F. A. Mesmer

When considering the history of modern science, the student of human behavior consistently encounters certain individuals who, knowingly or not, failed to see past their own prejudice when reaching supposed objective conclusions. William James said of that type – “his temperament really gives him a stronger bias than any of his more strictly objective premises. It loads the evidence for him one way or the other…He trusts his temperament, wanting a universe that suits it.”(1) This is the individual who believes despite evidence, a framer of his own paradigm. This potpourri approach—assembling ideas, however disparate or supportable, to conform to ones philosophy—has no place in the modern scientific method, but this fact doesn’t keep that fiction out of the world of science, and the litany of conclusions spun by charlatans continues to rage against the scientific method.

This short essay will follow the life and work of Franz Anton Mesmer, perhaps a perfect case study in the personality type described above by William James. My intention here is first to establish that what Mesmer found was in fact a valid scientific point (placing him—somewhat awkwardly I might add—as an historically important figure in the history of medicine), and second, conclude that personal bias stood in the way of his understanding that discovery. “Although there is much to ridicule in the origins of mesmerism” wrote Sherwin B. Nuland, “its legacy must be taken very seriously—from crackpot concepts may arise useful theories and useful tools.”(2)

Mesmer was born in Iznang, Germany, in the year 1734. Very little is known about his early years. “In 1743 nine-year-old Franz Anton Mesmer entered a school run by monks to begin the studies that would prepare him for the university and ultimately the priesthood.”(3) In Bavaria, at Jesuit schools in Dillengen and Ingolstadt, he studied philosophy and theology, later renouncing the profession of priest and entering law school in Vienna. “Realizing he had no aptitude or desire for the priesthood, he refused to accept holy orders or a place in the Church,”(4) and yet left unapologetically armed with Aristotelian logic and inspired by the curious mathematics of Newton and the even curiouser theology of Leibniz. Finding that law was not his way, Mesmer entered the Vienna Medical School in 1760, working and studying for six years with perhaps the most qualified medical community in Europe at the time.

It was while studying medicine in Vienna that Mesmer developed an early theory of animal magnetism, which he later distilled and published in a dissertation written in Latin and entitled, provocatively, Idssertatio Physico-medica de Planetarum Influxu (Influence of Planets on the Human Body), an idea swelling with occult and metaphysical undercurrents so popular in 18th century Europe. Isaac Newton himself grouted the mosaic foundation of occult-science by his unrepentant study of metaphysics and alchemical processes popularized by Paracelsus and others of the western hermetic traditon. Indeed, with statements like the “most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies” [published] in the fantastic last paragraph of his Principia (1713 edition),”(5) Newton offered license, in a way, to the outlier metaphysics of Mesmer.

To understand Mesmer, or the century in which he practiced, means understanding the difficulty with which burgeoning scientists grappled with theories developed in an environment of mysticism and rational thought, and indeed the “temptation to become mystical remained strong in Germany…the homeland of Faust and Paracelsus."(6) The occult pedigree branching out of the chunky hermetic trunk (alchemy, magic, kabbalah, taort, etc) followed a number of diverging paths through the late eighteenth century. With Freemasonry gaining rise in western Europe and America, underground Rosicrucian movements claiming spiritual descent from C.R., and the early rumblings of Theosophy, the old science was proving alive and well. There were just enough pieces of the hermetic tradition floating around Europe for one skilled enough to make strategic use of them, which Mesmer convincingly did.

Finishing up his time at school, Mesmer turned to more practical issues. He found a financially gratuitous marriage and entered the circle of elites of Vienna in tow with his new spouse. For a number of years Mesmer’s world orbited around those elite circles and the medical school, making contacts and establishing himself as a physician. He worked with a number of prominent doctors in Vienna, attending wards and lectures and gaining valuable real-time experience in the art of medicine, leading him to open an in-house clinic (1767) “where besides an office and dispensary he maintained a research laboratory. Here he examined his patients, diagnosed their ailments, and prescribed remedies…most of his prescriptions, treatments, and cures were ordinary enough, nothing to alarm his patients or his colleagues.”(7)

It was during this period of relative normalcy that Franz Mesmer undertook his earliest clinical work in animal magnetism. In the case of Francisca Oesterlin, a relative and house guest of the Mesmer's, he found the state of western medicine sorely lacking when it came to understanding psychological problems, hysteria in the case of Ms. Oesterlin. “With Franzl, he stayed with the methods to hand until his patient’s inability to respond forced him to conclude that orthodox medicine was not enough. She resisted his treatments until she forced him to develop a totally new theory of the neuroses, the theory that gave rise to the first important modern school of abnormal psychology.”(8)

Mesmer used his earliest work - The Influence of Planets on the Human Body - to develop a more refined theory that included Newton’s universal fluid and other current discoveries in the fields of electricity and magnetism. He named his new theory of health and disease Animal Magnetism, and with his two Viennese patients Francisca Oesterlin and Maria Theresa (a blind pianist) Mesmer set out to prove to his medical colleagues its scientific validity. While his repeated attempts at validation found a few lone nods, for the most part the medical community in both Austria and Germany viewed his work as slipping toward a shadow world of science and magic – a sideshow.

Mesmer’s biggest problem was his repeated success. If he had been entirely unsuccessful no one would have noticed him. To Mesmer, success meant he was right, and they were wrong; “many observers who believed there was something in Mesmerism could not see what it was because Mesmer obscured their view by throwing up a smoke screen of baffling theories,”(9) like those laid out in his Propositions (the supposed proofs of Animal Magnetism), the most important of which are included in the following list.(10)

1. There exists a mutual influence between the Heavenly bodies, the Earth and Animate Bodies.

2. A universally distributed and continuous fluid, which is quite without vacuum and of an incomparably rarefied nature, and which by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating and communicating all the impressions of movement, is the means of this influence.

8. The animal body sustains the alternate effects of this agent, which by insinuating itself into the substance of the nerves, effects them at once.

10. The property of the animal body which brings it under the influence of the heavenly bodies, and the reciprocal action occurring among those who are surrounded by it, shown by its analogy with the Magnet, induced me to term it Animal Magnetism.(11)

It was with these propositions that Mesmer lost the battle with the medical community in Vienna. What he was proposing was a kind of unified field theory, a panacea if you will, for medicine, through the subtle manipulation of energy. That Mesmer had figured out the first rules of psychoanalysis and hypnotism never received the attention it might have because of this persistent “smoke screen” of ideas used to justify his successes. The points in his propositions read like Blavatsky or Leibniz, dramatically proposing truths as though it was in your power to do so. This kind of inspired reasoning was more suited to the romantic—which it turns out would certainly be the case.

It is during this gestation period of mesmerism that the first cracks appear in its thin façade. In Austria, Mesmer was perhaps the closest he would ever come to objectively understanding the importance of certain techniques he used to aid the patient. With Maria Theresa he actually achieved some significant progress toward returning her eyesight when the rest of the medical community there had failed, but it never occurred to him that his long visits, his establishment of a doctor-patient relationship, his use of autosuggestion and trance, were the real cures. He read into his successes a script that didn’t belong there - autosuggesting himself into belief that the universal fluid was a real thing, and the evidence of its reality, though not physically detectable (as of yet), was observed during a mesmeric trance, and that observation of these events was itself proof of this mysterious agent, this illusive ether. It was a shaky argument, one that he never won within the medical/scientific community.

In 1778, with scientists and physicians disputing his claims, Mesmer abandoned Vienna altogether and moved to the intellectual hub of 19th century Europe, Paris. “Linking his fluid to health and promoting his theraputic salon with consummate showmanship, Mesmer converted animal magnetism into probably the most widely discussed theme in France during most of the 1780’s. In a decade during which an equally invisible fluid could raise a balloon aloft, mesmerism found easy popular acceptance.”(12) Where in Vienna he was an outcast, in Paris he was all the rage. Though the medical community if France distanced itself from Mesmer, his ideas and salons touched an anti-rationalism nerve within the Parisian elite. His tubs and rods, the glass harmonica, patients (often women) fainting on the floor in some mesmeric crisis touched on being devilishly fashionable around court but was entirely dismissed by strict rationalists and natural scientists.

Mesmer hit a nerve in France, tapped into deep-seated emotions and insecurities. His critics were vocal, and relatively unanimous within the medical community, but slowly it became apparent that “critique from the establishment fostered rather than weakened the hold of mesmerism on the popular mind.”(13) The medical community couldn’t do but watch on as France fell into the piercing eyes of the Wizard from Vienna and his cacophony of devotees, and from Mesmer’s point of view, it was a chance to play the two parts of his personality, his logic and his imagination, on the mercy of France. “Mesmer’s doctrine caught the historical currents of both intellect and emotion as they moved forward, often in conflict, from the rationality and the sentimentality of the eighteenth century…and like other visions of the period, it appealed to the heart as well as to the head. And consequently mesmerism had not only a strand of scientific but also an elaborate weave of romantic and revolutionary utopianism that contained threads from western societies inheritance of religion and magic.”(14) In a sense, Mesmer’s pseudoscience helped propell France from the enlightenment to the romantic period. Robert Darnton’s book entitled Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France documents how mesmerism was a major “mediating force in the transition from the ‘cold rationalism of the midcentury’ to a ‘more exotic intellectual diet’ marked by the yearning for the supernatural and the scientifically mysterious.”(15)

The theme developing here is obvious—science being perverted as a personal crusade, justified by prevailing superstitions and complex metaphysics. Mesmer’s first Proposition categorically states “there exists a mutual influence between the Heavenly bodies, the Earth and Animate Bodies.” This is what Mesmer understood as science, as research. How do we know that heavenly bodies (sun, moon) have a mutual influence with animate bodies? The research doesn’t really say, but gallons of ink are wasted on theorizing the complexities of these interactions and to spelling out the abc’s of manipulating animal magnetism. His propositions propose and pronounce, but the facts are left wanting.

In 1802, Mesmer left France for good. The last 13 years of his life would be spent in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Constance, where he would remain for the most part forgotten. “At the time of Mesmer’s death in 1815, Mesmerism had split into three distinct varieties: scientific, occult, and political. Political Mesmerism died in the French Revolution, [while] occult Mesmerism continued, and continues, more or less unadulterated, to this day.”(16) The mystical strain of Mesmerism influenced key figures over the next century, including Mary Baker Eddy and Madame Blavatsky, the latter even writing in her most popular work Isis Unveiled that “Mesmerism is the most important branch of magic; and its phenomena are the effects of the universal agent…”(17) The third movement to spring out of Mesmer’s work was the one actually concerned with the how’s and why’s, the mechanics of the mesmeric trance. It is this legacy that impacted real science in the nineteenth century, and slowly the mesmeric trance gained wider acceptance until it was fully proved as a psychological phenomena by Hippolyte Bernheim (1888). “Burnheim shows how this [new] understanding of hypnosis makes sense of all the authentic medical cures recorded by the Mesmerists from Mesmer onward.”(18) Animal Magnetism was kicked to the curb, so to speak, and what was left was the really interesting and scientifically verifiable point – which again, Mesmer never saw because of his strongly held personal convictions.

Mesmer, for all his faults and self-induced philosophical distractions, was the first individual (in the modern age) to isolate and promote an early form of hypnotism. It is for that that historians write complex biographies of Mesmer and give some credit where it is due. He encouraged western medicine to move toward a more human way treating the mentally ill, and proved that conversation and autosuggestion are very powerful healing tools. Yes, he was a charlatan, but he was the type that sold the snake oil without completely understanding its therapeutic ingredients.

Quackery is a common theme throughout the history of science and medicine. The scientific method is continually under assault from people like Mesmer, who see the world, as William Blake convincingly wrote, through their “temperament, wanting a universe that suits it.” We may think, being modern Americans, that we are beyond all that, but even a cursory look at the “intelligent design” debate proves otherwise.

Endnotes:

(1) James, William. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. As cited in Jung, Carl. Psychological Types. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 300
(2) Nuland, Sherwin. Doctors. New York: Vintage, 1995. p. 272
(3) Buranelli, Vincent. The Wizard from Vienna. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1975. p. 29
(4) Ibid. p. 31
(5) Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. p. 11
(6) Buranelli, Vincent. The Wizard from Vienna. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1975. p. 35
(7) Ibid. p. 47
(8) Ibid. p. 60
(9) Ibid. p. 104
(10) Darnton, Robert. Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968. P. 177
(11) Mesmer, Anton. Mesmerism: A translation of the Original Scientific and Medical Writings of F.A. Mesmer. Los Altos: William Kaufmann, 1980. p. 67
(12) Young, James H. “Review: An Influential Pseudoscience.” American Association for the Advancement of Science. Vol. 163, No. 3873 (Mar. 21, 1969), p. 1318. JSTOR online resource.
(13) Ibid
(14) Ibid
(15) Ibid
(16) Buranelli, Vincent. The Wizard from Vienna. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1975. p. 205
(17) Ibid. p. 207
(18) Ibid. p. 214

Fair use of above material...

-reese

demo c rats

From the first uttered word humans have been communicating via language, developing that perfect combination between sound, pitch and idea. Think of any word. What images flash through your mind? How many ideas shoot like branches off that first idea? How many words build themselves off of the first word, like a mind game of evolutionary scrabble?

Language conveys nearly everything, we communicate with words and sounds and are equally understood. We learn to love through words, but we also learn to hate through words. We probe the fringes of society through language, but do any of us fully understand it?

If you look at the title of the post, you'll find demo, and you'll find rats. The C in the middle is like a greater-than sign, which suggests that rats are greater than demo. It's language, and we manipulate it as we like (though the above example can be rejected as being entirely fallacious). The alphabet can be manipulated for the betterment of the individual, or used to their detriment. Not all language is equal, and some language is decisively detrimental.

Now, politics circa 2008. Language - be it republican or democratic - is so guarded and calculated that the lines between manufacturing results and campaigning for votes becomes blurred. Manufacturing language through scientific algorithms tested with focus groups and then leaked to drudge does not equate a dialog with the American people. Language is being manipulated before our very eyes; on CNN and FAUX, and to a lesser extent MSNBC, language is being abused. Notice the commentator vs journalist coup on cable television. Language - on right wing radio, left wing radio (yea, I'm talking to you Air America), is divisive and partisan. Truth is spoken occasionally, but not often does an individual bridge the exclusive caverns of both camps.

Language. It is Hillary's crutch. She can't say anything that will encourage republicans to join her, and the more she talks the less democrats want to vote for her. She has said recently that McCain is more qualified to be president than Obama, handing the opposition live fuel and then laughing it off as silly and reinforcing the necessity to stick to the issues. Ferraro, a supporter of Clinton, said recently that the only reason Obama is where he is is because of his skin color (yea, Geraldine, everyone understands the overwhelming advantage African Americans have in the US). Wow, the power of words. The Clinton camp seem to be using the sub-genius strategy of ninja wordsmiths. Words are important - and when you use words which represent the opposite of what you say, your either deceiving us or yourself - so which is it?

Words matter. Clinton cannot continuously shout 'wolf' with impunity. Her surrogates can't decry his advantage because of race and at the same time expect to remain above the fray of racism. For Clinton to repeatedly maintain that she and McCain were qualified to be president because of their outstanding service to this country, but Barack only offered a speech in 2003 and thus has yet to cross the threshold of commander in chief, is patently absurd. Words matter. We are all judged by them, given grace or pardon by them. Perhaps we forgot words are actions, that our words preview our actions.

Language matters most when it remains consistent, a thing nearly forgotten in politics. Barack is consistent in his argument, and doesn't descend beneath the fray except to defend himself. Watch the exchange, watch when they say one thing but exhibit another. McCain was vehemently against torture but has now acquiesced to the administration, and seems to think no one remembers his previous position.

Language is an action. Remember that, and judge the candidates upon the entirety of their character. None of them are perfect, but then we aren't electing a savior or messiah. We can only know them by their actions and words (and even then can be deceived - you have to be shrewd), and the most trustworthy now appears to be Barack Obama. His language and action appear positive and consistent. Words do that, they convey hope or fear depending upon their users intention. In the Clinton campaign, fear has surpassed hope, and she is betting that America will be convinced.

Fear is a 3am phone call. Fear is Barack's middle name - Hussein. Fear is loosing. Fear manifests into strategy, and strategy into words. Clinton's words are bowing like serfs beneath her anxiety. Words are our barometer to truth or falsehood. When they are misused, purposely or not, it is found out. Clinton has repeatedly misused words in order to gain momentum - a kind of audacity of fear.

Yes, words matter. People declare their intentions by their words, and then set out in an effort to accomplish those intentions. Remember we are trapped in a war of aggression upon another nation, unprovoked, which is costing us 12 Billion dollars a month to sustain, and remember that words and actions brought Hillary Clinton to vote for that war, and to not since reject it, and to pronounce words that suggest Obama had only those poor judgments (actions) and speeches (words) to oppose the inevitable debacle. Yes, words and actions matter.

By a raise of hands, how many of us support the war in Iraq? Exactly. Words matter, votes matter, actions matter. How can we allow those who contributed to the problem to be in charge of the solution? Really, I wonder. Even Einstein wondered...

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Lets be honest. Words lead to actions. Hillary voted for the K-L bill, for the Iraqi war, supported NAFTA and accepted millions of dollars in exchange for killing her universal healthcare plan during Bill's administration. She has been on the boards of both Walmart and Monsanto (two ethically challenged corporations), been involved in shady dealings in Arkansas, been husband to the man who oversaw the demoralization of the modern democratic party (sorry, guilt by association is a weak argument); and who will do nearly anything to attain power, even if it means imploding the party she is running to lead.

My analysis isn't based on race or gender, but on actions and words. Because of that, the rational choice is Obama. Can you make a more convincing argument?

-reese

YouTube Playlist

Track 1: The haunted king
Track 2: Off the Road
Track 3: Koyaanisqatsi
Track 4: A lapse of time
Track 5: Cell time
Track 6: One finger victory salute
Track 7: Rise and fall of empires
Track 8: The lighter side of evil
Track 9: Verbal tennis
Track 10: Could it get any worse?
Track 11: Ordering melange for Kirk
Track 12: Questionable endings

Googled (earth)

I've been absorbed in my Google Earth application a bit too much lately, scouring the deserts of Africa, flying over the Tibetan plateau, diving into the grand canyon. While I am landlocked and otherwise engaged, it offers some kind of proxy traveling experience.

While exploring the deserts of the Sudan recently, I came across some interesting villages in, what seems a Martian-like environment. But the villages are rather unique, and one can easily follow camel trails to other villages in the region. Fascinating. Here are the coordinates:

13 49 51.79 N 25 37 E

Just copy and paste that into the search window of G. Earth.

-R

This Week In History

1922 drawing of Joyce by Djuna Barnes, via wikimedia commons.

• Feb. 2, 1848: Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is signed

In consideration of the extension acquired by the boundaries of the United States, as defined in the fifth article of the present treaty, the Government of the United States engages to pay to that of the Mexican Republic the sum of fifteen millions of dollars.

• Feb. 3, 1820: U.S. population announced at 9,638,453 - representing a 33% increase from the previous decade.

• Feb. 2, 1882: James Joyce is born. Often considered the greatest novelist of the 20th century, Joyce both inspires and confounds. Years ago I undertook Ulysses only to find myself wading through a mysterious kingdom of foreign words and obscure references. I gave up, I was defeated. The following is a verse from his poem Chamber Music, a bit more appealing to the commoner mind. Also, you can find his Dirty Letters To Nora at the link. A recording made in London, 1929, preserves for history the rhythm of his poetic style, and the cadence in his voice.
  

I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering ships, the charioteers.
They cry unto the night their battle-name:
I moan in sleep when I hear afar their whirling laughter.
They cleave the gloom of dreams, a blinding flame,
Clanging, clanging upon the heart as upon an anvil.
They come shaking in triumph their long, green hair:
They come out of the sea and run shouting by the shore.
My heart, have you no wisdom thus to despair?
My love, my love, my love, why have you left me alone?

• Feb. 7, 1964: The Beatles arrived in the NY for their first US tour. By the look on their faces, they weren't expecting so many screaming banshees.
  

• Feb. 8, 1600: Giordano Bruno declared a heretic by the Catholic Church. 9 days later he was burned at the stake. Bruno, like Spinoza and many other proto-scientists of his day, was a pantheist. They looked at nature, at the stars, and deduced that everything was and is part of a whole, that God is in all things, and all things are within God. Today that sounds perfectly appropriate, but in Bruno's day, such things once said were automatically attributed as a challenge to authority, to the church. It may be said that he is sciences first martyr. From The Harbinger.
  

  As a mystic, Bruno grasped the essential unity of this infinite universe and severely criticized the religious belief-system for its dualistic metaphysics. He experienced God as the world itself, an idea that transcends the empirical sciences and traditional theology. Therefore, it is not surprising that Brunian mysticism seriously threatened the rigid and closed politico-religious establishment of his time (this same dogmatic outlook by the Church would later force Galileo to recant all his discoveries in descriptive astronomy).

• Feb. 9, 1895: Volleyball invented. Uhhh, yea.
  

• Feb. 9, 1943: Joe Pesci is born. Later becomes George Carlin's god.
  

-Reese

Maimonides and Western Medicine

Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) was born in Cordova, Spain, the heart of the intellectual and economic Umayyad state known as Andalusia. In the twelfth-century, Cordova was dramatically different than the rest of Europe; religion was less a reason for intolerance than an inspiration for craft and art, leading to a kind of renaissance unseen elsewhere in Europe for another century. It was in this environment that Maimonides was educated and trained, not only in the Torah (as precursor to becoming a Rabbi), but also in the art of medicine. The reason behind this training was purely practical, as “until rather late in the Middle Ages, rabbis were not paid for their services…for that reason, Maimonides like any other rabbi had to adopt a profession in the world, and like many intellectually gifted medieval rabbis he became a physician.” (1)

The state of western medicine in the late 12th century was one of stasis. “In an age when the voice of authority was the most significant influence in determining belief, philosophy, and the understanding of nature, the persisting ghost of a single man loomed over medical thought like an overpowering colossus. That man was the second-century C.E. Greek physician Galen of Pergamon.” (2) To a large extent Galen’s death left medicine in a 1500-year state of perpetual doldrums. The great Arab thinker Avicenna (980-1037) changed that somewhat; his work The Canon was perhaps the most important medical writing to come out of the Arab medical system in the middle ages, and became the standard textual work in medical schools of Europe until the 18th century. But despite even his towering achievements, Galenic medicine was persistent juggernaut that stymied even the most brilliant minds.

Did Maimonides change this? Did he challenge the supremacy of Galen? To a certain extent yes, but even Moses was unwilling to completely tap the empirical keg when confronted with the sheer volume and historical march of Galen’s work. Sherwin B. Nuland’s biography Maimonides looks at this very question, of whether the Rabbi deserves membership in the pantheon of western physicians…"What was the contemporary state of “the theory and practice of medicine” in the twelfth century, and how was it affected by Moses’s teachings and his daily round of patient care? Did he add to the general sum of knowledge? Did he make any new discoveries? At his death, were the “theory and practice” of medicine of “the time” significantly different than they might have been had he never lived? And most important for posterity, did he leave a heritage that succeeding generations of physicians could look to as a model of the grand tradition of their art and science?" (3)

To be succinct, the purpose of this short essay is to bring some clarity to those questions. I intend to explore three areas in which Maimonides could be considered to have contributed greatly to the continuance and evolution of the western medical tradition. This essay will explore those three contributions, and make a case for their relevance and importance to the present state of the Great Art. Those three areas of influence are: First, a challenge and clarification of the work of Galen; second, an insistence to the separation of religion and medicine; and third, a prescient understanding of the necessity of preventative medicine. It is for the last that he is considered truly brilliant, and deserving of the title The Prince of Physicians.

Though Maimonides is less known for his work as a physician than he is for his commentary on the Torah and his Guide to the Perplexed, he remains a highly respected author and thinker even into the modern age, and it could be said that his work “Mishneh Torah, the fourteen volume systematization of all Jewish law from Scripture to his own day” remains unsurpassed. It has been suggested that to get Judaism right, one must first get Maimonides translation right, because it was he who honed and clarified the disparate parts of his faith. Though that was separate from his work in the field of medicine, I begin with it for the reason that it was the same brilliance that found him a leader in Judaic thought that underlies his work in medicine.

Maimonides challenged Galen generally through most of his medical work, but specifically in his Medical Aphorisms, a collection of 25 treatises on healing and medicine within which were approximately “1,500 passages culled mainly from Galen, with critical comments, providing the physician with a handy desk manual, reducing Galen’s 129 books to one.” (4) The heading under the 25th Treatise (last in the book) suggests an alternate title for the last chapter, “which may be called ‘The Holy War for Independent Scientific Investigation Against Galen.” (5) It is an ominous way to begin a chapter, and precludes any thought that the content will spill praises toward Galenic thinking. Indeed, “in medicine, as in other fields, Maimonides strived to reduce complexity to system and order. He chafed under Galen’s prolixity and reduced the Roman physician’s massive literary output to a single book of extracts that a physician could carry around in his pocket.”(6) Thus a clear picture arises of Maimonides challenging the status quo. Part of his influence on the western medical tradition derives from this simplification and clarification, and his bold challenges against the supremacy of Galenic thought. Maimonides contests the “arrogant presumption” of Galen, writing that he “considers himself more important than he really is.” (7) The following passage perhaps elucidates the point at hand, written by Maimonides himself.

"If anyone declares to you that he has actual proof from his own experiences, of something which he requires for the confirmation of his theory, even though he be considered a man of great authority, truthfulness, earnest words and morality, yet just because he is anxious for you to believe his theory, you should hesitate. Do not allow your mind to be swayed by the “novelties” which he tells you, but look well into his theory and his belief, just as you should do concerning the things which he declares that he has seen; look into the matter without letting yourself be easily persuaded. And this is true whether the person is notable or one of the people. For a strong will may lead a man to speak erringly—especially in disputation. I offer this in order to awaken your interest in the statements of that wise men, that prince, Galen." (8)

It is this challenge of Galen, the juggernaut of western medicine, which sets apart Maimonides as truly unique. This uniqueness sprang from an independence of thought, and an insistence on rational inquiry and historical skepticism. “Maimonides was among the first to point to the feet of clay that would eventually crumble sufficiently to bring down the entire icon.” (9) Maimonides challenged Galen, and got away with it.

Though Maimonides was a Talmudic Rabbi, better known for his religious contributions than his scientific ones, his “medical writings contain no references to Talmudic medicine, nor is there a hint of magic, superstition, or astrology, widespread at the time in medical practice.” (10) The rabbi was a natural scientist when it came to the understanding and treatment of disease. It could be said, in a sense, that he was Aristotelian, that he implicitly understood the process of scientific rationality. “In principle, Maimonides divorced medicine and science from religion,” (11) which brings me to my second point.

Certainly there was much need for this in the medieval age, a time when the monks were the practitioners of medicine (though this was the case primarily in Europe). There is a story of Maimonides, when, after becoming a physician at the court of Sultan az-Sahir Ghazi (son of the great Saladin), he prescribed a medical treatment (wine and music) that went against Islamic law. When asked why he would recommend this, his answer falls in line with his rigid insistence on maintaining the independence of medical authority: “The physician, qua physician, must advocate a beneficial regime regardless of the religious law, and the patient has the option to accept or decline. If the physician does not prescribe what is medically beneficial, he deceives by not offering his true counsel.” (12)

At a time when the lines of demarcation between scientific inquiry and religion were at best obscured, Maimonides provided the physician with ammunition to defend his profession. In contrast, St Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a famous Christian cleric and near contemporary of Maimonides, “asserted that ‘to consult physicians and take medicines befits not religion and is contrary to purity’ – and it was a popular gibe that ubi tre physici, dui athei (where there are three doctors, there are two atheists).” (13) Of course this was hyperbole from the most dogmatic of churchmen, but it gives an understanding of the confused nature of medical thought at the time, and the necessity of the separation Maimonides insisted on. To be fair, Maimonides (being first and foremost a man of god) argued that the reason for good health was ultimately desired not for an end in and of itself, but for the great praise of the almighty. One cannot praise God in a state of disease and sickness. He commented in the Mishneh Torah that “since, when the body is healthy and sound one directs oneself toward the ways of the Lord—it being impossible to understand or know anything of the knowledge of the Creator when one is sick—it is obligatory on man to avoid things which are detrimental to the body and seek out things which fortify it.” (14) This though is not a negation of separation or an affront to the authority of medical practitioners, but a conclusion as to why one would want to maintain optimal health. As such, it does not discount his original insistence on the independent authority of physicians. This then is the second great offering of Maimonides to the history and evolution of western medicine, manifested through his insistence on the supremacy of physicians in all things medical.

The third contribution of Maimonides to western medical tradition is perhaps the most important, and certainly is what he is most remembered for (within medical history). It is a cogent and surprisingly modern idea, though in his time perhaps not so much. It is a simple concept, lacking in his day, of the necessity of preventive medicine. One needs look no further than his Aphorisms for support of this revolutionary idea. In the seventeenth treatise, titled Aphorisms Pertaining to General Rules of Health, he lays out the argument. “Immobility is as great a detriment to the maintenance of health as activity is of benefit.” (15) He continues by adding “one’s attention should first focus on the maintenance of natural [body] warmth, before anything else. That which best insures this is [the performance of] moderate physical exercise, which is good both for the body and soul (soma and psyche)”. (16) He prescribes for the elderly a daily regimen of walking, something that has an uncannily modern ring to it. Likewise, Maimonides posits the benefits of massage and touch as a means of stimulating the innate ‘heat’ of the body, insofar as it rejuvenates the body naturally.

As part of his preventive medical techniques, Maimonides also intuited modern medical procedure by noting the beneficial effects of positive thinking, leading to an early form of psychosomatic medicine. Whether certain amulets or trinkets were anathema to his practice was often overlooked when the needs of the patient were at hand. He was “committed to the thesis of the mind’s effect on the body, [and] it was permissible to discard even the most cherished of medical convictions in the interest of a patient’s psychological needs.” (17) Case in point was the mental stability of the person during medical treatment, in which case amulets and other such pagan paraphernalia were permissible “lest the mind of the patient be to greatly disturbed.” (18) It was this flexibility that served Maimonides in his work as a physician, and gained him the trust and respect of his peers.

Though it may be said that Maimonides didn’t necessarily advance any of these three points to a degree that they were ultimately reality changing for western culture, he represents a marker in the road to modern medical techniques. Perhaps none of his work was truly original, but he, and to a lesser extent his Arabic counterparts al-Rhazi and Avicenna, represented a slow chipping away at the immense façade that had come to be understood as Humoral Theory. Each in their own way advanced the art, each chiseled another chip from the concrete theories of Hippocrates and Galen. As for Maimonides it may be said, “of the several aspects of the Ramban’s genius, the one that was surely most appreciated by readers in his time and later was his extraordinary ability to separate wheat from chaff and to collect, classify, and correlate needed information into a helpful, compact, and easily remembered whole.” (19) This perhaps more than any other thing made Moses a genius, a polymath not unlike Galen.

In considering the above conclusion, it can also be stated that it wasn’t Maimonides’ original intent to advance the art of medical practitioners. Certainly his most profound work was in the area of Judaic law and Talmudic revision, and even to a certain extent the formation and dissemination of what is known today as the Kabbalah. Nevertheless, his work in the court of Saladin, and of course his few medical writings, earned him a hallowed place in the annals of the western medical profession. He exhibited a prescient mind; his work at separating religious and medical law, his challenging Galen, and finally his work in the field of preventative medicine, all combined exhibit an intuition of the direction and future of western medicine. As suggested above, he is more a beacon in the road than an individual who diverted the traffic, but that fact doesn’t make his work less special. He is remembered today primarily for his Guide to the Perplexed, but that is perhaps only because he is less studied as a pioneer in medicine than as a giant in Judaism.

**********

Footnotes:

1. Neuhaus, Richard John, ed., The Second One Thousand Years. Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2001. p. 16.
2. Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 155.
3. Ibid.
   
4. Seeskin, Kennith. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 39
5. Rosner, Fred. Muntner, Suessman. Eds. The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides. New York: Bloch Publishing Company. p. 171
6. Seeskin, Kennith. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 39
   
7. Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 167
8. Id. at 168
9. Id. at 169
10. Seeskin, Kennith. Ed. The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. p. 39
11. Id. at 40
12. Ibid.
    
13. Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefit To Mankind. New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1997. p. 110
14. Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 176
15. Rosner, Fred. Muntner, Suessman. Eds. The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides. New York: Bloch Publishing Company. p 41, Volume II
16. Id. at 42
    
17. Nuland, Sherwin B., Maimonides. New York: Random House, 2005. p. 179
18. Ibid.
    
19. Id. at 173

D. Reese Zollinger, 2007
(fair use of above material)

Happy slogging!

Branding

We live in the age of the image. Never before in history has such a barrage of unconnected ideas moved through our lives. From iPod to YouTube our culture has become a streaming channel of endless icons, branding with thought tattoos each individual who dares to tune in.

From the early days of western corporatism advertisers have been rubbing the bottled genie in hopes of magically increasing corporate revenue. What they soon realized was that the attention of consumers was easily bought by employing controlled symbolism to market their products, drawing the customers loyalty more through attachment to the symbol than the item being offered. When deconstructing this morbid state of affair- something that I'll attempt in this short essay - it should first be understood that it is not the image (icon, brand, or logo) that is important, but what that image solicits as an emotional response.

The fact that we can find historical precedent for modern advertising doesn’t make it easier to understand. Symbols litter our minds; from the golden arches to bitten apples our world has become a crowded arena of patented images. The consumer’s attention is battled for on the front lines of supermarket isles, in the halls of malls, or even driving down the interstate. We are told we can become members by simply buying products, as if this act was itself the sacrament. So deep has this symbolism penetrated that in Kalle Lasn’s words (Culture Jam, 2000), “advertisements are the most prevalent and toxic of the mental pollutants.”

This toxicity, rising as it has through the need to sell products, has left an indelible mark upon the human mind. Lasn continues by noting that, “Corporate advertising…is the largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the human race.” Strong words, but not altogether unreasonable when you see as Lasn does that the symbol has gone from simple iconography to complex and multidimensional abstraction. In that symbolism is historically one of the most powerful tools for uniting people, we must recognize that its nature is two-fold; first, the symbol is itself inherently benign, and second, any meaning applied to a particular image is what becomes important.

There is an old iconographic precedent that justifies modern advertising. In the year 312, while preparing to battle for control of the Roman Empire, Constantine received a vision telling him to unite his men under the banner of the Cross. “In hoc signo vinces,” the angel told him, “In this sign you shall win.” This symbol, already having ancient ties to Egyptian and Phoenician cultures, was easily accepted, and eventually became the most complex and powerful banner of western civilization.

Beyond the West we find other cultures using similar means to achieve similar ends. Chinese thought manifested as the symbolic duality of yin/yang, Judaic representation would be expressed by the Star-of David, Native American as Totem; all of these symbols being expressed in glyphs designed to establish instant connection between image and idea.

The consumer provides the fresh skin for the hot iron, so without cultivating critical minds, our bodies will continue to be treated as perfect receptors for the corporate logo. More than our wares, but our whole selves, our thoughts and deeds, should define what makes us different. By seeing necessities as more than iconographic trophies, we displace ourselves from the corporate battle. We begin to make informed decisions based not upon form, but upon function.

It was realized in the mid-eighties that (Naomi Klein, 2002) “successful companies must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products.” (No Logo) That we have allowed the Corporation to move from production of goods to the manufacturing of Icons is our mistake, one that we must claim and work to remedy. Does it really satisfy, does it bring us happiness? We should ask these questions and others as we confront the barrage of commercials from day to day, because the symbol has turned from representing deeper, universal ideas, to selling materialism. We can imagine a young man saying: “Under the shadow of the sears tower I found myself,” because it was that symbol that his city presented as most important. This experience is common. As the sacred retreats from the Vegas Strip, cowers beneath the overwhelming magnitude of the “stars and stripes,” or huddles away to avoid contamination from ethanol or elmer’s glue, we begin to understand her reticence.

Advertisers long and systematic policy of targeting the ego has produced a morally inept culture, dependant not upon deeper meanings but on colorful veneers. Once again, it is the emotional reaction to the said media that is in question, because, (William Bernbach, 1989) “you can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You’ve got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don’t feel it, nothing will happen.” There are numerous examples of advertisers soliciting emotional responses to commercial products. Ads such as, “Drive = Love,” or “Bigger is Better,” show that the aim is our emotional insecurity. We are reminded again and again about the body’s endless needs and infinite wants, that we must have a certain thing to be up-to-date, or fashionable. What was natural and sustainable has become demonized by the consumptive majority; our new prophets are corporate leaders and tycoons.

The tendency today is to see life in monetary terms, because that is our world; that is capitalism and democracy in action; that is free-market economics, the newest revelation from the bible of modern affairs. We are looking through the glass darkly, not because we don’t own it, but because we're only leasing it. Some argue that the corporation has brought us what we love most, entertainment and material goods. They have given us a world where we may theoretically take more time to enjoy the finer things, the subtler things, but in the end we pay for it.

The corporation has hijacked the icon. Our deepest fears are played against us in hopeless tugs-of-war. Should I buy Coke or Pepsi, Nike or Converse, Gucci or Gap? The Icon rules, we are the first generations to have brand names as kings, to be raised on cartoons and commercials. It is a life we have been given and must somehow sort out. As each generation has its challenges, so this is one of ours. In a world where one watches the Super Bowl not for the game but for the advertising, we should be concerned that the wool keeps inching down.

It is ours to reclaim for ourselves what it means to be human, to redefine our approach to society. In this postmodern hyper-technical culture of competing interests we may choose or we may not. Whatever our do, the concept of marketing symbolism will surely survive, because our need of image and icon date to the very beginnings of humanity. Again, the conclusion is to not see the symbol as destructive, but to question what the symbol solicits as an emotional response. As we realize this, we can cultivate symbols with deeper meanings, ones that illicit a beneficent reaction, ones like the mythic Shiva that remind us of our mortality, that we must live well for tomorrow there may be no more living.