not mean that it cannot be done without medicines. But if it is to be done with the aid of medicines, then the right medicine is helpful, the wrong one obviously brings in a danger.

How does R choose the right medicine? Not by intuition; because I saw him consulting his books for the choice of medicines.

Of course. He learned homeopathic medicine in America and his ideas of homeopathy are the American ideas. But how does his knowledge prevent intuition? Even an allopathic doctor has often to intuit what medicine he should give or what mixture — and it is those who intuit best that succeed best. All is not done by sole rule of book or sole rule of thumb even in orthodox Science.

How could a patient, as good as lost, leap up, although he knew nothing of faith in yogic force?

That often happens. It is even sometimes easier to deal with a man of that kind, provided he does not know what is being done,— so that there is no room for doubt or mental resistance.

He himself admitted that he could not expect such a miraculous result from his treatment. It was the Mother's force that did it.

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Naturally.

Is it then the question of mediumship? If so, I dance in rapture thinking that yogi-doctors have a vast possibility!

Yes, provided they do not entrench themselves in doubt and rigid materialistic orthodoxy.

I am thrown out of joint at two miracles, Sir: (1) R's treatment or yours; (2) N K' s English poetry, though Madam Doubt still peeps from behind. Anyhow, no chance for me¹ Sir! What to do?

Why out of joint? It ought to strengthen your joints for the journey of Yoga.

Not at all sir. Mind, sir, mind. Madam Doubt, sir, Madam Doubt! Miss Material Intellectualism, sir! Aunt Despondency, sir! Uncle Self-distrust, sir! Cousin Self-depreciation, sir! The whole confounded family, sir!

I congratulate you for having such a fine instrument, and him as well for being so for the Divine's action.

I will try to make it clear, but no time tonight as it is 4.40 a.m. already .

December 23, 1935

You have shown me my fallacy, but I am afraid, the fundamental points of perplexity remain unsolved ...

I don't deny G's resuscitation, nor do I object to your congratulating R. I don't even say that homeopathy is all bosh and allopathy is heaven's reward. Well, there were evidently three factors at work in this case: Mother's Force; R's mediumship which was constituted of faith, confidence, vital power, intuition, etc. and his drug treatment.

Now what I am puzzled about is the exact contribution of R's medicines in this case.

Exact? How can one measure exactly where vital and mental and

¹ kapāl: Fate

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spiritual factors come in? In dealing with a star and atom you may (though it appears you can't with an electron), but not with a man and his living mind, soul and body.

If R were an allopathic homeopath, with a difference only in treatment and not in pathology, I wouldn't doubt his explanations.

Why on earth? What is an allopathic homeopath? Homeopathic principles are just the opposite of the allopathic. So why must the dealings be fundamentally the same with only a difference of drugs? In spite of what you say you have the solid belief that allopathy alone is true. I suppose allopathic homeopathy is something like a biped with four feet.

If you say that homeopathy is quite different from allopathy, as regards the treatment, the pathology must be the same. [Sri Aurobindo underlined the last part of the sentence. ]

Not necessarily in all cases or in all respects.

How can a homeopath ask a high blood-pressure man who has just risen from the grave, to attend to his duties in the old way and give him the usual food?

Why can't he, if he has some other means of combating the possible bad results? I have not heard that R asked G to resume his duties. He represents it as if he remained neutral and it was G's own choice with which he did not interfere. That may have been imprudent ; but R is daring in everything and that means a stiff dose of imprudence. Besides he has his theories also which may or may not be true, but I cannot say they are prima facie impossible if I can judge by the daring one he put forward for making S eat the full Asram meals. If S's accounts of his condition are true, they seem to have been justified by a considerable amount of success.

A symptomatic treatment can't be applied in cases where

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the same symptom is produced by two or three different diseases because the symptoms will always recur so long as one doesn't go to the root.

Why can't it? There is a possibility that you can strike at the cure, whatever it be, through the symptoms and you can kill the root through the stalk and leaves and not start by searching for the roots and digging them out. That at any rate is what I do.

Don't speak of your own cures, please; I can't fight you there!

Why should I not speak of my cures? When they are perfectly apposite and a proof that you can cure by symptomatic treatment ?

You mean you don't want to give me the lie or say I am under a delusion?

If you say R is led by intuition I'll stop my argument and give you a chance of a hearty laugh. But then how did he ignore so important a factor as albumin in G's case?

He has intuition but not always the right intuition to fit the case. It is a mental intuition he uses, and mental intuition is a mixed movement.

I have answered all that already. I do not say R was right; but he did not act at random; he gave his reasons for neglecting the albumin which I am not medical enough to understand. I would have preferred if he had dealt with and had kept G under observation, before letting him loose, but it is not my funeral. I don't expect G to live long and I don't think R expects it either. But in the case of S he has for the time being at least proved his case. He is by the way dealing with G's kidneys today and admits it is a ticklish job; but the first effects he says were successful and he is waiting for the night to pass to see what will be the sequel. For the drug, he says, is highly potentised, (that is American language), but may produce an upheaval. Well, there you are, that is the man. Right or wrong? God he knows. I put a force behind him and also await the results.

He had by the way hesitated to act at once on the kidneys because the body needed to be accustomed to renewed vigour (so far as I

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understand) before risking the coup. Contrary to allopathic pathology? Maybe. But it has some similarity to what I have seen in my experience of action by Yoga.

His faith, hope, self-confidence, I suppose, help to produce a favourable nidus in the patient's mental atmosphere.

Certainly, if you are dejected, diffident, despairing, full of doubt, you can't produce a favourable nidus in the atmosphere.

Self-confidence necessarily presupposes knowledge and experience; though the converse may not be true.

What an absurd statement! Self-confidence is an inborn thing; it does not rest on knowledge and experience.

If Napoleon had been a little less self-confident, he might have been a victor at Waterloo.

Who says that? I never heard that Napoleon failed at Waterloo for want of self-confidence. I have always read that he failed because he was, owing to his recent malady, no longer so quick and self-confident in decision and so supple in mental resource as before. Please don't rewrite history unless you have data for your novel version.

About Kemal Pasha, well, I hear you pumped into him a s lot of force.

Napoleon had a lot of force pumped into him also.

Even then these personalities had the stratagems of war and I current politics at their finger-tips, like Japan which is reaping a golden harvest out of European tangles. If I could say that about R in his field, then all my doubts regarding his drug-effect wouldn't arise. . .

Please remember that R has studied homeopathy and he has knowledge of homeopathic medicines if not of allopathic pathology. He took a degree in America and the Mother tells me that many of

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his ideas of which we were so impatient and thought them his own inventions are the ideas of the American school of homeopathy which is more meticulous, intolerant, intransigent, dead against allopathy, particular about the subtle properties of homeopathic drugs and their evanescence by wrong contacts (quite Yogic that) than others.

His self-confidence and intuition may produce some striking results at the time of crisis, but it must blend with knowledge to give permanent results.

How do you know he has no knowledge of homeopathic drugs?

His lack of sufficient knowledge of things makes me doubt and throw almost the whole balance on the side of your Force. If he had been as successful outside with such a scanty knowledge, I would have said then, all luck! or now that I know, action of some greater Power behind.

He was successful outside. While he was outside the Asram, not yet accepted, he was making remarkable cures and already getting a name. I had to stop him as soon as he became an accepted disciple, even before he came into the Asram, because his practice was illegal. But I had to refuse applications from the town for allowing him to treat patients because he had succeeded so remarkably with them that they wanted to continue. I was not concerning myself in the least with his cures and knew nothing at all about them. And you say all that was luck because his ideas differ from yours? Are you not reasoning like Molière's doctors who declared that a patient's audacity in living contrary to the rules of Science was intolerable or like the British Medical Council which refused any validity to Sir Herbert Barker's cures because he was an osteopath and had no qualified medical knowledge?

I wonder, then, whether our mode of looking at things is altogether wrong. And if there are really such drugs in homeopathy which can give results in cases in which we have almost none, then it would be worth trying to study it and combine both systems.

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Certainly there are — the universe is not shut up in the four walls of allopathic medicine. There are plenty of cases of illnesses being cured by other systems (not homeopathy alone) when they had defied the allopaths. My experience is not wide but I have come y across a good number of such cases. And if it is not so, why then did Dr. V come to R for help surprisingly when he and A had failed with all their capacity and experience? V has known and practised homeopathy to some extent. May we not infer that he knew there were cases in which homeopathy (not allopathic homeopathy but pure) might be successful?

Or is it only a question of personality apart from Yoga force? If R had taken up allopathy, could he not have done big miracles like these, where Valle and others failed? And if I were asked to administer the same drug to this dying man, could it have produced such a striking effect ?

It is not a question of drugs alone. The drug is only a support. If you had not intuition and self-confidence and the same thorough- going belief in your own action and the Yoga-force behind you, you might have done some good but not had the same rapid effect. R believes in his medicines, but he does not believe that they are infallible in their effect or rely on them alone. He believes in the man behind them and in the Force behind the man.

You can try to logicise me but do try to satisfy me. also!

How can I "satisfy" you when my point of view and basis of knowledge is quite different from yours or R's either?

I could go on writing and writing and multiplying, but I have tried to squeeze my thesis into this space. You said you, would try to make it clear. Please do so. . .

I haven't cleared up anything, I suppose, only logicised and not satisfied you. To clear up things it would be necessary to go to first principles as well as my own experience and view of things (to which you object because you can't fight me there), and that

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would be going into country foreign to the allopathic and scientific reason.

Let me say however about R: He is a man who seems genuinely to believe in the Force — even when he was not an accepted disciple and was treating cases in town, he was attributing his cures to the Force (ours), although we did not consciously preside at all over his cases or send him any particular help. So he has the first requisite for being a "medium" of Force. Next, he is a man of great vital push, self-confidence, abounding enthusiasm and energy; such men are the best instruments, not for knowledge, but for successful action. Second requisite there. Next, he is a man with a great power of suggestion and also of inducing auto-suggestions in his patients, and these become remarkably effective, provided they do not resist too much. He is the kind of man who can give pure water, saying, "This is a potent medicine", and the patient would immediately feel better after taking it. (By the way, many allopathic doctors do that, when they think it necessary, according to their own confession). Third help (though the trick would be un Yogic); the power of conveying one's own thought-formations, vital energy, will — decisions etc. to others being an element in Yogic action: he has that. Fourth, a knowledge of homeopathic medicines and what seems to me a very supple and daring use of them. Dangerous? perhaps or rather, no doubt; he himself admits that with his more potent medicines a great disturbance occurs before the cure or can do so and a great disturbance means a great risk; but a daring man is a man who takes risks in the hope of great results. He might have killed S ? Certainly, but so might an allopathic doctor. My grandfather and cousin were patently killed by the medicine administered by one of the most famous and successful allopathic doctors of Calcutta. An allopathic doctor also takes risks and those who are the most successful are also the most adventurous and decisive in their methods. All that does not militate against his capacity as a healer. They are points in his favour.

On the other hand there are big defects. He is a bluffer; he makes big mistakes and does not admit them even when he knows he has made them — he covers it up by an absurd statement which he thinks the others will swallow. But he does not persist in his mistakes — he sets them right without admitting them. He is not truthful and truthfulness is a great help for the Force, while the opposite induces

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a wrong vibration. He is vain, arrogant etc.─.and men with such defects can easily fall into great blunders. He pretends to have knowledge where he has none. He is ignorant of many things a healer ought to know.

Well, in spite of all he has done remarkably with S. Whether he will carry G through remains to be seen; but that for the time being he raised him up from the half-dead is beyond question. The man has parts ─ whether his parts will become a whole is a matter of the future. A man being a man can be neither perfect nor worthless. One has to see what can be made of him or what he allows himself to be made or to become. Let us Asquitheanly, for him as for others, wait and see. Why either condemn wholly as a fraud or boost up as a miracle ?

There would be much else necessary to say, about allopathy, homeopathy and the elasticity of Nature, about the place of medicine, Force and the medium, about spiritual force, intermediate occult forces and material forces, about the complexity and relativity of "truths" that are only convenient formulas and the inadvisability of turning them into absolute and all-covering truths, etc., etc. ― but all that would be long, would carry us into too deep depths and can be postponed till the blue moon rises in your heavens.

December 24, 1935

Guru, I hope this letter will catch you before you start for the Supramental sleep !

At about 5 a.m. I was called by P as K was having blood vomiting. R was also there with his medicine. Seeing K' s vomiting, I had the impression that it was from the lungs. An examination led me to suspect apex of rt. lung. I don't know what R thinks about it; but at first sight he said it was vicarious menstruation. Anyway he gave her medicines. The bout subsided and she slept quite peacefully. Then again she had blood-vomiting. According to his treatment, food and nourishment have to be given. R told me that he will write to you and give her charge to me as he is busy with many other cases, and his temporary treatment won't clash with mine.

I don't know what to do now. I am at Thy service, Sir.

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If you and R don't agree as to diagnosis, it is better to send for a third person, (Dr. Valle is indicated, I suppose), to consult and advise. It is necessary to know what she has. We are informed that K had this once in Gujarat. You can ask P about this and, if it is correct, find out what was the diagnosis and treatment.

I suppose in any case (if it is lung trouble, also) food and nourishment have to be given and it is only if it is liver or stomach that it would be otherwise?

6.30a.m.

By "allopathic-homeopath", I meant a homeopath having studied allopathy who will have a very sound basis in Medicine. All homeopathy schools are now teaching pathology, etc. . .

They may all study pathology, but I don't think they all bind themselves to the same conclusions as the allopaths. If they did, they would not be able. to have an entirely opposite system.

I don't deny that personality is a big factor though I don't know exactly whether hope, faith, etc., operate physically more or bring some occult forces into the field.

You have only to admit that the mind and vital can influence the body — then no difficulty is left. In this action of mind and vital on the body faith and hope have an immense importance. I do not at all mean that they are omnipotent or infallibly effective —that is not so. But they assist the action of any force that can be applied, even of an apparently purely material force like medicine. In fact however there is no such thing as a purely material force, but the action may be purely material when it is a question of material objects. But in things that have life or mind and life one cannot isolate the material operation like that. There is always a play of other forces mixed with it in the reception at least and for the most part in the inception and direction also.

I don't understand why I came into this world with doubts and Co. whereas others did so with self-confidence. Why some people go on patiently and honestly and still end their days in misery, whereas frauds etc. flourish so well! I would

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say Kismet. You may say blessed Karma — it is only another name.

Well, the frauds are capable and clever in their fraudulency, I suppose. And why should not capacity have its results? The others are only moral and the reward of morality is not worldly success but the satisfaction of a conscience at rest. Virtue is its own reward — it can't ask for success in life also!! What would the poor frauds do if having the torments of a bad conscience (?) they had no success to soothe their tortures?

Karma is not luck, it is the transmission of past energies into the present with their results.

Do you hope that a "blue moon" will ever rise in my heavens?. . .

I trust that a blue moon will rise in everybody's heaven who has on one side the patience to go through and on the other no fundamental and self-expulsive wickedness in his nature. Even for these others the blue moon will rise one day, though later , — if they have once sought for it.

Even if it does, I would prefer your "blue moon" letters dilating a little the last para regarding mediumship and medical aspects — if you can.

Well, we'll see.

December 25, 1935

You have seen Valle's observations about our patient K. My intuitive diagnosis is then correct; only the intuition was distorted by the mind in misjudging the side affected by the lesion.

It was intuition? I thought it was the result of a prosaic examination.

Still I am not sure that her right side is free; but that can be ascertained by X-ray. R had that "vicarious" impression

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to the last. I actually asked Valle if it was so, he negatived it at once.

Why not pool results and say it was a vicarious monstrosity that produced a lung lesion in the middle-left together with the right apex? Excuse the levity — the temptation of a joke at doctors has always been too much for any lay resistance. .

History and symptoms were so obvious.

But what was the history? I asked for it and you have not told me. Mother was informed it had already happened in Gujarat.

It is for such instances, Sir, that my faith in his drug treatment gets shaken.

I don't know. There are several people besides S and G with whom he seemed to me to have a remarkable success.

If a homeopath went by symptoms only, he would perhaps cut off the leaf but I am afraid the roots would flourish as strongly as ever.

That is what A told G, that homeopathy only gives a transient palliation followed quickly by a worse catastrophe. But after all, if it can raise up a man at the last gasp condemned by a unanimity of the whole allopathic faculty almost with the sentence "No more can be done" and send him walking about for a few more days of cheerful life, it is a rather big palliation. Moreover, in some cases I have watched, I have seen R's drug produce not only a rapid, even an instantaneous improvement, but in the end what seems up to now a lasting one and this in cases of illnesses of ancient standing. However that does not cover K' s case which looks more like a lung affair (Mother always was apprehensive that she may be a consumptive case) than a vicarious menstruation or monstrous vicariation one. R however says that it is his principle to make a diagnosis and never change it or say anything more about it but just go and prove his case by a cure!! What say you to that, sir? Confidence, if you like! However what bothers me about diagnosis is that if you put 20 doctors on a case, they give 20 different diagnoses (in S's

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we had three doctors with three quite different theories of the illness) — and such jokes as a doctor shouting "Appendix", opening up a man, finding illness neither of appendix nor volume nor chapter and cheerfully stitching him are extremely common. So if a layman's respect for allopathic pathology and diagnosis is deficient sometimes and R's sneers at doctors' diagnoses find occasionally an echo,— well, it is not altogether without "rational" cause.

A had mild diarrhoea; his relatives made a great fuss over him by caressing, fondling and surrounding him all the time!

Killed with kindness?

I hear that R has prescribed butter-milk for K. Valle himself prescribed light food.

I hope you don't prescribe "absolute repose". R wants her to move about, do light sedentary work not involving any pull on the body and, generally, so arrange that she may not think herself seriously invalided. This has always been the Mother's principle in dealing with illness, or she approves that wherever possible.

December 26, 1935

While crushing my rigid mind, do you want to establish the long-neglected and much-maligned merits of homeopathy as beyond all dispute and, harangue by allopaths?

Not at all. I don't care a penny for homeopathy (or allopathy). I only wanted to poke some jokes at your allopathic mind.

My attack is against two things: R's efficiency and capacity as a doctor; and the rationale of homeopathy on symptomatology alone.

If you question that, you destroy homeopathy altogether.

I asked R about his patient G: "Is there no thickening of

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the blood vessels, high blood-pressure, no dyspnoea, etc.?" He said, "None at all." Yet Dr. Prasad Rao found all these and signs of heart-failure.

You went when G had a setback. R had written to me about headache, liver and some other difficulties before you went.

Dr. Rao further said that the patient was still in the danger zone. Any exertion, indiscretion might bring about another attack.

But it seems Valle has different ideas; he does not find G in a dangerous state or on the point of death, as he was before. Admitting P .R.' s infallibility, is Valle then a fool? Why does he give credit to R or keep him there? If R is such an incompetent ass, why does V support him, cover him, keep him there? This is a thing which seems to me a little unintelligible. Doctors differ? Why so much in this case? Valle who does not believe in Divine Force, is I think, the only doctor here who has a practical knowledge of homeopathy — he was struck with the justice of R's treatment from the first in S's case; he approves of his treatment in G's. Would he do so if R were merely a blundering ignoramus?

R gives a high blood-pressure patient on the verge of heart- failure "moderate" licence in eating, drinking, etc. He calls it "leaving to Nature"!

Well, I have followed that system with myself and others and gone on the basis that Nature is very largely what you make of her — or can make of her.

Since his heart, kidney cannot be regenerated, his habits have therefore to be adjusted accordingly. He can't remain a "bon vivant" any more.

In that case isn't it better that G should die? What's the use of life under such conditions?

If R is concerned only with symptoms, why does he ask me to find out the significance of high blood-pressure etc. or

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ask Valle to build up a diet for G?

Because he found you very competent at it. As for the diet he had to cede something to Valle so that the family might see there was a necessary collaboration.

People will acclaim that allopathy has failed and homeopathy has succeeded. But my point is that Valle, an allopath, would have been as successful as R if he had the backing of your Force.

The Force needs an instrument and an instrumentation also sometimes. The instrument was R, the instrumentation partly at least his drugs. I don't believe in the story of the inefficiency of homeopathic drugs only because they are homeopathic. Also, I don't believe that R knows nothing about them and can't properly apply them. I have noted almost constantly that they have a surprising effect, sometimes instantaneous, sometimes rapid, and this not in R's evidence alone, but in the statement of his patients and the visible results. Not being an allopathic doctor, I can't ignore a fact like that.

I quote to you an instance of the symptomatic riddle. Some symptoms like headache, vomiting etc. may be caused by many diseases such as brain-tumour, syphilis, blood- pressure and others. If you tell me that a homeopathic medicine for headache and other symptoms will be a panacea for all of them then I am afraid it will be difficult for me to accept it.

Tumour, syphilis etc. are specialities, but what I have found in my psycho-physical experience is that most disorders of the body are connected, though they go by families,— but there is also connection between the families. If one can strike at their psycho- physical root, one can cure even without knowing the pathological whole of the matter and working through the symptoms is a possibility. Some medicines invented by demi-mystics have this power. What I am now considering is whether homeopathy has any psycho-physical basis. Was the founder a demi-mystic? I don't

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understand otherwise certain peculiarities of the way R's medicines act.

Now the diagnosis, about which you have joked. Why take a muddle as an instance and ignore other cases ? I should say that a mistaken diagnosis of the appendix, far example, is very rare.

Good heavens! It happened in scores and scores of cases when there was the appendicitis mania among doctors in France —and they have other manias also.

Why ignore wonderful things due to thousands of right diagnoses and let sporadic cases of error loom large in your eyes?

Sporadic cases! I have heard of any number of them; they are as plentiful as blackberries in Europe. And as for difference of diagnosis it is almost the rule except when doctors consult together and give concessions to each other. Don't try to throw allopathic dust in my eyes, sir! I have lived a fairly long time and seen something of the world before my retirement and much more after it.

We know only a few big cases of success of R, but how many of his failures do we know ? In the Asram itself Rajangam is one. I saw R's most furious letter to you, on Rajangam' s lack of faith.

But I have Rajangam' s letters also. He seems to have had a curious mixture of superstitious hope and strong doubt, especially as R bungled badly at one point. However the body of an allopathic doctor can't be expected to respond to a homeopathic fellow, can it?

Then I hear he has failed in L's case also.

If L's case failed, then L in her letters lied to me. She related a complete cure of all that she had been suffering from for dreary months and years in which she was writing blood-curdling letters

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to me relating all her symptoms and miseries in voluminous detail. Once feeling well, she declared she did not believe in treatment but in Divine Force only, gave R a kick and sent him away. He was of course furious. For some time I had no letters, then little by little they began again, but as yet they are not so blood-curdling as before. Question: If D. F. alone does it without drugs, why is not L cured now as she was then under R?

I don't know of the other miraculous cures, nor do I know what rational grounds he has put forward for S's taking Asram food.

Rational, from the point of view of his experience only — not from allopathic pathology.

I think an allopath like M would be able to cure many people just as R has done — and also without some of R's mistakes.

M has an admirable knowledge and masterful movement in his treatments, but Mother finds that he is an overdrugger. He pours drugs on his patients as some painters overload their canvas with colour. He almost killed himself in this way, and we had all the trouble in the world to tone him down. He admitted it frankly, but since professional bias was too strong for him, when he fell ill, he could not help drugging and drugging.

Now about K' s case. R boasts that it is not his principle to make a diagnosis, but to prove a cure and you ask me what I say to that. Well, R proclaimed after hearing the symptoms that it was a case of vicarious menstruation, even after seeing the blood-vomit which is characteristic of T. B. I call it bluff, Sir. Let him stick to his sacred principle and not bluff us with his queer vicarious animal! Dr. Voile who has a big experience to his credit has clearly pronounced it to be T .B. And why vicarious, pray? because she was having some menstrual troubles? But her last period was quite normal. And what about her past history of cough, pain in the chest, blood-vomit?

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K' s case may be T. B., though Valle dragged in a "vraisemblablement"¹ and X-Ray is required — very probably it is, though I am not quite sure. R swears that ordinary doctors who have not had sufficient gynaecological experience can and do take V .M. for T .B. It does not follow that it is so in this case and his statement may be all bluff. . . Now if we look beyond pathology to what I may call psycho-pathology (non-allopathic, non-homeopathic), this hysteria is usually accompanied with some disorder of the genital parts; wrong menstruation is itself often due to sexual trouble. T.B. again is always (psychologically) due to a psychic depression — I use psychic in the ordinary, not the Yogic sense; this psychic depression may arise from sex-frustration of one kind or another or from some reaction of the sexual order. So if R is wrong in suspecting V. M., psychologically he may be right — there may be, not vicarious menstruation, but its psychological equivalent. All that may no doubt be Greek (not medical Greek) to you, but I know what I mean — and so long as that is there, the cure of the T. B. by D.F.² is rather problematical. In X's case I saw at once that nothing could be done. That is why R got his chance. The allopaths could have cured the T. B., but it would have come back worse than before. However he is so disgusted with the storm of opposition raised against him that he seems inclined to throw up the cases and even (other things aiding) to leave the Asram. If so, all will be peace in Jerusalem, S will go back with his liver into orthodox hands, G fulfil his allopathic destiny and an interesting phase will be over.

"I don't care about all that," he will say. "I will prove by my cure." If one is dealing with a case of T. B. or of heart- disease, I assert that some knowledge of pathology is necessary so that one can understand how far other organs have been involved. R would be quite ignorant of it and therefore can't treat the case effectively whereas an allopathic- homeopath would be in a better position. . . .

But the allopaths can? Then how the devil do non-allopathic homeopaths (R is not the only example) succeed at all in their pathological cases ? They do, you know, and that needs some explaining.

¹ Probably. 2 Divine Force.

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