Medicine, Mythology and Spirituality

Medicine, Mythology, and Spirituality: Recollecting the Past and Willing the Future

In his discussion of the art of healing, Ralph Twentyman places the problems of modern medicine in the context of the evolution of consciousness and the modern crisis of selfhood and community. He relates this to today’s all-too-common experience of loneliness in relation to the experience of individuality.

By contrast, Twentyman points to the dawning vision of humankind as a “true being” it itself—a living organism. The illnesses that characterize our time are looked at within the context of these birth pangs of a new era of evolution and consciousness.

C O N T E N T S:

Preface

1. Order and Disorder
2. Crossing Frontiers
3. Pathology Gets to the Point
4. Seeing the Picture
5. Upside-Down Thinking
6. Dogs, Snakes, and Mirrors
7. Miasms and Moral Challenge
8. The Human Being—An Indefinite Article
9. Materialism Grips Medicine
10. Evolution—Facts, Theories, and Myths
11. The Single and the Whole
12. Finding Our Way through the Underworld
13. A Way Forward
14. Loss and Gain
15. Conclusion

Bibliography

About the Author

Llewelyn Ralph Twentyman (1914–2010) ws born in the area of Wolverhampton, UK. Despite the chaos of World War I, he experienced an idyllic childhood in the countryside. He trained at Cambridge and University College Hospital, and later served in the RAF medical service in Habbaniya, Iraq. After release from the RAF, he trained in homeopathy at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital and became a senior member of the medical staff there. He was introduced to Karl König, founder of the Camphill Schools, which led to a fruitful working relationship and friendship, and Twentyman served as a trustee and Vice President of the Camphill movement until his death. König in turn introduced him to Dr Rita Leroi and Dr Kaelin who pioneered the use of mistletoe in the treatment for cancer. Twentyman introduced the mistletoe treatment of cancer as suggested by Rudolf Steiner and viewed anthroposophic methods as a valid extension of Hahnemann’s homeopathic approach. Twentyman edited the British Homeopathic Journal for twenty-one years and has lectured extensively. He passed away peacefully at home on April 29, 2010.