We visited the Mount Vernon house museum (England) to learn about the origin of the well-known Bach Flowers and the work of the Doctor Bach Center transmitting the legacy of Edward Bach.
In a village in the English countryside called Sotwell, in the county of Oxford shire, the house in which Dr. Edward Bach lived in the last stage of his life is still preserved, the doctor who in the 30s discovered the 38 flower remedies that today bear his name: Bach flowers.
Stone stairs lead to the entrance door, from where you can see a quiet and wild garden. Nothing in the atmosphere suggests that we are only 80 kilometers from London: you can hear the birds chirping and the pleasant smell of flowers welcomes us.
The house is called Mount Vernon. From here, the Doctor Bach Center, created by the doctor’s immediate collaborators, continues decades later to elaborate the tinctures of flowers just as their creator did. The editorial staff of Corps was in England to visit this place.
EDWARD BACH: A LIFE DEDICATED TO RESEARCH
Working as a doctor, Edward Bach realized how emotions influenced the health of his patients and came to the conviction that many diseases had a psychic and not a physical root.
In his search for new ways that did not treat the symptoms of diseases, but their causes, he soon became interested in homeopathy, to which he made contributions as a bacteriologist in the field of intestinal disorders.
However, the doctor’s research did not stop there. Their goal was to find in the plant kingdom remedies for moods that influenced human health.
Of fragile health and refined intuition, he continued his research in Wales. Experiencing in himself the emotions and symptoms that his imbalance brought and letting himself be guided by the effect produced by plants, he found there up to 19 flowers with therapeutic effect. The other 19, with which he completed his now classic collection of 38 flower remedies, he found in the vicinity of Mount Vernon, where he moved at the end of his life.
Shortly before his death, he concluded his project and dedicated himself to disseminating it so that it reached as many people as possible. The Doctor Bach Centre continues to devote itself to this outreach work today, one of the purposes of which is to preserve the simplicity and purity of the method by which the original remedies were prepared and dispensed.
HOUSE MUSEUM IN MOUNT VERNON
The living room and studio of Mount Vernon, transformed into a small museum, transport the visitor to the 30s. Along with sketches of plants with their corresponding description made by the doctor himself can be seen part of his writings and the instruments he used to prepare the preparations.
The method remains the same. Bach found that, with the heat of the sun, the dew droplets that covered the flowers were infused with the properties of the plant. Depositing the freshly picked flowers in spring water and leaving them a few hours in the sun managed to reproduce the same phenomenon. Thus, he obtained the mother tincture, which he mixed in equal parts with wine brandy for preservation.
As this method was only viable in summer, he developed a second method still in force that consisted of briefly boiling the water instead of exposing it to the sun.
HOW DO BACH FLOWERS WORK?
Bach flowers are not infusions of medicinal plants or phytotherapeutic extracts, as they do not contain any active ingredient. So how do they work? What Bach perceived in certain plants was his vibrational information. Someone who feels fear vibrates at a certain frequency, and Bach realized that some plant species could counteract and balance specific fears.
To extract vibrational information from plants, that concentration of energy that can be used to heal negative emotional states, two methods are used: solarization and boiling. The first, as we have advanced, consists of leaving the flowers in the sun, in a glass bowl with spring water, for three hours.
In the second, these are brought to a boil for 30 minutes. With the droplets of the resulting tincture, the stock is prepared (first dilution) by adding grape alcohol to the essence so that, in this way, it is preserved in perfect condition without altering each of its properties. From the stock bottles the individualized formulas are prepared.
