Dr Edward Bach

Edward Bach

(24 September 1886 – 27 November 1936) was an English doctor, bacteriologist, homeopath, and spiritual writer, best known for developing the Bach flower remedies, a form of alternative medicine inspired by classical homeopathic traditions.

Biography

Born in Moseley in England, he studied medicine at Birmingham at the University College Hospital, London, and obtained a Diploma of Public Health (DPH) at Cambridge. He qualified in 1912 and worked as a house surgeon, pathologist and bacteriologist. From 1919-1922 he worked as a pathologist and bacteriologist at the London Homeopathic Hospital.

From an early age, Dr Bach had been aware that people's personality and attitude have an effect on their state of health. He was a physician well ahead of his time and he moved form orthodox medicine into developing a natural form of medicine to treat emotional and spiritual health, very much in tune with the trends in natural health today.
He believed that an illness is the result of disharmony between body and mind. Symptoms of an illness are the external expression of negative emotional state.
 

While he recognized the role of the germ theory of disease, defective organs and/or tissue, and other known and demonstrable sources of disease, Bach wondered how exposure to a pathogen could make one person sick, while another was unaffected, when to all appearances and analysis they were in equal states of health. He postulated that illness was the result of a conflict between the purposes of the soul and the personality's actions and outlooks. This internal war, according to Bach, leads to emotional imbalances and energetic blockage, which causes a lack of harmony, thus leading to physical diseases. 

In 1917 he became very ill, and  it was predicted that he had only three months left to live. Despite his illness, he continued his work and kept the positive attitude for recovery. 
In the spring of 1930, aged 43, Dr Bach closed his laboratory and his practice and he decided to search for a new healing system. He went to Wales to seek further remedies in nature.  

  Bach flower remedies

He spent the spring and summer discovering and preparing new flower remedies – which include no part of the plant but simply what Bach claimed to be the pattern of energy of the flower. 

Rather than being based on medical research, using the scientific method, Bach's flower remedies were intuitively derived and based on his perceived psychic connections to the plants. If he felt a negative emotion, he would hold his hand over different plants, and if one alleviated the emotion, he would ascribe the power to heal that emotional problem to that plant. 

He believed that early morning sunlight passing through dew-drops on flower petals transferred the healing power of the flower onto the water, so he would collect the dew drops from the plants and preserve the dew with an equal amount of brandy to produce a mother tincture which would be further diluted before use. 
Later, he found that the amount of dew he could collect was not sufficient, so he would suspend flowers in spring water and allow the sun's rays to pass through them.

After many years of medical practice and researching wild flowers from nature, he created simple, natural and effective treatment for all emotional and mental human states. He developed 38 remedies, together with  Rescue Remedy that covered all aspects of human nature and thus all the negative states of mind. Bach's remedies focus on treatment of the patient's personality, which he believed to be the ultimate root cause of disease. 

Even he was ill and doctors predicted him only 3 months left to live, his determination to complete his work lead to his complete recovery. 
Dr Bach decided to spread his knowledge among the people and started to heal his patients free of charge. He published his work and wrote short book "Heal Thyself", with its message that physical disease is the result of being at odds with one's spiritual purpose. 

Bach died in his sleep on 27 November 1936 in Wallingford, Berkshire, at the age of 50, content that his mission was complete. He had left behind him a unique system of medicine that is now used among the people all over the world.