Norm's book on medical intuition is a textbook on this new science, a book that combines his history as a scientist examining this skill and as a physician urging the common sense of personal health care. Energy medicine and allopathic medicine are teamwork, but neither compensate for negligent health habits, as he is quick to point out. Norm Shealy has always been a visionary in the field of medicine and human consciousness, and I have been blessed to be a part of his life's work. I would not have become the medical intuitive I am today had we not met so many years ago. And I can also say that it was precisely because of my skill as a medical intuitive that the inner world of human consciousness opened up to me. I know that this is a science, but it is a science of the soul, not the mind. And it requires the utmost inner training on the part of the practitioner to become a precise instrument. I was more than lucky in finding Norm as my mentor; I was blessed. And this I know to be true above all else—you cannot walk into the territory of the soul unescorted. A mentor is essential. I am grateful my mentor wrote this book.
Caroline Myss
Oak Park, Illinois
September 2009
1
MY JOURNEY FROM PARAPSYCHOLOGY TO NEUROSURGERY AND MEDICAL INTUITION
Three years later, while I was an undergraduate at Duke University, I was asked by the director of “The University Players,” to write a radio skit on Dr. J.B. Rhine's work in parapsychology. I spent three months interviewing this first professor of parapsychology and observing in his lab. I was convinced that he had exhaustively proven that individuals could “guess” correctly the contents of closed envelopes, precognitively know what was coming next, and do psychokinesis—influence the rolling of dice. The work was fascinating but left me frustrated—why did he not do something useful with this parapsychological wisdom?
The terms used in those days were psychic, clairvoyant, psychokinesis, viewing, and precognition—all anathema to “academic” psychologists!
The skit was produced in the spring of the year, and I went on to medical school in the fall of 1952. For the next eighteen years I was preoccupied with medical school and graduate training in neurological surgery and my beginning clinical practice. Actually, I chose that field because I thought somehow it would help me understand the brain-mind. In medical school I had two major experiences with what I later would recognize as intuition. In my sophomore year, in Physical Diagnosis class, I made a diagnosis, which was correct, but which the professor felt I should not have been capable of making! He accused me of cheating and wrote a scathing report for my student file. Two years later, he apologized and asked me to intern in the Department of Medicine. He said he had withdrawn his earlier report from my file. In my junior year, I made a diagnosis of sarcoidosis of the pituitary gland in a patient who had entered the hospital over the weekend. Sarcoidosis is an autoimmune disorder that can be very serious, especially when it involves the brain or master gland. The professor of endocrinology was shocked when I presented my diagnosis and said to me, “You are a medical student. You can't make such a diagnosis.” It was the first case of sarcoidosis of the master gland seen at Duke, and Professor Engel and I wrote a definitive paper on the subject.
Meanwhile, my research throughout medical school was investigating the physiology of the amagydala of the cat. The amagydala is strongly tied to emotions. Then, during my neurosurgery residency, I developed interest in the physiology of pain and continued that when I joined the faculty at Western Reserve Medical School. There I discovered the physiological foundation for pain mechanisms, a paper for which I was given the first Harold G. Wolff Award for Research in Pain. Remember this event, as it later became one of numerous synchronicity aspects of my life, a concept or term which, at that time, would have had no meaning! I met, at that meeting of The American Headache Society, Dr. Janet Travell, President Kennedy's physician, and a leading expert in myofascial pain. Out of my work came also my first two inventions—TENS, Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation, and DCS, Dorsal Column Stimulation—both now used worldwide. Again, a beginning of what I would later know as intuition at work!
From age sixteen, I had planned to be a professor of neurosurgery. In early 1966, I was offered an opportunity to be interviewed to take over a major department of neurosurgery. As I had experienced by that time major meetings with a large number of chairs of Departments of Neurosurgery, I suddenly realized that I really did not like many of them. They were often arrogant, rude, or alcoholics and not individuals with whom I wanted to socialize! In fact, neurosurgeons had a reputation from the early days in the twentieth century of being the rudest of all specialists! I phoned Dr. Talmage Peele, my mentor since I entered medical school; I had done my amagydala research in his lab; and his response was, “Junior, you are ruining your career.”
Suddenly, I made a critical decision—to leave academia. I took a position as chair of the new department of neuroscience at the Gundersen Clinic in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. The Gundersen Clinic was at that time the tenth largest private clinic in the United States. One of its founders had been president of the American Medical Association, and my position at Gundersen Clinic would allow me an opportunity to be clinically active but do some continuing research. Over the next five years, I was by far the busiest I have ever been, often working eighteen-hour days and seeing hundreds of patients with the broadest variety of neurosurgical problems. During that time our department expanded to include three neurosurgeons, three neurologists, and a neuropsychologist. I was able to have wonderful laboratory assistants who could carry out the research protocols that I developed. I even worked with a palsied orangutan, Shakey, in whom I demonstrated that electrical stimulation could indeed control tremor. In collaboration with Dr. Ted Tetzlaff, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin, LaCrosse, we demonstrated electrical control of seizures in rats as well as control of penile erections in monkeys.
Meanwhile, my research with chronic stimulation of the spinal cord in cats and monkeys had proven successful enough that in 1968 I presented my work at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in St. Louis. The paper was so controversial that physicians jumped up on the stage and grabbed my microphone. The paper was the first ever given at that meeting that was turned down for publication in the Journal of Neurosurgery as too controversial. It was subsequently published in Analgesia & Anesthesia. Two years later, I presented my first eight cases of DCS in human patients with advanced, incurable pain. Suddenly neurosurgeons wanted to jump on the bandwagon and do the procedure!
I had developed the original equipment with Tom Mortimer, who had done his master's and doctoral research in my lab. When he graduated, he joined the faculty at Case Institute of Technology and went on to become a famous biomedical engineer. He suggested that I invite Medtronic, the leading manufacturer of pacemakers, to manufacture the Dorsal Column Stimulator (DCS) devices. They agreed initially to support the Dorsal Column Study Group, a consortium of neurosurgeons who planned to operate on a total of five hundred patients and follow up on them, over five