The life of a Pembroke healer> Pomroy autobiography delves into clairvoyance, herbalism

“CLAIRVOYANT REMINISCENCES AND HERBAL RECIPES” by T.W. Pomroy, The Pembroke Historical Society, 1996, 88 pages, paperback, $9.95 ($6.95 for Pembroke residents).

Originally printed in 1887, and now reproduced as a softcover, oversized volume, the title of this book tells it all.

It contains an autobiographical account of the life and medical practice of one Thomas W. Pomroy, a resident of Pembroke for most of his life, and practitioner of “clairvoyant healing.”

Thomas Pomroy was born in Pembroke in 1832. One of 10 children, he went on to lead a fairly unremarkable early life, with little education. The only possible indicator of his future profession was a propensity during his youth for collecting herbs, roots, barks and berries with which he would concoct various potions. However, the medicinal value of these never will be known because of his friends’ understandable reluctance to sample them.

At age 13, he had his first experience of clairvoyance, foreseeing in a mental vision an accident at the mill in which he worked, and in which he was injured severely. But it is his experiences shortly after his recovery, as a participant in the public displays of a “certain Professor of Mesmerism,” to which he credits the development of his clairvoyant gift.

“When the Professor finished his course of lectures and left the town, things presented a different aspect to my mind …” He describes how, not long afterward, he effects his first cures, drifting into a trance and prescribing herbal remedies of which he claims to have no knowledge, or memory, in his waking life.

In fact, this is what makes Pomroy such an interesting character. Throughout his career, he makes no claim to understand how he is able to divine health problems and cures, sometimes only from clippings of hair from people many miles away.

He rarely uses advertising or publicity tricks, preferring instead to rely on word-of-mouth testimonials. He certainly never claims to be channeling — which was at the height of its popularity at that time in parlors across the Western world — and professes a firm belief in God, to whom he says he owes his talents.

The book goes on to catalog, often in highly lyrical prose, his extensive tales of success across Canada, the eastern United States and even England and his constant battles for acceptance by the medical establishment. It ends with a portfolio of personal testimonials to his skills.

Finally, and possibly of most interest, it includes a selection of his herbal cures, complete with a caveat from the publishers, for conditions from catarrh to cancer.

Although a slim volume, which sometimes veers toward travelogue territory, it remains a fascinating firsthand document — from a seemingly humble man — of the practice of what these days appears to be an increasingly neglected topic. It’s intriguing, and certainly deserving of this reprint.