[Read aloud to Adelle]
Healing Hands, The Amazing True Story of a Spirit Doctor [available on archive.org] by J Bernard Hutton
We went to visit a spirit doctor in Birmingham, the ill-fated journey that brought us A Fools Wisdom and a new scratch on the side of the car, and bought this book about George Chapman and William Lang while we were there meeting Michael Chapman, who has taken over the mediumship for Lang from his father.
This book is old now, written in the 1960s, when the world was a more credulous place, when communicating took writing letters, or if you were lucky telephone calls, and visiting Aylesbury was an expedition. The writing reflects the time, you couldn’t write a book like this now, the internet would tear it asunder.
Written by a convert to spirit healing, it follows the journey of George Chapman acting as medium for spirit doctor William Lang, with a multitude of stories from happy patients who had received successful healing from the pair. The writing style is documentary, intending to lay out facts as they were discovered during the research with the patients. While it doesn’t succumb to preaching it does clearly reflect the positive beliefs of the writer, who has experienced good results from his own healing sessions.
As a scientist (of sorts) I find the level of evidence presented to be wanting, but there seems no denying that there are plenty of people who consider they received useful healing from the duo. The mind is an incredible thing and it can find ways to provide healing given the right stimulus, reading this brings to mind the placebo effect. If people have received benefit from it, who am I to question how that benefit works?
Our own meeting with Michael was an interesting experience, he is a likable showman who gave attention to Adelle and her troubles. He (or perhaps Mr Lang) performed some trance work on her, especially her left hand side, and while she felt weird immediately after he had finished, I have yet to see any significant changes in her condition.
The parallel with orthodox medicine is surprising, many of my own visits to doctors have essentially had them either completely ignore my complaints altogether, or go looking for something else, something they know how to fix. They also work largely by stimulating the mind to figure out ways to fix itself.