Dr. Edward Bach (1886-1936) was a physician well ahead of his times. In his short career he moved from orthodox medicine into developing a natural form of medicine to treat emotional and spiritual health, very much in tune with the trends in natural health in the 1990s.

 

Born in Mosely outside Birmingham, of Welsh extraction, he was an intuitive, delicate but independent child with a great love of nature. Following an early desire to heal others, he left school at 16 and spent three years in his father's Birmingham brass foundry, in order to pay for his own medical training.

 

Dr. Bach's early medical career was both conventional and successful. In 1912 he qualified at University College Hospital, London where he became Casualty Medical Officer in 1913; later that year he became Casualty House Surgeon at the National Temperance Hospital. After recovering from a breakdown in health, he developed a very busy practice close to Harley Street. From an early age, Dr. Bach had been aware that people's personality and attitudes have a bearing on their state of health. As a student on the wards he took an interest in patients as people rather than cases, and early on came to the conclusion that, in illness, personality is more important than symptoms, and should be taken into account in medical treatment.

 

He became increasingly dissatisfied with the limitations of orthodox medicine with its focus on curing symptoms. Believing that effective treatment involved addressing the causes of illness, he decided to pursue an interest in immunology, and became Assistant Bacteriologist at UCH in 1915.

 

His health was never robust; refused for service in World War I, he worked himself to illness in 1917, and was expected to die. His determination to complete his work led to a complete recovery and when he later developed his essences, he was strongly influenced by the belief that following one's true vocation is essential to spiritual and physical health.

 

From 1919-22 he worked as pathologist and bacteriologist at the London Homoeopathic Hospital. There, he was struck by the fact that Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, had recognised the importance of personality in disease 150 years before. Combining these principles with his knowledge of orthodox medicine, he develloped the Seven Bach Nosodes, oral vaccines based on intestinal bacteria which purified the intestinal tract with remarkable effects on patients' general health, and on difficult chronic conditions like arthritis.

 

He still had his Harley Street practice, and treated the poor for no payment in Nottingham Place. With little spare time, he continued to search for simpler and purer methods of healing. Although the medical profession had adopted his vaccines (they are still used today by some homoeopathic and other physicians), he disliked the fact that they were based on bacteria, and was anxious to replace these with gentler methods, possibly based on plants.

 

In 1928, at a dinner party, he had a revelation. Looking at his fellow guests, he realised that they fell into several distinct types. From this, he came to the inspired conclusion that each type would react to illness in a particular way. That autumn he visited Wales and brought back two plants, Mimulus and Impatiens; he prepared these as he did the oral vaccines, and prescribed them according to his patients' personality, with immediate and successful results. Later that year he added Clematis. With these three essences he was on the brink of developing an entirely new system of medicine.

 

In the spring of 1930, aged 43, Bach closed his laboratory and his lucrative practice and went to Wales to seek further essences in nature. Walking through a dew-laden field early one morning, it struck him that each dewdrop, heated by the sun, would be imbued with the healing properties of the plant it lay on. This inspired him to develop a method of preparing essences using pure water.

 

As he continued his work, his intuition became so sensitive that, by holding a flower or tasting a petal, he could immediately sense what its healing effects would be.

That year he wrote the short book Heal Thyself, with its message that physical disease is the result of being out of line with one's spiritual purpose. At first rejected by several publishers as being too revolutionary, it was published in 1931 and has remained in print ever since.

 

From August 1930 until 1934 Dr. Bach based himself in Cromer, on the Norfolk coast, finding and preparing further Flower Essences, and successfully treating patients with them.

 

Bach charged no fees, and his financial resources were dwindling. In 1934 he moved to Mount Vernon, the small house in Oxfordshire which is still the Dr. Edward Bach Centre. He worked on: writing, treating patients in Sotwell and London, and finding further essences.

 

As he discovered each one, he would suffer the states of mind and body for which they were needed - a painful and exhausting method of research, but one which gave him a great understanding of his patients.

 

Shortly after his fiftieth birthday in September 1936, he became seriously ill. He continued to work and lecture, while training assistants to carry on his work. He had now developed 38 Essences, together with the Rescue Remedy, and knew that no further essences were needed; the 38 Essences covered all the negative states of mind underlying illness.

 

At the end of November 1936, he died in his sleep, content that his mission was complete. His work was carried on at Mount Vernon by the friends and helpers to whom he had entrusted it.

 

Dr. Bach was deeply religious; his philosophy was at once simple and profound, based on the innate perfection and spiritual nature of human beings. Disease is 'entirely the result of a conflict between our spiritual and mortal selves.' Health and happiness lie in being in harmony with our own natures, and doing the work for which we are individually cut out.

 

As he wrote:

'It means doing the house-keeping, painting, farming, acting, or serving our fellow-men in shops and houses. And this work, whatever it may be, if we love it above all else, is...the work we have to do in this world, and in which alone we can be our true selves.'

 

Disharmony arises when interference deflects us from our true course-the interference of other people, or of our own moods, fears and hesitations. Disease is 'the re-action to interferences. This is temporary failure and unhappiness and this occurs when we allow others to interfere with our purpose in life and implant in our minds doubt, or fear, or indifference.' It is equally important that we should not interfere in the lives of others.

 

There are seven main moods which prevent us from being true to ourselves: Fear, Uncertainty, Insufficient Interest in Present Circumstances, Loneliness, Over-sensitivity to Influences and Ideas, Despondency or Despair and Over-Care for the Welfare of Others. The seven moods on which the Flower Essences are based, can be sub-divided into different types: fear, for example, may take the form of terror, requiring Rock Rose, concrete fears (Mimulus), fear of losing one's mind (Cherry Plum), inexplicable fears (Aspen), or fears for other people (Red Chestnut).

 

Disease is 'in reality, for our good, and is beneficent', in that it draws our attention to the need to listen to our true selves; the Flower Essences return us to our own path, not by attacking the disease, but by flooding our bodies with higher vibrations, 'in the presence of which disease melts as snow in the sunshine.'

 

As there are seven moods which interfere with our health, so: 'There are seven beautiful stages in the healing of disease,...Peace, Hope, Joy, Faith, Certainty, Wisdom, Love.'

 

'Every one of us is a healer,' wrote Dr. Bach, 'because every one of us at heart has a love for something, for our fellow men, for animals, for nature, for beauty in some form, and we every one of us wish to protect and help it to increase.'