ABSTRACT
The concept of vitalism, that man is more than just the sum of his physical or mechanistic parts, reappeared within the elitist Western universities of Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries in a response to the new science of mechanics and rational thought. This concept of a vivifying force that made man alive and was the essence of his being had been the fundamental basis of most early medical philosophies and still has its expression in Ayurvedic medicine as “prana,” in homeopathy as the “vital force,” and in acupuncture as “Qi.” Medieval biology, taking its roots from Aristotle and his concepts of natural laws and the theological dictates of the day, could not separate the mind from the body or the psyche from the soma. Thus, when reductionism, the concept that the body and its diseases can be totally described in terms of their parts and subparts, began to surface, the intellectual elites of the time began to resist this new science with a vitalistic attack. The vitalistic promise, however, could not survive the many discoveries and newer concepts that began to appear, including Descartes’ separation of the body and the mind and the mathematical explanation of all things, the classification of disease by Thomas Sydenham, Morgagni’s pathophysiological approach, and Virchow’s discovery of cellular pathology. The vital energy tradition was carried on as a footnote in medicine by the Viennese physician Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), who conceived the notion of “animal magnetism” as the source and cure of all disease. This concept has matured over time and has been called “psychic force” by Robert Hare (1781-1858), “parapsychology” by Joseph Bank Rhine (1885-1980), “psionic energy” by Robert Thouless (1894-1984), and “auric or astral force,” a term coined by the Theosophists (Madame Blavatsky 1831-1891), while modern teachers prefer the phrase “subtle energy.” Others who developed this idea in a more spiritual manner were Phineas P. Quimby (1802-1866), who developed the concept of “Mind Cure,” and his more famous patient, Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1919), the founder of the Christian Science Church. Modern day laying on of hands, prayer, and spiritual healing still carry on the vitalistic nature of our spiritual being.
