From the Easy Chair

Medicine and Healing

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 26-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161AM72

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161AM72, Medicine and Healing from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[Rushdoony] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 178, September 13, 1988.

This evening Otto Scott and I are going to discuss the subject of medicine and healing.

This is a subject big enough to keep one going for a month, because we are at a critical time in history with regard to medicine and healing and with regard to the medical profession. There is a growing division within the profession because the doctor of other years has now been replaced by people who have nothing but contempt for what medicine has been in the past, who regard abortion as an option, euthanasia as sometimes the wise step to take, who will not speak out against such things as homosexuality and so on.

So a division is growing within the medical profession. And one of the most common reports I have had from many doctors whom I know is that partnerships of many years have been broken over these issues. The fundamentals are now becoming very important. Things that were taken for granted with regard to medical practice are no longer taken for granted and men who worked together for 10, 15, 20 years find that they have grown apart because of their differing perspective on medicine.

At the same time, something has happened to the patient as well, because our problems today are not only the doctors. They are the patients also.

And I would like to read something from David T. Nash, M.D, Medical Mayhem, a book published in 1985. And he writes, I quote:

“I once wrote an article describing the need of every individual to contribute to his health instead of to his illnesses and in the course of it, mentioned a number of risk factors known to cause and exacerbate heart disease. The article was quoted in a local newspaper and a few days later the letters to the editor column included a letter from an irate reader who indignantly attacked the article. The gist of the tirade was that pointing out the antecedents to heart diseases, I as blaming the victim.

“Many of us would like to believe that heart disease strikes as a bolt from a vengeful deity. It is common to find patients who develop heart disease and refuse to believe that smoking, overeating and inactivity contributed to their plight. Such patients delude themselves into believing that medical care can cure the effects of their own bad habits. They believe that good medicine will give them good health without requiring any personal effort on their part,” unquote.

So this is a very real problem now and I have had doctors tell me that it really creates resentment if they will not prescribe some kind of wonder drug, that the patient if told that rest or some attention to personal habits is the proper course of action, they feel cheated. They want to be given something that will do the job for them so that they can go on living as they were living before without any difference.

So we have a problem that is in doctor and in patient, that is a part of our cultural decline and even breakdown.

Otto, do you have any general observations to make by way of introduction?

[Scott] Well, I think the depersonalization of medicine...’

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] ... is something that worries almost all observers. It is part of the depersonalization of a society as a whole and it is not particularly the fault of the medical profession. This is true in law and it is true everywhere else where individuals are not treated as individuals. They are treated as examples or representatives of types. And you are while male, white middle class, middle age male or you are a young black female. You are this or you are that. You are not who you are, but what you are. And the whole specialization of medicine which has led to some very strange thing. We have, for instance, heart trouble, which you correctly point out is the leading cause of death in the United States. I think 500,000 a year, somewhere in that area, which gave rise to the bypass surgery.

Now I have lost several friends to bypass surgery, because they had more than one bypass and it is very difficult. The massive scar tissue created from one bypass to go in and do it again. I had one man who died as a result of the third effort when they went into his back. And I said, “You know, they will kill you. You are not going to be able to live through that.”

And he said, “Well, in the condition I am in now, I really don't care.”

And this was in a veteran’s hospital where there was no question of who could pay whom. And we have that sort of thing going on.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Now it is the anecdotal method of covering a subject as everyone recognizes is not going to give any one an accurate picture. Over all, medicine has expanded. It has learned more than it has ever known before. Its diagnostic tools are better than before and so forth, but I can never forget Durant’s aphorism. He said, “New diseases come from the cures of the old.” And we have one of the most highly medicated populations in the world.

I remember years ago talking to a refugee physician, a Jewish doctor who had gone through medical school in Poland in the 30s who then fled from the Nazis into Italy and he practiced in Italy until the latter years of the war. And he said, “You know, the Italians are tough.” He said, “They would come in if half their leg had been cut off. They are carrying their leg, hopping it.” He said, “You couldn’t kill them with a hammer.” And he was used to hard cases and tough people.

Then he had to flee from Italy because the Nazis... the Fascists began to get anti-Semitic as under Hitler’s pressure and he practiced in Shanghai. And in Shanghai, again, he was dealing with white Russians who had been there for years or with Chinese. And then he came to California. He said he had never seen such beautiful people, great big, robust, beautiful looking people. And he said they would get a cold or something and he said they would go to bed and it would be weeks for him to get them on their feet. He said they were like hot house plants. They have no strength at all. And I listened to that with some interest. That was... he ... he told that in the late 40s, I believe, when we still had a lot of tough people left over from the previous generation.

And since then I have noticed that. There doesn't seem to be much spiritual strength in the average American. And they go to a doctor not just because they have a physical problem, but because they have a mental or a psychological or a more even a moral problem. Doctors have become everything here. They have become priests, witch doctors, savants, social critics. It is almost like the old peasantry view of the priesthood. The doctor is supposed to be a magician. So I can understand when you say that they expect a magic pill. Of course.

[Rushdoony] You spoke of the depersonalization of modern medical practice and I think that is a very important point. Nowadays there are a great many clinics where a large group of doctors come together in a building that is larger than hospitals often were when we were younger and operate a group practice so that when you go in you are passed from hand to hand. And this kind of practice is very popular with many patients, because somehow it is more scientific and objective to be put through a lot of tests and procedures in a kind of mechanical way. I am almost willing to bet that more problems result as a result of these huge clinics than they do from family practice where the doctor knows you, knows your history.

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] ...knows you as a person.

[Scott] Knows your lifestyle.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I know that before I went to the university our small town family doctor who also delivered one of my children some years later told me not to let any university doctor examine me in the morning, because he would think I was nearly dead, because, he said—and he had treated cousins and aunts and uncles—he said, “In your family on you mother’s side, there is a strong tendency to a very low blood pressure and in the mornings your pressure will be abnormally low. So always have it taken towards noon or in the afternoon.” And a number of other things like that he said.

[Scott] That is interesting.

[Rushdoony] And he knew us. He knew us because he knew more than myself or my parents and my brother and sister. He knew all my relatives.

As a result, he had insights into my physical well being that were very far reaching. Now the family doctor is still able to do that in a way that the clinic never can.

[Scott] If he knows the family.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And if there is enough propinquity over enough period of time. My father told me that when he came up from Venezuela there is a fever down there caused by a mosquito or some such which is conveyed by a spirochete which will remain in the blood and it is recurrent and fairly common and that he knew of a number of Venezuelans who came to New York and who came down with that fever and would to a physician who would give them a blood test and treat them for syphilis and the treatment in those days for syphilis was {?}. And this did not help them, to say the least. And it didn’t help them, of course, to be labeled as syphilitic with all of the consequences involved. And finally the physicians in Venezuela got in touch with the medical association in New York and sent them up illustrations and instructions to make this distinction. They had quite a bit of difficulty in getting the American doctors to accept the idea or even to get their attention.

Now that is only one little anecdote of a problem which we now have on a national scale. People are coming in from the orient with diseases that we have never heard of.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] They are also coming in with... they are harboring diseases that are endemic to them that don’t bother them, because they have developed an immunity to them. And they are beginning to do... to spread diseases among the earlier American population to which our bodies are not accustomed.

Now when the Europeans first came to the New World, thousands, tens of thousands of Indians died simply from the cold and from malaria and various other things that the Europeans came with, brought with them to which the European had developed considerable immunity. So we have a medical problem because in recent years we have opened the gates to new races from new parts of the world. In fact, we are holding Europeans out and bringing Asiatics and Asians in.

[Rushdoony] We have another problem in medicine as in other areas of life, such as the ministry. The school is a problem, the medical school.

[Scott] Ah.

[Rushdoony] And I believe the medical school today is training monsters. Let me read—and I have had a number of telephone calls and conversations, but this letter says it very plainly from... just received a few days ago from a young man who had excellent test scores, grades, strong letters of recommendations from past professors who was being interviewed by a medical school interviewer.

I quote. “In my interview it was apparent very early on to those interviewing me that I took more tan a weekend interest in my religion. Asked if I would perform an abortion on a 14 year old I responded, ‘Of course not.’ Asked if I would refer her to someone who would, once again I said that in light of my views on abortion it would be hypocritical of me to say, ‘No, I won’t kill you baby, but here is the name of someone who will.’ This did not sit well with the interviewing committee. When all was said and done after an hour I walked out of the interview confident that I had not betrayed my values or my Lord by my responses. I felt that the matter was in God’s hands. A week later I received notice that I was not being offered a position in the entering class, but that should I wish to discuss the reasons for my rejection the dean of admissions would be pleased to meet with me.

“My talk with the dean was very enlightening. He told me that there was nothing wrong with my academic record at all, but that all three of my interviewers described me as being extremely rigid and inflexible with regard to my values. And that was where the problem lay.

“I responded that that was an interesting way of looking at a person who had absolutes. He retorted that we live in a changing world and that as physicians we have to be ready to change with society. He said that it was ok for me not to believe in abortion and said that 90 percent of the students felt that way, or so he claimed. But it was inexcusable for me to impose my values on others, that is, by not helping this fictitious 14 year old to obtain an abortion.

“‘There is no place,’ he said, ‘in the medical profession for people as judgmental as that.’

“Furthermore, it was felt that I might even go so far as to proselytize my patients when they are in a state of vulnerability, although some would call it receptivity. Once again, inexcusable, even bordering on malpractice.

“My views on homosexuality as something deviant were greeted in a similar vein. I am sure you get the drift of the meeting.”

Well, there is much more, but that is enough to indicate that Christians are being called out to the medical classes unless they are thorough going compromisers.

[Scott] Well, Hitler wouldn’t have had any problem at all, would he?

[Rushdoony] No. No. So this poses us with another problem. Are you going to be able to trust the young doctor? Which medical schools in the country will allow Christians to enter and to graduate?

[Scott] Well, these are questions we can’t answer because we are not supplied with any valid, objective information about medical schools, their qualifications or anything else. That is a letter that was sent to you. That is one personal experience. In a recent issue of Commentary magazine by the man who wrote Losing Ground...

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes, Murray.

[Scott] Murray. Murray has brought up the fact that black applicants have been accepted in medical schools who have grades, academic grades which are grounds for rejection from a white applicant.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] That is part of his article. And he is saying in the article that this is nonsense and this has to stop, because we have to confront the consequences of failing standards for sociological reasons or for political reasons.

Now the doctors themselves have problems with the government which is growing.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] As you know, the government peer review boards are now in charge looking over the shoulders of the insurance companies.

[Rushdoony] And hospitals are now administered by administrators who act as though their enemy is the doctor.

[Scott] And the ... there... the... the... to go back to the Christian thing. The argument that is presented is that abortion is legal and you have no right to object to what the government has determined to be legal.

Now this is a reversal of our traditional thought. We have never before been told that a professional has no right to object.

[Rushdoony] This goes back to the idea that there is no morality nor law beyond the state, what the federal government makes into law is therefore moral.

In Institutes of Biblical Law volume one I have a quotation there of an interview with senator... then Senator Gene... or, not Gene, but Senator Tunney, the son of the...

[Scott] Yes.

[Rushdoony] Gene Tunney, the heavy weight champion. And in it when confronted by pro life people he insisted that abortion was moral because it was legal. And when asked of theft, robbery were moral he said, “No, because it is illegal.” He was then asked if it were legalized would it be moral. And he said, “Of course, yes.”

[Scott] Well, he would have done well in Nazi Germany.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Or in the Soviet Union.

[Rushdoony] And that is exactly the same concept of law that we are progressively developing.

[Scott] And you have no right to even object, because you might... the objection might be an effort to force your views upon somebody, to even express your views is to attempt to force your views.

[Rushdoony] And that is exactly the problem that this young man Steve ran into when he was with this committee.

[Scott] Well, hospitals are running into the same problem. The Catholic church and its hospitals and various and sundry other groups are running... All the churches, all the main line churches they have had to bow down before the state on this because the main line churches have not stood up against the state.

[Rushdoony] And they have taken federal funds to build hospitals so that they are now beholden to the federal government and subject to its controls.

Years and years ago the Supreme Court ruled that where federal funds go in spite of what Congress may say in a piece of legislation, federal controls must go. So you have federal controls on church hospitals.

[Scott] They are not really church hospitals, are they?

[Rushdoony] No they are not. They are increasingly required to compromise at one point after another.

[Scott] And how can they call themselves a church?

[Rushdoony] Yes. This is why there will have to be in the years ahead something of a revolution in the medical profession both with the doctors, the patients and the hospitals, a radically changed attitude.

[Scott] Well, it is difficult to achieve. As you know, my wife almost died. She had a serious operation on her knee which left her debilitated and lame And then a year later she had pneumonia and she was in the critical ward on the critical list for quite some time. And I made arrangements for her death. I went in to see her first a couple of times every day and the condition was very bad, very bad. She pulled through and we don’t know why, because we never know why. We never know why somebody is healed and somebody else is not. That is out of our camp.

And during that whole period the doctor never once spoke to me. He didn’t have the simple humanity to answer the phone. I called his office time and again and I could never get past his nurse. I could never get past the receptionist or a nurse who would come on the line who would give me a meaningless formula saying she is doing as well as can be expected or her condition is unchanged or something of that sort. Not once did that barbarian speak to me.

Now that has sort of behavior has created a animus against the medical profession that runs throughout the entire nation. Their arrogance and their assumption that because a person is sick that they become imbecilic is unforgivable.

[Rushdoony] Yes. I ... I am laughing because I have a recollection of the fury of a doctor, a good friend of my father’s when he became a patient in a hospital in his old age.

[Scott] It served him right.

[Rushdoony] And he was a good man, a kindly man, but the nurses felt he was the worst patient they ever had because he was constantly exploding at being treated as a child.

[Scott] Oh.

[Rushdoony] And he said, “I know more than any of you nurses do. Now don’t treat me like a child. But they did.

[Scott] Oh, they always do. You can’t ask the doctor what is in the medicine.

Now one can be a physician without being cultured just as one can be an engineer or a business man or any other kind of specialist. And I would say that that is one of the problems the medical profession should address and that is that you have to be a cultured person if you are going to deal with other human beings.

[Rushdoony] Yes. This friend of my father’s the doctor when he got out of the hospital he said he was no longer going to practice in this country, because he did not like the direction of medicine and he was going to make sure he never landed in an American hospital again. So he went to a mission board and talked them into sending him overseas as a medical missionary.

[Scott] Isn't that interesting?

[Rushdoony] And he enjoyed himself immensely and every report we had from him indicated what a delight his medical practice was because he was dealing with human suffering as a Christian, full freedom to do as he pleased with Christian nurses and he found it a great joy and he worked almost to the year of his death a very happy man.

[Scott] Well, I did see a visit... I visited a friend of my dads in a hospital in Caracas and they had an extra room and his family was there. And is daughters and wife were running and getting him fruit juice and water and all the sort of little things that make you feel more comfortable and there were no visiting hours. They... the presence of the family members relieved the nurses of all kinds of unnecessary work and assisted the patient to recover.

[Rushdoony] Yes. One doctor who was very prominent in what was then {?} Tanganyika wrote that their death rate was very high as long as they had a modern hospital. He said they finally gave up on it and built huts such as the natives had and had the whole family come in and live with the patient. The infection rate dropped dramatically and the healing rate sky rocketed, because the patient was there with at least some of the members of his family and life around him continue das normal. The recovery rate was phenomenally better.

[Scott] Well, in that same context, then, why aren’t more patients treated at home?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Because the expense of a hospital today... When Ann was in the hospital the expense ran 800 dollars a day, 800 dollars a day. Now I remember when I a hospital room was comparable to the Waldorf Astoria, 20 dollars, 25, 35, 40 and even 50. But 800.

[Rushdoony] One doctor wrote a while back that it would be cheaper if a room in a nearby hotel were rented.

[Scott] Of course.

[Rushdoony] And a nurse hired.

[Scott] Absolutely.

[Rushdoony] And the care would be better.

One of the interesting things I would like to call attention to in a moment goes back to your comment about the relationship between drugs and drug created illnesses. But first, Otto, with regard to hospitals, it is a place for patients, unfortunately, because they have there all the expensive equipment that is needed in case of an emergency or a crisis. On the other hand the presence of all kinds of testing devices leads to their over use with patients. So there is a penalty involved.

A very interesting work by Dr. Richard Taylor who has practiced in England, Australia and the United States is a book entitled Medicine out of Control: The Anatomy of a Malignant Technology, published in Australia in 1979. And he there made a number of very important points and in a sense you could say could see the coming of AIDS, because drug therapy, of various sorts destroys the immunity system slowly. And he points out that Eleanor Roosevelt died of disseminated tuberculosis which was reactivated by the cortisone she was given for her arthritis so that her death was a product of the very drug she was taking. And this has been documented over and over again by a number of writers so that the over use of drugs is damaging the immunity system of peoples and creating very, very serious problems for people.

[Scott] Well, I wondered about tranquilizers when they first appeared and they... if you recall, they appeared, I believe, in the late 40s, early 50s.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And it was supposedly to reduce anxiety and stress. Now anxiety and stress is part of life. If you are alive and you are alert you have these various emotional responses which are essential to your ability to meet the situation. To be relieved of anxiety or stress when you are still in a difficult situation just makes you less capable of rising to the occasion. It... it... it blankets your feelings, your emotions. It is... it is amore what? A more respectable way of attaining what the alcoholic attains which is a temporary forgetfulness of his actual problems. He gets.... he gets an imitation euphoria.

Well, victory is a lot more euphoric and a lot better.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And I wondered very seriously about... and in those days I hadn't converted I didn’t put it in moral terms, but I just wondered about the unnaturalness of anybody who wanted to be cushioned from life. It just didn’t seem mature.

[Rushdoony] Well, now you have made a very, very important point that I could confirm abundantly out of my pastoral experiences. I will go back to one that is from the early 50s, which is a confirmation of that, namely that many of these tranquilizers are given to people to enable them to evade their responsibility because they are ducking their duties. And this instance concerned a man who was constantly dealing with housewives. And he was a handsome man and his moral IQ was very low and so he was very quickly involved with umpteen women, which mean that the could not collect from them. They were horrified at the idea because of the relationship between them of him asking them for money.

Well, his superiors were demanding that he get on with his collections. He was good in selling, but not in collecting. And he had an increasingly difficult problem. He owed the company all kinds of money and there was no way he could collect it. So he went out of his mind, which was very convenient. And...

[Scott] Did he have a nervous breakdown?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Because he did not know how to resolve that situation.

Well, the minute he did the company gave him, as a valued employee, all kinds of medical and psychiatric care and some kind of tranquilizer was prescribed for him, which when he took restored him to a balanced mind. But he knew very quickly that when he was back in his right mind he had this problem and he knew no way out, so he would pretend to take it and destroy the pills, drop them down the toilet or something. And his wife caught on to it after a while that he kept saying that he had taken it and so on and so forth. And it was reducing her to a wreck.

And I met her on the street one day and she looked to be much better than usual and I said, “Oh, are things better now? Is Jack taking his pills?”

And she said, “No, he won’t take them and he is still off his rocker and ranting all night long.”

I said, “Well, you look fine.”

She said, “Well, I am taking his pills.”

[Scott] Oh, my. Isn't that something. Oh, well, there is lots of... you know, there... there is humor in the whole thing. I remember that a physician whom I did know who was a sort of a friend of mine once gave me one of these through physical examinations which took several days and all kinds of tests and so forth. And he... he had several questions at the end of all this which surprised me. One was: Did you ever take drugs? And I said, “Well, can’t you tell that I don’t take drugs?”

He said, “No, of course, I can’t tell.” He said, “We could tell if you are under the influence of drugs. We might on occasion tell ... see that you had withdrawal symptoms, but otherwise we have no means of knowing.”

Well, I said, “Why would you ask such a...”

Well, he said, “Maybe you are a psychopath.”

I said, “What?” I said, “Why would I be a psychopath?”

Well, he said, “You have abnormally quick physical reflexes.” And he said, “That is very often a psychopathic reaction.”

Well, I said, “What is a psychopath?”

Well, he said, “A person who has no feeling for others, who engages in physical violent behavior, has no particularly developed moral sense.”

I said, “You are talking about young people.” I said, “Are there any elderly psychopaths?”

He said, “They are very rare.”

I said, “That is what I thought.” I said, “You are really talking about you.”

Well, he said, “Otto, didn’t you ever have any money?”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “You have got your appendix, your tonsils, your adenoids.” He said, “You are worth several thousand dollars on the hook to any doctor.”

So we settled for that. That was it.

[Rushdoony] Well, the very term psychopath dates the story, Otto, because it is no longer used.

[Scott] Is that right?

[Rushdoony] Psychopath refers to someone who has something wrong with his own soul. Now the term is sociopath.

[Scott] Oh, it is sociopath.

[Rushdoony] He is socially created.

[Scott] I see. I didn’t know that.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] Well, I can’t tell that story anymore.

[Rushdoony] Oh, you can, being dated.

I would like to quote a couple of things from a book written by a professor at the Yale medical school, Dr. B. S. Segal, Love, Medicine and Miracles, in part a very fine book, although he goes overboard on holistic medicine. And there are some things that he says that I certainly cannot agree with, because it indicates softness with regard to eastern religions. However, to his credit I just say he stresses the healing power within an individual and he says, “Every doctor should attend a healing service at least once and to realize what can be done.”

At any rate he does quote Pasteur’s famous statement that in disease it is the soil, the human body, which is the most important factor.

Then he quotes in another context, of course, but all the same for its importance, a remark by David ben Gurion who observed, and I quote, “Anyone who does not believe in miracles is not a realist,” unquote.

And that, I think is a tremendous quotation. Then another statement by Dr. Segal, quote, “Depression is partial surrender to death,” unquote.

[Scott] That is very pertinent.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And he does speak about the fact that it is not the drugs but the patient who does the healing for the most part. And he has one story on that which is very, very dramatic. It is about a man who had a great deal of faith in science who had far advanced lymph sarcoma in 1957. And he says that all known treatments had become ineffective, tumors the size of oranges littered his neck, armpits, groin and chest and abdomen. His spleen and liver were enormously enlarged. The thoracic lymph duct was swollen closed and one to two quarts of milky liquid had to be drained from his chest each day. He had to have oxygen to breathe and his only medicine now was a sedative to help him on his way.

Then he goes on to say that in spite of this, this man still had hopes, because he believed in science. And there was a new drug that was being tested named {?} and it was to be evaluated in the very clinic where he was. And he begged for it even though he did not qualify because the experimenters wanted subjects with a life expectancy of at least three months and preferably six months and they were not sure that this was on a Friday that he would last till Monday. But because of his pleading and he was somebody of consequence, they finally gave him an injection on Friday of {?}.

And then the doctor reported on Monday, “I left him {?}, gasping for air, completely bed ridden. Now here he was walking around the ward chatting happily with the nurses and spreading his message of good cheer to any who would listen. Immediately I hastened to the others to see the others. No change or change for the worst was noted. Only in Mr. W was their brilliant improvement. The tumor masses melted like snowballs on a hot stove and in only those few days they were half their original size.

So he goes on to say that the man’s recovery was remarkable and very shortly he was discharged and was flying in his own plane and apparently fully recovered.

But two months later the first reports about {?} in the news were published and all the testing clinics reported no results This so disturbed the man, because he was, as he says, logical and scientific in his thinking, and began to lose faith in his last hope.

So after two months of perfect health, he relapsed to his original state, became gloomy, miserable and very, very quickly was back to his original state, dying.

So the doctor thought this would be a good opportunity to explore the human mind with what we call now medically, doctors call the placebo effect. So he told the mean that the {?} he had received in the early shipments deteriorated in the bottles and he had a new super refined double strength product which was going to arrive the next day. And the man was immediately happy and optimistic and he recovered again. And the injections were fresh water, but nothing more. And he was again able and back to flying. The picture of health, the doctor says.

But the final AMA announcement came out and it read, quotation, “Nationwide tests show {?} to be a worthless drug in the treatment of cancer,” unquote. Within a few days of that the man was back in the hospital and died in less than two days.

[Scott] Well, what is it? The faith of a mustard seed?

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] The Africans and other primitive tribes would die once the witch doctor cursed them and I think it is true that our spiritual condition determines to a remarkable extent our physical condition. Fear inhibits the mind, prevents you from thinking clearly, terror, lack of faith. I remember an enormous drunken Indian who appeared in the union hall in Houston in the middle of a strike and I was in the hotel next door and they called me over. They were terrified of him. And when I walked in you could feel the violence in the air. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know why he was there, but the didn’t like these little people around him and he was on the verge of killing them all.

And I went over and put my arm on him and hand on him and said, “What is ... you looking for a hotel? You looking for a place to stay?”

And, “Yes.”

Well, I led him out and down the street and got him started somewhere else, no problems, because I wasn’t afraid of him.

And I believe that story. I believe that people are healed at Lourdes and I believe that laying on of hands does this if the individual believes. And where in a very peculiar period. We are in a period where ancient superstitions are re arising, when ancient forms of medicine are being re accepted, acupuncture and herbs and all kinds of things, holistic medicine, chiropractic which the Egyptians practiced. At the same time that we have these great technical advances.

But the odd part is that the technician and the technological advances are bereft of spiritual value.

[Rushdoony] Well, Dr. Segal says that the individual’s attitude is the most important factor in healing. And he feels that too great a demand of yourself also could be unwise. In fact, he has a statement. “I am not ok. You are not ok. But that is ok.”

But he says this and I quote, “The simple truth is: Happy people generally don’t get sick,” unquote.

[Scott] Well, of course. And sickness, you know, it is very interesting that a major illness like tuberculosis any really major illness is accompanied by a darkening of the mind and the spirit. And cancer has frightened so many people. We... we almost have a media that is intent upon destroying all the joy of life, because they terrify people with the idea that everything is going to bring cancer if you use it at all, that your home is unsafe because of radon, because the atmosphere is unsafe because of acid rain. The beaches are unsafe because you might drown. You get nothing but this litany of disaster and calamity and so forth and you wonder that anybody recovers, that anybody is healthy, that anyone is happy.

[Rushdoony] Well, you mentioned radon. Today’s paper said that they are coming to the belief that every home should be tested for radon.

[Scott] How much will they charge? They are... they are just giving the politicians a new tax idea.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes. And it will mean that millions will qualify that get it freely so we will pay doubly.

[Scott] What is the treatment for radon? Have they... have they gotten around to that yet?

[Rushdoony] I don’t know. I ... I don’t know.

[Scott] And where would you go?

[Rushdoony] I suspect one of these days we will learn that radon is not radon.

[Scott] Well...

[Rushdoony] For the time being, it is a good scare.

[Scott] Well, the... well the idea of the perfectly safe vehicle, the idea of the perfectly safe and secure life is insane.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] I mean, life is a very brief thing. And you walk down the wrong street and something can happen to you.

[Rushdoony] Yes, that is the point that Algon Gross quotes, a very remarkable man, made so powerfully that to seek a risk free life is death to any society, death to any economy.

[Scott] Well, yes. A society that doesn’t want to have any risks will not defend itself. It cannot fight. It cannot have a war. It runs out of people. And we have an awful lot of people who think that death is something is unnatural. It is a tragedy. The tragedy of death. Well, it is very natural. It is as natural as birth. There was a... death was a great deal more evident when we were young.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] We all had playmates we knew who died and every family we knew had a death in the family and there was a wake. I remember my grandmother, my Irish grandmother going over to feel her... her brother in his coffin and she said, “My, wasn’t he thin?” And on the way back home I said to her, “How could you do that?” And she said, “Well, when I was a girl in Ireland we used to bathe and dress the body. That was done at home.” And she lived in Cork which wasn’t really rural either.

[Rushdoony] Well, I have been by a great many deathbeds. And I have seen some very beautiful deaths, Christians who, in dying, seem to see both worlds simultaneously and who suddenly, although they had been very hard of hearing they hear the whispers from a distance and who had a remarkable peace and joy as they went.

[Scott] Well, it is...

[Rushdoony] So that you see a great deal of beauty in the deaths of ...

[Scott] It is the equivalent of a birth.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Scott] And not... we are not aware of our birth. It is not a super human pain or experience to be born. And we have bothered the world naturally, the same way. If it is not a violent and unexpected death. Cancer it has its value. Both my grandfather and my father died of cancer which gave them plenty of time to organize their affairs and adjust themselves to it. And they went in very good form.

[Rushdoony] That is an interesting point. In the Middle Ages it was a lingering death that everyone wanted. It gave them a chance not only to organize their affairs, but to take their leave of all their family and friends and to give them counsel and it was something that they looked forward to. But now people want to go quickly without knowing it, because they dread the lingering ailment.

[Scott] Well, I don’t know why they should. And both my grandfather and my dad, the whole family went out of its way to go visit and listen. Now my grandfather had gave several death bed orations and my father refused to acknowledge the situation at all. I think it... he ... he pretended that he was just indisposed. Well, whichever he chose, and ...

[Rushdoony] He kept on doing business.

[Scott] Well he was trying to create a lottery. That was his last venture.

[Rushdoony] For Venezuela?

[Scott] Yeah, for one of the provinces. He wanted to set up a lottery. He had it worked out. He had a telephone next to his bed and he was doing business for quite a while.

[Rushdoony] Well, we have covered a lot of territory. Is there any concluding... summary statement?

[Scott] Well, I...

[Rushdoony] A summary statement you would like to make?

[Scott] I like doctors. I... I respect physicians. I respect the profession they have chosen. It is not a profession I would chose, but it is certainly one of the most essential. I am sorry that it is developing such a bureaucracy. It has developed such a bureaucracy and that it has gotten so far away and I include in that even the areas of medicine as... as the therapists, the psychiatrists and psychologists and so forth. And more and more it seems to me that these people look at other human beings as specimens and cases and not as individuals and brothers and sisters, wives and daughters and fathers and sons. The human family relies on the medical profession to a considerable extent and I really think they should pay more attention in this country to the cultural aspects, especially since we have such a polyglot country.

[Rushdoony] And there was a doctor in my home town who back in the 50s and into the 60s practiced and had perhaps the most important practice in the community. He was a Christian and he had a number of Bible verses that he would prescribe to people so very commonly when he felt that drugs were not the answer, he would jot down a verse on the prescription pad and hand it to the person and tell them, “You had better take this seriously.”

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” And others, quite a variety of verses. It used to shock some people because they wanted a prescription they could take to the pharmacy.

[Scott] They wanted a magic pill.

[Rushdoony] Yes. And he would put the responsibility on them. It was very refreshing to talk with him.

Well, our time is about over. Thank you all for listening. God bless you all.

[Voice] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.