Dr Bach considered many theories and ideas during his career and wrote notes, articles, and letters on them. But at every stage of his work, he was keen to leave behind anything that was no longer relevant.
For example, he discontinued the use of succussion in preparing remedies. Investigated and discounted links between remedy types and astrology. Gave up diagnosis by physical symptom, and abandoned as unnecessary the idea of different remedies working on different planes.
He could be quite emphatic about such excess baggage! When he decided to leave London in 1930 and devote himself to flower remedies. He made a bonfire and burned all his outdated pamphlets and papers. Later, at Mount Vernon, when the system was finished, he built a further bonfire in the garden to destroy what he referred to as ‘scaffolding’.
In the same vein, he issued strict instructions to his publishers to destroy old editions of The Twelve Healers each time that a new edition was ready for the press. He didn’t want old editions republished. This is because they contained remedy descriptions and concepts that he no longer used in his work. He felt that these discarded ideas would be seized on by people who might look to complicate the system.
The Bach Centre’s role was set out in a letter Dr Bach sent to Victor Bullen shortly before his death. ‘Our work is steadfastly to adhere to the simplicity and purity of this method of healing,’ he wrote.
We try to remain true to our founder’s wishes. Books like The Original Writings of Edward Bach, published with our blessing, are presented as historical documents. With the context explained and old remedy descriptions edited out, as Dr Bach wanted.
Despite our efforts, older versions of The Twelve Healers were republished in the 1980s and are now widely available. As Dr. Bach predicted these out-of-date concepts are occasionally referred to by writers and Bach therapists, and not always in a proper historical context. All we can do is point to the system as Dr Bach left it and remind people that the finished system is more perfect – and far simpler – than its earlier incarnations.