I got into San Francisco early, and took Dick to Dr. Abrams where
George Sterling was waiting for me. George Sterling, as I understand,
is the Swinburne of California. He has an exquisitely refined head, a
nose that one sees on a Greek cameo, but a voice that labels him of his
country.
Dr. Abrams is a doctor whom a great many doctors call a quack, and
some superficial people laugh over. He is the man of whom Upton
Sinclair raved to me, declaring that he had made the discovery that
was to revolutionize the world. I am far too ignorant and unscientific
to attempt an explanation of this theory. Suffice to say that it is
entirely based on vibration. Each disease, he claims, has its own
vibratory reaction, and it is only necessary to take a blood test to
discover what the disease is, and then cure it.
I sat in his laboratory among a dozen doctors and watched and listened
for two hours or more. I should have listened and watched for two weeks
and then I might have begun to understand.
I have no right to an opinion, but I have a right to an open mind.
Those two hours were among the most interesting I have ever spent.
He took a drop of Dick’s blood and tested it. “This is the blood of
Richard Brinsley Sheridan,” Dr. Abrams announced to the laboratory! It
reacted to the malaria vibration, this he explained, might be due to
the amount of quinine Dick was taking. The cure he said, had the same
vibratory rate as the disease. He recommended me to stop all further
quinine and bring him back in a few days. He tested him for every other
kind of disease but Dick had practically a clean slate. This is very
rare, for most of us have something congenital, even if we don’t know
it.
I came away with one conviction at least, that Dr. Abrams is a type
of genius, is perfectly sincere, and is working himself to death. The
people who know more than I do can say what they like, but those facts
remain. He is undoubtedly living 50 years before his time. As for
sceptics, I do not see how anyone dare to be sceptical in these days
of wireless telegraphy and wireless telephone, which after all are
entirely based on vibratory foundations. I saw Dr. Abrams discover a
cancer in one person, tuberculosis with syphilis and malaria in another
and a decayed back tooth in a third. These were done from a drop of
blood, the patients were not even in the room. They came in afterwards.
Nebulously, in my head, I understand the process, but one has to be
there to see.
My own experience with the medical profession has made me very open
minded. I have received the results I looked for from the one doctor in
London that the medical profession declared to be a quack, when they,
the so-called best doctors in the profession, had failed to help me.
I sometimes think the medical profession is, of all professions, the
slowest to accept new ideas, the most conventional. Their sense of
professional etiquette seems to count before all else.
Later in the day we went to the house of a friend of George Sterling’s,
a composer, who sets his songs to music. There in a half dark room,
full of flowers, and baskets filled to the brim with rose petals, we
drank red wine. Curled up on a sofa I listened to the playing and
singing of his songs. Now and then George would read out loud some new
poem not yet published.
That night we went and sipped absinthe in some low haunt. It is no use,
Mr. Prohibition Agent, to come after me and ask me where that was,
because I don’t know, and I’m quite sure George doesn’t remember.