G. I. Gurdjieff as Physician and Healer

Christian Wertenbaker, MD

urdjieff was well known as a physician and healer. His activities in this area, documented by the many authors who felt compelled to record all of his manifestations for posterity, ranged from what would be considered typical for a physician, to unusual and strikingly effective dietary means, to treatment of many people through investigation and therapy under hypnosis, to extremely unusual and unorthodox methods, including direct transfer of energy from himself to his patients. Some of his cures could merit to be called “miraculous,” although in the context of modern physics—quite “miraculous” itself—reasonable possible explanations in terms of physical mechanisms are available. These will be only touched on in this article but will be more thoroughly investigated as part of a forthcoming book on Gurdjieff’s overall cosmology and its possible relationships to modern science.[1] This article instead will focus on some of the many stories that illustrate the range of Gurdjieff’s activities as a healer.

Gurdjieff had formal training in both Western and Eastern medicine, including probably attending medical school in Athens,[2] and studying Eastern ideas and treatments in many Asian countries,[3] including India, Tibet and China, but the details are somewhat difficult to pin down, as are those of many of his early activities in general. Around the turn of the 20th century, he established a very successful practice as a “physician-hypnotist,” treating many people with alcoholism and other addictions.[4] Later, after he emerged on the “historical” scene around 1912, he maintained relationships with a number of doctors, enabling him to obtain prescription medications and laboratory testing despite his not having an official medical license. In the 1930s he was known to be treating a group of women he was working with intensively, and himself, with “piqûres” (injections, we know not of what), most likely aided by his relationships in the medical and pharmaceutical communities.[5] He kept up with the advances of modern Western medicine, as illustrated in one of the stories below.

Fritz Peters lived closely with Gurdjieff from ages 11 to 15, beginning in 1924, and spent various periods of time with him afterward. In his two memorable books, Peters describes several medical interactions with Gurdjieff that illustrate some of the range of healing capabilities that Gurdjieff used.[6]

Sometime in the middle of his stay with Gurdjieff at the Château du Prieuré in Fontainebleau, France, Peters suffered a penetrating knee injury by falling on a rusty iron catch that held open one of the gates to the Prieuré. He quickly developed a severe infection, with septicemia and delirium, which the doctor at the Prieuré was unsuccessful in treating with “hot onion poultices.” Gurdjieff was away until the day after the injury; when he returned and examined the leg, he immediately sent someone to the local pharmacy to obtain a remedy called Ouataplasme, a medication-impregnated cotton that also served as a poultice. He had it dipped in boiling water and immediately applied to the wound, which was then bandaged. This was repeated every four hours, and by the next day Peters had markedly improved. Gurdjieff later explained that this remedy was very new, but that he had been aware of it. “When I come, I fix leg, because only I know about this new medicine which have in France now. I know this because I interested in everything, because necessary know all things for self in life. Just because I know this thing, and because I come back in time, you now well. You all right.”[7]

On a later occasion, when Peters scalded his arm with boiling water, Gurdjieff appeared in the kitchen immediately and unexpectedly, and forcibly held Peters’ arm over the open flame from the stove for a few seconds, explaining, correctly as it turned out, that this way the burn would disappear without any scar. Mme Stjoernval, who was present, said that although she knew of this treatment, having experienced it herself several years before, she would not have dared apply it.[8]

The third Peters episode is much more intriguing. In his second book, Gurdjieff Remembered, Peters describes an event that occurred when he went to visit Gurdjieff in Paris toward the end of the Second World War. A conscript in the U.S. army, Peters was in a state of extreme mental and emotional distress because of the war. Gurdjieff had not seen him for a long time. As soon as Gurdjieff recognized and hugged him, he said, “Don’t talk, you are sick,” and took Peters up to his apartment. He indicated a room where Peters could stay, and Peters lay down. Gurdjieff left the room, while Peters began to cry uncontrollably, developing a headache, and then could not rest. He went into the kitchen and asked Gurdjieff for something for his headache. Gurdjieff gave him hot coffee, then watched him from across the room. Peters writes:

I remember being slumped over the table, sipping at my coffee, when I began to feel a strange uprising of energy within myself—I stared at him, automatically straightened up, and it was as if a violent, electric blue light emanated from him and entered into me. As this happened, I could feel the tiredness drain out of me, but at the same moment his body slumped, and his face turned gray as if it was being drained of life. I looked at him, amazed, and when he saw me sitting erect, smiling and full of energy, he said quickly: “You all right now—watch food on stove—I must go.” There was something very urgent in his voice and I leaped to my feet to help him, but he waved me away and limped slowly out of the room.

He was gone for perhaps fifteen minutes while I watched the food, feeling blank and amazed because I had never felt any better in my life. I was convinced then—and am now—that he knew how to transmit energy from himself to others; I was also convinced that it could only be done at great cost to himself.

It also became obvious within the next few minutes that he knew how to renew his own energy quickly, for I was equally amazed when he returned to the kitchen to see the change in him; he looked like a young man again, alert, smiling, sly and full of good spirits. He said that this was a very fortunate meeting, and that while I had forced him to make an almost impossible effort, it had been—as I had witnessed—a very good thing for both of us. He then announced that we would have lunch together—alone—and that I would have to drink a “real man’s share” of fine old Armagnac.[9]

One might be skeptical about this direct transfer of “life energy,” but similar reports are too numerous to ignore. In 1917, Thomas de Hartmann was severely ill in the Caucasus with typhoid fever, a deadly disease without effective treatment at the time. “One day I became conscious,” de Hartmann writes, “and I saw Gurdjieff bending over me with the sweat pouring down his face. All his force seemed to be directed at me. He gave me a piece of bread and went away. I sat up and began to eat it, and I realized that he had saved my life.”[10]

Gurdjieff was an expert in hypnosis, which he used both for investigating the human subconscious and for treating addictions and disease. For the former he seemed to use conventional techniques, but for treating disease, he could use very unusual methods. In this regard, he was a great admirer of Anton Mesmer, who had used very similar techniques and had similar ideas about the energies in and surrounding the body.[11] For a large variety of reasons, it is likely that these energies are at least, in part, plasmas, the “fourth state of matter,” consisting of combinations of electromagnetic vibrations and small charged particles, ions and electrons. A particularly detailed description of such a treatment involving hypnosis, as well as some other unusual methods, is described by Solita Solano:

Another example—I brought him a woman with creeping paralysis who had been given up by all doctors in London and Switzerland. They said she would die within the year. Mr. Gurdjieff said he could not cure her because “screw” was broken, but he could save her life. Every day he or I gave her injections, and he taught me how to treat her with a complicated electric machine that had to be polarized differently on different days. She walked with great difficulty, dragging her feet. One day he told me to bring her into his room. I helped her in a chair and started toward the door.

He said to me, “Not necessary go.”

I turned at the moment his arm stretched toward her and downward in a swift gesture.

“Dormez [sleep], Madame,” he said.

Her eyes closed at once. For perhaps three or four minutes he stood before her, passing his hands from her head to her feet, at the distance of two feet, or less. Then he called, “Madame!” and she opened her eyes. After a question or two about her health, he told me to take her away. I went to assist her, but she rose from her chair and walked quickly to the door, to the front door, down the stairs and into the street. I caught her up and walked by her side.

“Je me demande pourquoi il n’a rien fait pour moi aujourd’hui,” (I wonder why he didn’t do anything for me today) she said. She did not know she had slept, she did not notice she was walking.

In the taxi she scarcely spoke, left it without my aid (usually it was necessary for me and the chauffeur both, to get her in or out of a car) and at her hotel she easily climbed the stairs.

Finally I said to her, “You seem to be walking better today.”

“Tiens, why so I am.”

The next morning she was as before. Part of this mystery is that she never once, then or later, asked me what had happened. She did not ever walk again, nor did she die. She is living in Switzerland today.[12]

Gurdjieff’s uncanny ability to manipulate and transmit energies extended into an apparent capacity to confer special healing powers to water. Mme de Hartmann reported as follows in 1926, when Gurdjieff’s wife was dying of cancer:

She [Gurdjieff’s wife] stayed in a big room at the end of the Ritz corridor in the Prieuré and two young people looked after her. Mr. G came once and sat near her window in an armchair. She could not swallow anymore, even liquids. I had just entered the room when he told me, “Give me a half-glass of water.” He held it in his hands about ten minutes and then told me to give it to her to drink. I couldn’t avoid telling Mr. G, “but you know she cannot swallow.” He repeated, “give it to her to drink.” What could I do? She was his wife. So I lifted her head and tried to give her to drink. And can you imagine, she drank it all and after that, perhaps for nearly a month, she was able to swallow liquids. Once when the doctor came to see her and stayed to dinner with us, he sat near me and told me, “She should have died a month ago. I cannot understand how she continues to live.”[13]

There is significant and credible recent research on “structured water,”[14] which I will not dwell on here, but which indicates that water, rather than being simply a passive solvent, can acquire a molecular and electromagnetic structure, due to “hydrogen bonding,” so as to be itself therapeutic, even in the absence of any dissolved medicine. This could, among other things, validate homeopaths’ claims about the therapeutic effects of extremely diluted substances.

Gurdjieff was a renowned cook and used food as medicine. “One day,” writes René Zuber, “I ventured a remark on this subject. ‘In fact, Monsieur, cooking could well be a branch of medicine?’ which brought the response, ‘No, medicine branch of cooking.’”[15]

He typically had an assortment of special dishes next to him at his ritual dinners, which he would selectively offer to specific guests.

There are several striking stories of remarkable “cures” in this area. Tcheslaw Tchekhovitch, who was living with Gurdjieff in Constantinople in 1921, reports on a spoiled young man from a rich family who was eating voluminous amounts of food and yet losing weight and generally wasting away.

Alexis used to begin his day with a breakfast of three or four large cups of coffee, twenty fried eggs or an enormous omelette, and bread and butter in corresponding quantities. For lunch, this young Pantagruel devoured several bowls of soup, a number of steaks, a variety of vegetables, and an almost endless supply of desserts. His millionaire father hoped to make an athlete of him and believed that such a diet could only lead to perfect health.

I don’t know how long this went on, but one day those around him recognized with astonishment that, instead of filling out, gaining weight, and becoming athletic, Alexis was getting thinner and thinner.[16]

After several unsuccessful treatments by physicians of increasing renown that included medications and an even richer diet, the father, on the advice of Dr. Stjoernval, appealed to Gurdjieff to take Alexis on as a patient. Gurdjieff, after examining him and ordering blood tests, which showed severe malnutrition, agreed, for a considerable fee, but insisted Alexis live with him and his treatment not be interfered with. From the first day, Gurdjieff dramatically restricted Alexis’ diet—to a normal level—and, using all of his persuasive guile, engaged him in strenuous physical work.

“After six weeks,” Tchekhovitch writes, “some color appeared on Alexis’ face, his hunger was less painful, he began to smile, and his cheeks filled out. I noticed that he had even become aware of the presence of women.”[17] After several more weeks Alexis was fully restored to good health. Gurdjieff explained to his pupils that the amounts of food Alexis had been eating had so overwhelmed and diluted his “gastric juices” that they could not digest even a small amount of it.

In the 1930s Gurdjieff prepared a special meal for Frank Lloyd Wright, who had married one of his pupils, and suffered from chronic, painful gallbladder attacks. Wright, having been delayed and having already eaten, was not hungry when he arrived and worried that the rich food would trigger an attack, but Gurdjieff persuaded him to eat it all:

During the night around 2 a.m. Mr. Wright awakened with violent pains, moaning and cursing Gurdjieff, his devilish oriental dishes, his wife’s insistence that he meet with Gurdjieff, and cursing his fate in general. Mrs. Wright, desperate and wrought up herself by this disastrous turn of affairs, found a hot water bottle and after about two hours Mr. Wright had some relief.

At 8 o’clock the next morning Mrs. Wright was shaken out of a fretful sleep with a cheery “Good morning Mother, wake up and prepare me a breakfast of bacon and eggs. I feel wonderful.” The master had been successful. The various condiments and herbs he had employed had stirred up the gall bladder, inflamed it to be sure, but had forced it to empty its contents. Gurdjieff had carefully inquired as to FLW’s symptoms when he had talked with Mrs. Wright before their coming. He had planned it all. That is the reason that he had to employ any and all desperate means to get FLW to eat his “special dishes.”[18]

The cure was permanent. □

Dr. Wertenbaker earned his medical degree from New York University School of Medicine and subsequently trained in neurology, ophthalmology and neuro-ophthalmology. He incorporates extensive knowledge of ocular and brain systems to arrive at precise anatomic and physiologic diagnoses. In addition to a private practice for 25 years, he has had academic and clinical appointments, including Associate Clinical Professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Director of the Neuro-ophthalmology Service at Montefiore Medical Center. He has published a number of books on the Gurdjieff Work.[19] For many years a participant in the Welch group in the New York Foundation, he also visits groups in Philadelphia and the Rochester Folk Art Guild.