In Which a Guest Columnist Takes the Reins for a
Day to Discourse on Men and Medicine
and Deep Pathology.

It is with no little pleasure that we give the right of way to these pastures to-day to Arthur J. Busch, city editor, who has something to say concerning a subject about which he has written before. If he bores you, bear with him, for I shall be back again next week.

Michael March.

By Arthur J. Busch

From London comes an imposing medical tome, the third volume in Dr. J. E. R, McDonagh's treatise called The Nature of Disease, published by William Heineman, which, from this distance, and in this sort of column ought to be the dullest book imaginable. Which it isn't to this writer, who has for some time been enthusiastically interested in the work of F. Matthias Alexander, the creator of a new technique of psycho-physical control, as a way of life.

The present volume is interesting therefor, because it represents a laudable and authoritative recognition of Alexander's work by one of the progressive, medical leaders in Great Britain, and because it is the kind of book that will undoubtedly make the pathetic pathologists froth at the mouth. I wish I could throw it in the midst of a reactionary meeting of the American Medical Association and listen to the growls, snorts and grumblings of these modern medicine men. Dr. McDonagh has been quick to recognize in Alexander a kinsprit of the first water; he, too, sees clearly the laugh in modern pathology and therapeutics. And in this, the third volume of an ambitious and courageous work, he carries on with great pains his effort to prove that disease springs from a single cause. ". . . . There is only one disease," he writes, "the so-called 'diseases' are but the signs and symptoms of this one disease and that disease is the result of the defeat of the body's resistance by the invader." Since the days of the medicine men, the medical fraternity has persisted along the same false path of attempting to cure symptoms, rather than remove causes. And the whole effort of Dr. McDonagh's book is devoted to exploding the hocus pocus of symptom-chasing and demonstrating the underlying principles at the root of disease. Not until the medical profession abandons its present smug practices, not until its current habit of eradicating symptoms is discarded and a sincere effort toward removing deep-seated causes becomes its primary aim, will there be any hope for enduring improvement in the health of the race. Modern therapeutics may arrest a symptom, but it very rarely removes the underlying cause of that symptom. You may be sure that nothing very much is going to be done about the cure of cancer until the deep-seated cause of that dread manifestation of tissue-collapse is unearthed.

Thus Dr. McDonagh, in his treatise, pays respect to the ideas of Alexander concerning psycho-physical control. McDonagh recognizes as fundamental that mal-coordinated condition of the human race brought about by the exigencies of civilization and he pays high tribute to the technique for rectifying this lack of co-ordination which has been developed by Alexander. Re-educate the individual to a conscious guidance of his conduct and you remove a very great cause of his physical and psychic ill-adjustments. Recognize (which is easy) the unreliability of man's instincts in the conduct of his life and then show him the way (which is not easy) to replace those debauched and deceptive instincts with consciously and intelligently conceived control and you release him from the bonds which have chained him to pain and limitation. Alexander has demonstrated that this can be done, and McDonagh attests that he is doing it with astounding results. Remove the cause (mal-coordination), which creates tension and strain and a consequent drain of the vital energies and you produce a graceful, properly poised being in whom the activities of body and mind, functioning as they then do in harmony, are carried on with ease and precision. The invasion, then, of disease which is Dr McDonagh's province is reduced to a minimum, because the natural processes inherent in man for combating the invader, are permitted to operate freely,

Alexander has published two books in America, both under the banner of E. P. Dutton. These books are called Man's Supreme Inheritance and Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual, and both are introduced by Professor John Dewey. Since however, Alexander's technique is based purely upon sensory reactions he has so far been successful in projecting only an intellectual idea of it in his books. His third volume, which is in process of completion will probably be published in England this coming winter.

Unfortunately, I am afraid both Alexander and Dr. McDonagh are about a century ahead of their times. The world is still steeped in reactionary blindness; revolutionary ideas are still slow to penetrate the shell of quasi-security which seems to envelope the minds of scientists, especially in the medical and psychological fields. Some day, however, Alexander's ideas will invade the now entrenched schools of psychology and take them by storm. The trouble is that the pink subtleties of Dr. Freud's libido are not inherent in Alexander's message to the world, and so he will, at least in the eyes of the he-who-runs-may-read public, remain an insuperable bore. Nor is there anything in him which can titillate and send gaga the goose-stepping public as did the impish, merry, mosquito drone of Coue's "cé passe, cé passe, cé passe."

Arthur J. Busch