Our friend, Isabell Biddle, left our three-dimensional world four years ago (December 5, 1970). Those of us who had known and worked with her are still aware of our spiritual loss in her passing. Many of our newer workers met her briefly in her last years. However short their acquaintance, her impact was always that of a concentrated spiritual energy a healing and inspiring force in their midst. On one plane she was truly an inspiration, but on a practical level she was an example of the rare human who fed her basic spiritual fire with the fuel of intellectual and religious wisdom as well as with a lifetime of service.

Hers was the practical service of the day and night care practiced by the old fashioned general practitioner. Many people are still living who recall the practice of her earlier pre-retirement days. The phone rang. An emergency?
Yes, of course. She’d put an extra housedress in her bag. Her doctor’s kit went with her, and her hands, above all, her knowing, wise hands. She’d move into the troubled household and there she’d stay until she could see the emergency receding. Only then did she feel free to return to the care of her own household and the refreshment of her books and her mental life.

By licensure, Dr. Biddle was an osteopath; by aptitude she was a ”ten fingered” osteopath. She had studied with the “old timers” who had surrounded the “old doctor,” as Dr. Still (the founder of osteopathy) was affectionately called. In spite of her basic conservatism, throughout her life she explored newer methods of manipulation and healing as she heard about them. She was highly discriminating in her acceptance of innovations. In her later years, she studied homeopathy and used it skillfully as an adjunct to her manipulative therapy. Another therapeutic approach which won her loyalty was the application of the structural premises of Dr. Sutherland now known as cranial osteopathy. Dr. Biddle’s native manipulative aptitude lent her great skill in applying these principles, which she maintained embodied the thoughts of Swendenborg.

Dr. Biddle was a woman who deserved the appellation “wise.” Through much of her life she kept in touch with the practices of the metaphysical teachers who lived and taught in Los Angeles – Ernest Holmes, Dr. Murphy, and others but one felt that she was not a “seeker” in the accepted Los Angeles sense. She had long since found what she needed to know. This was manifest in her life. Her reverence and loyalty to Swedenborg and his teachings focused her thinking through most of her life. She once confessed to me concerning the way she attained and maintained this focus. Knowing that her body demanded rest (she was a woman with much structural damage from early illness and accident), she compromised by staying in bed Sunday mornings. There, week after week and year after year. she studied the Swedenborg books dealing with anatomy and physiology, comparing the various editions and texts. Through many years she suffered from insomnia. Here, too. she consoled her untiring energy by working on the Swedenborg texts. The extent to which she absorbed and identified with the Swedenborg material is evident in her writing. Frequently it is difficult to determine whether she is writing spontaneously or quoting Swedenborg.

At about age 70, Dr. Biddle “retired” – or so she thought. She gave up her office in Los Angeles and retired to her house of old-fashioned comfort and warmth in Glendale. She planned to keep from boredom by taking ten children spastics, post polios, or otherwise handicapped children and doing her best for them. Very shortly she found several dozen children on her schedule. This was only the beginning. Her Los Angeles patients discovered her hideout, and this then was the end of her “retirement.”

At about this time, she heard about a new technique, Structural Integration. Her pioneering spirit could not rest until she had investigated, taken classes, and experienced it. Shortly she was fired by a new enthusiasm. She wanted to open a sanatorium where Structural Integration could be administered under controlled conditions. She was disappointed and somewhat chagrined that I could not share her enthusiasm for this project. Somehow the reality of a physically fragile 75-year-old woman dealing with the frustrations and problems involved in running such an institution seemed, in my mind, little short of a death sentence. Finally she saw her proposal more realistically, and slowly she abandoned it.

In accepting the premises of Structural Integration, Dr. Biddle reactivated her meditations on Swedenborg. In her last several years, as a result of two serious automobile accidents, she was virtually immobilized; much of her time was spent in bed. But here she had the comfort of her old Swedenborg. Her lament was that she wanted to write a book. a small book, about the pattern of the developing fascial web according to the premises of Swedenborg. She felt sure that the successful modus operandi of Structural Integration related directly to this fascial web, and her one great wish was to unravel this relationship and to establish it in a published work.

During the last few years of her life. confined either to her bed or her chair, Dr. Biddle started organizing her thoughts with this in mind. The five papers published here were part of this project and were published as she finished them. A sixth paper was largely mentally organized, but never transferred to paper. So many times she lamented, “I tried to get it out last week, but my head just wasn’t clear.”

Even in the final considerations of her life, Dr. Biddle was preoccupied with what she called “the fascial web.” We feel that these meditations claim her place as one of the pioneer thinkers in Structural Integration. It is with this recognition that we salute her here.

To Isabell Biddle
Hail and Farewell.An Appreciation for Isabell Biddle, D.O.