Spiritual Protreptics for Medical Students

Franz Hartmann, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 133 pages

A 133-page compilation built around Franz Hartmann's Occult Science in Medicine, with material from Blavatsky, addressed to medical students and holding that theosophia is the guiding star for the physician of the future. Hartmann's preface argues that the ancient books on medicine show the sages of former times knew far more of the fundamental laws of nature than is admitted today, and that the explorer of ancient lore must be a scientist though not every scientist is an explorer — the real lover of truth not being content to live on fruit grown in other men's gardens.

The introduction states the governing definition: disease is the disharmony that follows disobedience to the immutable law of love, justice and mercy which governs universe and man. Whoever thinks and acts in perfect harmony with his divine nature, bound by fraternal sympathy for all men, is held to be free of impurities physical and moral and so to carry no elements of self-destruction, since all his elements love each other and love is the creator and preserver of life; many diseases are traced to disharmonious elements allowed to contaminate the inner constitution. The first chapter accordingly treats the constitution of man, on the principle that a thorough knowledge of the inner constitution — not merely of part of the physical body — is the first requisite of any perfect system of medicine, and that neither life can be created by death nor intelligence manifest in a form unless those powers pre-exist in the self-existent substance, Svabhavat.

Read the full text (PDF, 2.9 MB, 133 pages)