Edward Bach
The Beginning of a Medical Career
Edward Bach was born on September 24, 1886, in Moseley, near Birmingham. He studied medicine in Birmingham and later at University College Hospital, London, where he was a resident surgeon. He also worked in private practice, with several clinics on Harley Street. As a bacteriologist and pathologist, he conducted research in the field of vaccines in his own research laboratory.
In 1917, Dr. Bach was working in areas where soldiers returning wounded from France were being cared for. One day, he collapsed due to severe hemorrhaging and was taken to an operating room. His colleagues operated on him to remove a tumor, but the prognosis was poor. When Bach recovered, the doctors told him he only had three months to live.
As soon as he could get out of bed, Bach returned to his laboratory. He intended to continue his work in the short time he had left. But as the weeks went by, he began to grow stronger. The three months came and went, finding him in better health than ever before. He was convinced that his sense of duty was what saved him: he still had work to do.
Homeopathic Research
His research in the field of vaccines was going well, but despite this, Dr. Bach was dissatisfied with the way doctors were required to focus on diseases and ignore the whole person. He aspired to a more holistic approach to medicine. Perhaps this explains why, not being a homeopath, he accepted a position at the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital.
Once there, he soon noticed the parallel between his work on vaccines and the principles of homeopathy. He adapted his vaccines to produce a series of seven homeopathic nosodes.
Dr. Bach observed that there are several human typologies and that people belonging to the same typology react similarly to illness or a difficult situation.
This work and its subsequent publication brought him fame in homeopathic circles. People began to refer to him as the “second Hahnemann.”
Floral Remedies
Until then, Bach had worked with bacteria, but he wanted to find remedies that were purer and less dependent on disease products. He began collecting plants, particularly flowers – the most well-developed part of a plant – in the hope of replacing nosodes with a series of gentler remedies.
The first remedies he discovered were Impatiens, Mimulus, and Clematis. The results he achieved with these remedies in his patients were so remarkable that by the end of 1928 he abandoned all other forms of treatment he was using, as well as his successful practice on Harley Street. He left London, determined to dedicate the rest of his life to the new medicines that could surely be found in nature. He took with him an assistant, a radiologist named Nora Weeks.
As he abandoned his home, office, and work, Dr. Bach began to let go of the scientific method and dependence on laboratories and reductionism. Instead, he relied on his natural gifts as a healer, increasingly allowing intuition to guide him to the right plants.
Over years of trial and error, which involved preparing and testing thousands of plants, he found the remedies he sought, one by one. Each was aimed at a particular mental state or emotion. He discovered that when he treated the personality and feelings of his patients, their unhappiness and physical stress were naturally alleviated because the healing potential in their bodies was unlocked and allowed to work again.
From 1930 to 1934, his life followed a seasonal pattern: spring and summer spent searching for and preparing remedies; winter providing help and advice to all who sought it. Most winters he spent in the coastal town of Cromer. There he met and became friends with a local builder and healer, Victor Bullen.
The Bach Centre
In 1934, Dr. Bach and Nora Weeks moved to a house called Mount Vernon in the county of Oxfordshire, in Brighwell-cum-Sotwell. In the fields and paths of this area, he found the last remedies he needed to complete the series. By then, his body and mind were so in tune with his work that he reached the emotional state necessary for healing and tried plants and flowers until he found the ones that were useful to him. In this way, through great personal suffering and sacrifice, he completed the work of his life.
One year after announcing the completion of his search for remedies, Dr. Bach peacefully passed away on the evening of November 27, 1936. He was only 50 years old but had outlived his doctors’ prognosis by almost 20 years. He left behind the efforts and experience of a lifetime, as well as a medical system that is used all over the world.
In a letter to Victor dated October 26, 1936, a month before his death, he wrote:
He left his work in the hands of his friends and colleagues, Nora Weeks and Victor Bullen, with the wish that they continue it and remain faithful to the essential simplicity of what he had done. And so they did.