Immortality medicines

Daoism, as the primary indigenous religion of China, is a highly esoteric tradition. Constructed of many different strands, over several thousand years, Daoism has a complex history of integrating various techniques of meditation, spirit communication, consciousness projection, bodily movements, medicine, and "internal alchemy" with a profound transpersonal philosophy of nature and a metaphysics of human relationships based on an ideal of spiritual transformation leading to immortality... 

On the traditions concerning the arrival of Xu Fu (or Xu Shi) to Japan in the third century B. C. in search of the medicines of immortality, and the shrine devoted to him at Shingu (Wakayama Prefecture)... 

Unfortunately, most early alchemists are unknown, considering that they were very secretive about their methods and left little in the way of written history. Their goals were mystical, economic, secret, unpublished, and unshared. Alchemic practices were also related to medicine as well as rehgion during some periods of time and in some countries. The alchemists main search was for the philosopher s stone that could unlock the secrets of transmutation—that is, the secrets of how to transform base metals and chemicals into different, more useful and valuable products, such as gold and silver. This also led to the futile search over many centuries for the elixir vitae that would be both the universal cure for all illnesses and the way to achieve immortality. 

Louis Lemery, son of the immortal French physician and chemist Nicolas Lemery, was bom in Paris on January 25, 1677, and studied at Harcourt College (194). Because of the boy s gift of eloquence, his unde, Louis Lemery, a famous attorney, tried to induce him to study law. Young Louis preferred his father s calling, however, and at the age of twenty-one years received the degree of doctor of medicine. Two years later he entered the Academy to study, first under M. de Tournefort and then under his father Nicolas Lemery. 

Paracelsus, renowned physician and medical writer in the first half of the sixteenth century, called opium the philosopher s stone of immortality. In European medicine of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries opium found wide use as an analgesic and sedative, although its abuse had become known from journeys of discovery to the Near and Far East. In the early nineteenth century a German pharmacist. Friedrich Sertumer. isolated the particularly active morphine from natural opium and this became widely used in military medicine as an analgesic and anesthetic in the latter half of that century. 

Ziegler, Joseph, Medicine and Immortality in Terrestrial Paradise , in Peter Biller and Joseph Ziegler (eds.), Religion and Medicine in the Middle Ages (WooAhnA e, 2001), 201-42. 

Thus one cannot, without error, confound this Humid Radical with Innate Fire. The latter is the inhabitant, the former the habitation, the dwelling. It is, in all the Mixts, the laboratory of Vulcan the hearth on which is preserved that immortal Fire, the prime-motor created from all the faculties of individuals the universal Balm, the most precious Elixir of Nature, the perfectly sublimated Mercury of Life, which Nature distributes by weight and measure to all the Mixts. He who will know how to extract this treasure from the heart, and from the hidden center of the productions of this lower world, to despoil it of its thick elementary shell, which conceals it from our eyes and to draw it from the dark prison in which it is enclosed and inactive, may boast of knowing how to make the most precious MEDICINE to relieve the human body. 

It is a doctrine of the Adepts that fallen man has not lost the capacity for immortality, but simply the food or regimen of eternal life. The possibility is indestructible in his nature. They are also persuaded that the human body conceals the inexhaustible fountain of a Sovereign Balsam by which this life, under given circumstances, may yet be recovered. It is alike in blood and milk, grease and bone, brain and marrow in a word, it sustains his physical nature at all points. Man has, therefore, within him the materials of a medicine which surpasses the healing properties of any herb or stone, as well as of any extract of other animal natures. This is the virtue of the food of the Tree of Life which once sustained Adam, and still persists in all his descendants. Extract it, and thou hast found the treasure. The essence is in thy hands thou hast no need to seek outside thyself for that which is so abundantly within thee. Man is the monarch of Nature his soul is his noblest part, which remains immortal and in its essence like unto the angels it communicates to his fallen body the majesty which illuminates the countenance. But that body has still a thousand virtues which are the remains of his primal prerogatives, and, above all, a principle of life which it is still possible to develop. 

I hit what exactly is alchemy Even the origin and definition ()l the word are obscure. In China it represents the quest for immortality, in India it is the art of making medicines, while in (he West it is associated with the quest for the Philosopher s Stone, which transmutes base metals into gold. Alchemy is aU these things, and more besides. 

Po-Yang revives and wakes up the faithful disciple and the dog, and they go on to join the immortals. The two disciples who lost faith are informed that their ex-master has transcended mortality, and they must live a life full of regret over their missed opportunity and lack of faith. The story is full of symbolism and the importance of faith and obedience. The alchemist (or those who would follow the alchemist s path) had to understand not only the practical issues of making tinctures or medicines but the deeper esoteric or hidden aspects of nature. What makes the story even more complex is that the central character, Po-Yang, is a thinly disguised Lao-tse, founder of Taoism, one of whose names was Po-Yang of Wei. Po-Yang is thus not merely a master alchemist but a spiritual master. 

Volatile aromatic oil wax medicinal culinary cosmetic liqueur dye embalming—preservative immortality for matters of love. 

Above The Elixir of Life by the 19th-century caricaturist Phiz. Medieval alchemists believed that the transmuting agent—the Philosopher s Stone—would also act as a universal cure if taken as a medicine, ending disease and old age by conferring immortality upon the fortunate beings who drank the magical and elusive substance. 

Another ancient idea associated with alchemy is the wish for long, even eternal life. Alchemy s two goals—the transformation of base metals into gold and the making of an elixir of immortality— coalesced in ancient China with the belief that gold was a magic medicine that could reverse the decline of the body and mind ... 

It is ironic, indeed, that despite the historical record summarized above, no male psychiatrist, no modern male psychiatric historian, acknowledges the witch as healer and therapist, the true mother of the modem, privately practicing physician and psychotherapist. Instead, as we have seen, Man (the Masculine Physician) robs Woman (the White Witch) of her discovery he declares her mad, and himself the enlightened healer. This process is repeated over and over in the history of medicine. Semmelweis, protector of the parturient woman from the disease-producing hand of the physician, is likewise declared mad, and imprisoned in an insane asylum. Anna O., Joseph Breuer s immortal patient, teaches her physician... 

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