In Dr. Robert Lusting’s book, The Hacking of the American Mind (2017), he argues that clever marketing by Madison Avenue and Wall Street have discovered brain physiology and chemistry to substitute pleasure for happiness in the public mind. This is done by convincing people to adopt a code of conduct which may be completely the antithesis to good health. The tool which is used to control a person’s behavior is the meme. If a person is unaware of the meme in operation, the mind is hacked. And this simple tool can mean the difference between good health and disease; between a short life span and longevity. If we are unaware of the meme in control of our behavior, we find it increasingly difficult to heal ourselves.
P.S. we’re not talking about internet memes! Meme: an element of a culture or system of behavior passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.
“Signs and symbols rule the world, not words or laws.”
– Confucius
America’s female news anchors follow a restricted dress code. Celebrity women do the same and the population follows the lead. The women on TV dress in bright colors, show bare gym-toned legs, expose their arms and chest, wear lip gloss, extend their eyelashes, wear their hair long, and often show an inch and a half of dark roots if they’re blonde. Judge Janine Pirro, the Fox News contributor is one of the best personifications of the meme. At 71 years old, she could pass for 45 with heavy makeup.
In contrast, men in television wear their hair short, only expose their face and hands, wear dull colored suits and a silk knot on the front of the neck which serves no purpose. Their makeup is minimal, only what is required by the camera. Now, if we think this is only natural, there was one political leader who thought it seriously significant; and subject to change. Mao Zse Tung said his wish was to: “enable every woman who can work to take her place on the labor front, under the principle of equal pay for equal work.”
He recognized the power of dress to project nationalism and ideology. In October, 1949 in Beijing, marking the founding of the People’s Republic, he wore the Sun Yat Sen suit that soon became the national dress. Women’s clothing was functional and limited in style, e.g., gray loose-fitting trouser suits. It could be difficult in a crowd to distinguish the men from the women.
In an article in Slate Magazine in April 1998, Judith Shulevitz wrote, “The early female cosmetics tycoons (Helena Rubinstein and Elisabeth Arden) faced two problems. One was the lingering Victorian belief that face painting was for hussies. The solution was to tie makeup to the freedom women were beginning to enjoy…the right to work and vote. A century ago, beauty was considered a trade too vulgar for respectable people.”
In her book, Hope in a Jar (1998), Ms. Shulevits noted that the 1920s and 30s generated the mass-produced image, leading to the culture of celebrity and unified standards of feminine beauty.
“Suddenly, there was a look, and everyone had to have it. Makeup became a mandatory act of conformity and by the time the women’s movement began to address it, of oppression.”
These reflections demonstrate just how consequential the memes we adopt, willingly or unwillingly, can be. Merriam- Webster tells us that, “Originally memes were conceptualized as units of cultural transfer”. But, in The Atlantic in November 2010, Michael Hirschorn warned: “Once a meme is out there it’s very hard to quash. No amount of evidence will stop a certain segment of the public from believing…”
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis discovered how devastating it can be to confront a meme, in 1850, when he stepped up to the podium of the Vienna Medical Society’s lecture hall. Dr. Semmelweis had an astounding announcement to make. As the chief of obstetrics at the Vienna General Hospital, Semmelweis noticed that the doctors delivering babies often came directly from conducting autopsies on corpses. And childbed fever was killing 10% of mothers and babies. He experimented by introducing hand washing for physicians using a mild chlorine solution. The results were dramatic and over the following three months infant mortality decreased to only 1.8%. Exultant with his discovery, Dr. Semmelweis mounted the stage in the ornate lecture hall to share the good news with the gathering of eminent fellow physicians. His message was, “Doctors, wash your hands!”
To his dismay, the audience rejected his advice; the paradigm shift required to accept such a simple single cause of childbed fever was too great to overcome. That fundamental change would have to wait for the discovery of bacteria as the cause of infection: i.e. the birth of germ theory. Dr. Semmelweis lost his job at the Vienna General Hospital with most colleagues and his students condemning him. Handwashing ceased in the obstetrics ward. He traveled Europe attempting to convince doctors and hospitals to install sanitary conditions. But his health declined and in 1865, he died at 47 years old in an insane asylum.
Over the 40 years following the death of Semmelweis, attitudes to hygiene gradually shifted and the discovery of germs led to a new theory of the cause of disease. In 1857 Louis Pasteur, of pasteurization fame, had begun to raise awareness of the presence of pathogens and how to kill them with heat. Robert Koch discovered the anthrax bacillus, launching the new research field of medical bacteriology. Surgeons began handwashing in earnest. The British surgeon Joseph Lister pioneered antiseptic surgery and, by the 1890s, all of the public were washing their hands. Florence Nightingale helped. She improved hygiene in military hospitals during the Crimean war in the 1850s and, when she returned to England, revolutionized the nursing profession. By 1900, public consciousness of germs was pervasive. Even the food industry began individually wrapping products. Pasteur boiled wine to prevent it becoming vinegar and boiled raw milk to sterilize it. The adoption of the germ theory of disease spawned trillion dollar medical, pharmaceutical and vaccine industries in America. Pasteur’s germ theory is simply a belief that the body is a sterile organism. Germs cause disease and killing them, cures.
The premise seems, on the face of it, easy to accept. Until we notice that with all the marvels of evolution in these industries, more people are diseased and there are now a larger number of diseases than ever. In the US, over half of all children have one or more chronic conditions as does the same proportion of millennials, as well as 62% of Medicaid-population adults. Modern medicine has produced some miraculous cures and, especially in surgery, the sophistication of care is outstanding. For example, in microsurgery on delicate organs, like the eye and the brain.
But on July 26, 2000 an article published by the AMA’s own journal, JAMA, written by Barbara Stanfield, MD, documented 225,000 iatrogenic deaths a year in the US. This makes iatrogenic disorders from unnecessary surgeries, medical errors and prescription drugs, the third leading cause of death. Only cancer and heart disease have larger numbers of fatalities. In Death by Medicine (2011), Gary Null says: “The number of people who die each day because of medical errors: physical mistakes, hospital-related illness and reactions to FDA-approved medications is the equivalent of 6 jumbo jets falling out of the sky. More people are dying each year at the hands of medicine than all casualties in World War I and the Civil War combined.” An iatrogenic disorder is the disease you get just by going to the doctor or to the hospital.
The explanation for this catastrophe may simply be the meme we have accepted. Pasteur’s theory, that germs cause disease, was easy to embrace, both by scientists and the public. Pharmaceutical companies found the theory financially exploitable, merging with chemical companies to develop synthetics to kill or immobilize parasites, bacteria and the microbes they theorized caused disease. But, though pharmaceuticals suppress or eliminate the symptoms, do they treat the cause?
The French chemist Antoine Béchamp (1816-1908) was a life-long rival of Pasteur. He claimed Pasteur was wrong about germs causing disease. Béchamp concluded that human bodies are “mini ecosystems”. When a body’s internal ecosystem becomes weakened, whether by poor nutrition, toxicity, or other factors, it changes the function of the microbes that are naturally present in the body, thereby producing disease. Microorganisms only become pathogenic after environmental factors cause the host’s cellular “terrain” to deteriorate. What this means is, if true, blaming germs for disease is like accusing firefighters, who are putting out a fire, of arson. Germs are attracted to diseased areas; they do not cause the disease.
At Hippocrates Wellness, the focus is on detoxification through a plant-based diet to cleanse the body, allowing it to heal itself. To augment this avenue to wellness, Hippocrates offers over a dozen advanced Energy Medicine technologies which stimulate healing effortlessly while encouraging reversed aging and immunity from infection. Targeting diseased areas, directly, with pulsation of specific frequencies while a guest is in a comfortable reclining position, in complete privacy has demonstrated remarkable, even immediate results. Sessions vary between 20 – 45 minutes.
Pulsed electromagnetic frequencies (PEMF), oxygen therapy, infrared light, polarized light, sound vibrations and non-invasive technologies stimulate the natural healing powers of the human body at the deep cellular level. Hundreds of emission protocols are designed to target specific maladies and specific areas of the body afflicted with pain, mental or physical stress, or disease. In 2011, on national TV, Dr. Oz introduced and endorsed pulsed electromagnetic emission for the QRS (Quantron Resonance System) as the best treatment for pain and stress.
Energy Medicine is now on the threshold of a breakthrough. Nikola Tesla saw it as the future of medicine: “If you want to find the secret of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration”.
Energy Medicine treatments have no side effects and the manufacturers of these technologies do not target germs as the enemies of health. They are terrain theory practitioners. And now affordable, portable units are available for sale and home use. Hippocrates Wellness is currently offering consideration on these devices.
“Like the earth, we need peace to heal ourselves”
– K. Tolnoe
