Complimentary medicine, myth or miracle?

The healing arts have had a very chequered past!

3000 years ago in India the belief was that illnesses were caused by evil spirits and the principal weapons used against them were charms, spells and incantations which were designed to drive the devils out of the sufferer. We are quite entitled to dismiss all this as superstitious nonsense fit only for a primitive people but it is undeniable that the mind has got a tremendous influence over the functioning of the body; there are innumerable documented instances of people who have been convinced that they are going to die and have done so even though they had nothing physically or medically wrong with them. The opposite is also the case; how many times have people been told that their prognoses are hopeless, only for a seemingly miraculous cure to suddenly occur? I believe it is quite clear that we still know very little about illnesses, their causes and remedies compared to the knowledge we could have if many of our preconceptions could be overcome.

It is not so long ago that so-called learned men treated patients with purging, scouring and bloodletting in order to attempt to cure ailments; the horrors that King George the first was put through in order to cure his mental problems seem absolutely unbelievable today, and the modern myth that Lord Byron died in a Greek swamp of fever is only partly true, since he was of course stricken by a fever but killed by his so-called doctors! Even today there are many experts in their fields who completely ignore the holistic side of healing; they will prescribe drugs, many of which can be extremely powerful and dangerous without taking very much, if any, thought about the lifestyle of the patient. For instance, how many of these doctors will enquire into the normal diet of their patients? Proof is now emerging that by merely ingesting quantities of black pepper the effects of an orally taken drug can be magnified many times because the peppers can greatly reduce the rate of metabolism (in other words, breakdown in the stomach and intestines) of certain drugs, thus allowing far larger quantities of each dose to pass into the bloodstream. The consequences of this, of course could be either extremely beneficial to the patient, but where a drug is toxic (and there are few that are not) result could be devastating or even fatal. Many old drugs recognized even thousands of years ago can be routinely overlooked by medical practitioners who are quite happy to prescribe very expensive modern drugs; much of the blame for this can be laid at the feet of the system which quite rightly perhaps insist that before a drug is issued it must go through a painstaking series of testing beginning in the laboratory, progressing through its use on living creatures such as specially bred mice before finally entering controlled trials on human beings. This is a very long winded process indeed, and certainly not least of all a very expensive one and although a pharmaceuticals company will normally be more than happy to cover the cost of it they would certainly not do so for an easily obtained herb or spice that a patient can acquire elsewhere at little or no cost.

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Here in the 21st century the Western world has a medical system which is far more professional than anything which has gone before and many of our capabilities, particularly in surgery, would no doubt appear completely marvellous to doctors of only a few short decades ago. It is very dangerous however for all of us to rest on our laurels and dismiss the teachings of long ago; there is a great deal of knowledge which has been lost either because of religious or even racial prejudices. It is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that there is much, very much that we do not yet understand about the human machine.