The Natural Connection

“If you wish to upset the laws that all crows are black, it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.” William James 

Suppose for a moment that you grew up in South Georgia. You may not know everything, but one thing that you do know is that crows are black. Then one day, a small boy arrives at your door carrying a cardboard box. Inside the box, he says, is a crow that he trapped while it was feeding in his grandfather’s cornfield. He offers it as a gift. 

Not wanting to be rude, you stoop to peek inside the box, thinking “Just what I need, another crow to feed!” and see something that you know cannot be true. This crow is white. As you open the box to examine this impossibility, the crow flies away. You are left with two choices. 

You can become angry with the child, and refuse to believe what you saw. Everyone knows all crows are black. There is no sense in believing otherwise. Or for the rest of your days, you may scan the skies when corn ripens in the fields, secure in the knowledge that there would be no reason for the Creator to make only one white crow. 

I am a seeker of medical white crows. Those small instances where I find that the veneer of hard science can become rippled and cracked, exposing evidence for which we have no explanation. Episodes where I am confronted with medical information that can be viewed either as impossible and implausible, or with amazement and wonder, depending upon your perspective of the universe. 

Sometimes white crows sneak into my exam rooms, borne as gifts from my patients. Such as the story an elderly woman whispered to me of how her brother was saved from his burning home by a young, radiant stranger who appeared silently in his kitchen, warned him of the fire, then led him to safety through the smoky haze, never to be seen again. 

Medical white crows often arrive as international emissaries from other healing traditions. How can it be that by burning a small bundle of dried herbs beside a pregnant woman’s fifth toe, her breech baby can turn in her womb, avoiding the need for a C-section? The apparent success of Chinese moxibustion (the application of heated herbs at acupuncture points), for centuries derided as superstitious and primitive in our culture, was reported in the November 18, 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. 

In my mailbox last week, masquerading as a scientific paper, I discovered a huge medical white crow. A Big Kahuna White Crow, the kind that makes you stay awake at night and wonder what is this thing we consider our body, anyway.  

Published in the November 2000 issue of Integrative Medicine, authors Pearsall, Schwartz, and Russek examined the startling issue of “Changes in Heart Transplant Recipients that Parallel the Personalities of Their Donors”. They propose that the heart contains information and memory, perhaps encoded as chemical messengers from the brain called neuropeptides, about it’s original owner that can be transferred to the heart recipient. Could it be that the heart remembers? A concept termed “cellular memory”, it is beginning to develop support within the scientific community. 

They interviewed 10 heart transplant recipients, their families and friends, as well as the family and friends of the donors. The recorded interviews sought to discover any changes in the heart transplant recipients that had not existed prior to the transplants, and whether these changes appeared to parallel personality traits, behaviors, and preferences of their donors. In all cases, changes were observed and recorded before any contact was made with donor families, and were corroborated by more than one observer. 

Among all 10 recipients, 2 to 5 changes mirrored the donor’s characteristics, often in a striking manner. In one case, a 17-year old black male’s heart was donated to a 47-year old white man. The donor loved classical music and played it on his violin. The recipient’s wife described her husband as someone who never listened to classical music. Moreover, she described him as a person who had been uncharitable towards people of other races. After the transplant, he began to listen to classical music for hours, and invited his black co-workers over to his home, which he had never done before. 

One 5-year old girl recognized the never-before-seen father of her donor in a shopping mall. She ran to him, called him “Daddy”, and climbed into his lap. A 56-year old man was able to describe the method by which his donor was murdered, and describe the face of the murderer. Other patients drastically changed food preferences, such as the male recipient who prior to the transplant loved meat, but became nauseated by meat after receiving the heart of a vegetarian woman. 

The authors conclude that all of these changes could not have been merely coincidental, and acknowledge that more research is needed to see just how the heart remembers. Meanwhile, it will do no harm to continue to scan the heavens, keeping our viewpoints open. Somewhere, in the world must live another white crow. 

To receive further information about this topic, write to The Natural Connection, c/o Dr. Pauline Bellecci, PO BOX 777, Waycross, GA 31502 or contact us on our website www.swampdocs.com 

Suggested Reading:    The Heart’s Code—Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy by Paul Pearsall, PhD  (1998)  

©2000-2003 Pauline M. Bellecci, MD