The Lost Art Of Medicine

A philosophical approach to healthcare is the only cure

In my youth, I felt very powerful forces were at work in the world that I had no ability to affect. By the time I went to college, studying philosophy seemed the only way to begin understanding and processing the problems I observed. I was particularly fascinated and inspired by the wisdom and science of ancient China and went on to learn and practice Traditional Chinese Medicine.

I later trained as an emergency medical technician and supervised the ambulance of a volunteer fire department. I had the opportunity to work closely with the emergency room staff of our hospital. The breadth of my work in assisting those who were in crisis or ill gave me a unique perspective.

I had a good rapport with some local physicians. They knew I appreciated the best of modern science and technology, and many of them were interested in knowing more about Traditional Chinese Medicine. Their motivation was virtuous, but they were encumbered with a relatively narrow view of wellness. The primary causes of human suffering were unrelated to their work.

The focus of modern healthcare is blinded by the immediate needs of the present. Beyond the brilliance of emergency medicine, surgical repair, and the incredible advances in treating cancer, doctors are limited by a set of disastrous techniques for ameliorating chronic disease. 

Although many of my patients were oriented towards natural and preventive medicine, some physicians referred very ill people with intractable conditions for acupuncture treatment. These patients gave me additional awareness of how often medications are applied for temporary relief, rarely affecting the origins of illness. Some of them couldn’t separate their complaints caused by the drugs they were taking from their initial condition. 

The dangers of pharmaceuticals, including vaccines, have been a serious problem in healthcare for decades. The assessment of benefit versus risk is rarely performed in an unbiased manner; and never with a broad view of general happiness and vitality.

Practicing an ancient form of philosophical medicine in the modern world was a challenge; however, it gave me an understanding of the array of imbalances and diseases.

Although all axioms have exceptions, I came to appreciate that there are no single causes, nor single cures. This is directly opposed to modern medical thinking, and recently, any physician who voices or applies this very simple concept is in great jeopardy.

The courageous doctors who have recognized that defending against a virus or recovering one’s health is not dependent on a single vaccine or prescription, are in serious violation of the mainstream response to the pandemic. Incredibly, physicians who do not declare allegiance to the monopolistic doctrines of corporate medicine are in danger of losing their license to practice.

It is absolutely because they have embraced a wiser, open-minded approach to their work; very much in accord with ancient medical philosophies.

Healthcare as a Product

Pandemics and medical emergencies eventually pass. However, maintaining good health, supporting natural immunity, and finding harmony in life, are perennial challenges. With most traditional medical approaches, sustaining these attributes is dependent on feeling unity with the creative forces that surround us.

All time-honored traditional medical methodologies use techniques that are applied in an attempt to return harmony to life. From a practitioner’s perspective, the most effective way to do that is to encourage patients to help themselves.

Most people seek medical care today for reasons that have nothing to do with understanding their place in the world. More often, patients arrive at a clinic or emergency room after symptoms become unbearable, in fear of further suffering. Particularly in industrialized societies, well-being is defined in negative terms: as not having pain or illness.

The right to take personal responsibility for one’s health and happiness begins with knowing what these concepts include. The modern healthcare industry describes and treats the symptoms of disease; deeper primary causes are rarely discussed. The concept of a healthy life remains undefined and obscured.

The contemporary medical establishment labors at the base of a virtual cliff — at the periphery of an unbalanced society, struggling to treat those who have fallen off the edge  — only to return patients to the very life and lifestyle responsible for their suffering. 

This only exacerbates disorder and disease and is dramatically exemplified in a pandemic where people who feel unwell are advised to stay at home without any access to remedial therapies. When they are extremely ill and have no other recourse they must go to a hospital where there is a greater risk of deterioration.

Despite incredible advances in medical engineering and the best intentions of some doctors and scientists, healthcare systems continue to dive deeper into crisis while the underlying causes of disease are far from understood.

Defining illness by the microorganisms that appear when balance is lost or natural immunity is impaired, illustrates a very shallow understanding of the course of disease. It may be helpful to peer through a microscope to evaluate process or risk, and in some cases, the conservative use of antibiotics or antivirals may be appropriate. However, a narrow approach that attempts to isolate a single destructive factor, excluding the larger picture of a patient's diet, activities, and sense of belonging —  ignores the primary causes of feeling unwell. 

Although convenient for the medical industry, the naming of diseases has a dehumanizing effect. The unique combinations of pain and suffering that an individual feels should never be dismissed. In a complete reversal of what is needed, patients are taught to possess their illness; my headache, my cancer, I have COVID.

Labeling disorders allows prescribing a pill for a complaint or giving an inoculation for a single pathogen. This is not just overly simplistic; it defies the obvious complexity of any human dysfunction and will often repress a symptom rather than support a weakness.

It is hardly a secret that the so-called side effects of drugs or vaccines are often far worse than the disease that is being treated. And the number of people suffering from the injection and ingestion of questionable potions is both telling and shocking.

The continued marketing of high-risk concoctions with lists of potentially harmful reactions or addictive responses reveals the disordered condition of the modern medical world. 

The height of scientific hubris is the claim that vaccination is a means of preventing illness by suppressing infection. It is based on the assumption that the sophisticated human immune system can be manipulated with an injection of foreign agents. Unfortunately, a huge number of studies confirm this approach stimulates an unpredictable series of adverse reactions and is often life-changing. 

Techniques are becoming more invasive by attempting to interfere with the elemental processes of cellular biology. Inoculations that mimic the body’s subtle and powerful messaging system are proving to have the greatest risks.

COVID vaccines, which were sold as a means to stop transmission, severe symptoms, or death, in addition to having questionable results, are also proving to have dangerous risks. Yet reports of blood clots, severe neurological dysfunction, and numerous debilitating effects are the acute extreme reactions.

Most of the less dramatic side effects of vaccination, impacting the lives of hundreds of millions, are never evaluated. Malaise, aches and pains, lack of energy, and digestive complaints often foreshadow long-term chronic illness. But they are not seen as problematic and don’t qualify for medical intervention until they cause a severe crisis.

One Historical Precedent

Traditional Chinese Medicine developed a broad range of methodologies and utilizations, yet unlike modern biomedicine, the science is rooted in a finite set of metaphysical constructs. 

Well over 2500 years ago, Chinese scientists posited an elemental force moving through all of nature. This unification theory rests on a cosmology that thoroughly illustrates the mechanics of cyclical permutations. All life can be viewed as a singularity or as manifestations and stages of change; nonetheless always dynamic, rather than static. 

The Yin and Yang symbol is a simplified icon of this movement of inseparably intertwined polarities; each element holding the seed of its opposite pole. 

The exact origins of the philosophy that gave ground to its related sciences are unknown; however, the pragmatic medical system based on this understanding of the universe developed in accordance with a complete paradigm of energetics — one still applicable to human health today.

The earliest Chinese philosopher-physicians elucidated the place of humans in a continuum and described a complete anatomy and physiology that was an extension of this knowledge. The central tenets of their approach and techniques rested on understanding the dynamics of primal energy as it coursed through the human form.

Vitality is defined in terms of body, mind, and spirit. The functioning of internal organs, including their physical, emotional, and spiritual components, are seen as the manifestations of predictable, periodic constants. 

The human form itself is viewed as part of a greater energy field, with channels similar to rivers, streams, and reservoirs — serving to maintain inner health and harmony with the external world.

Stimulation of dynamic points on the body with heat, pressure, or needles has an effect locally and at a distance, primarily on internal organs that control systemic functions. Herbs and diet directly stimulate or strengthen the organs, inducing proper function and vitality.

In their most traditional uses, acupuncture and herbal therapies are adjunctive techniques supporting lifestyle; well-being is directly related to finding balance. By recognizing and mirroring the pervasive creative influences of the natural world, humans can establish harmony with their environment. 

The ancient Chinese recognized that living in peaceful creativity was considered the ultimate means of maintaining superior health and contentment. And by extension, wisdom was defined as simply being in accord with the way of nature, through self-cultivation. 

Modern Application of Traditional Techniques

In contrast to working as a salesperson for the pharmaceutical industry, the ancient Chinese philosopher-physician was integral to society — acting as a guide in finding individual creative temperament — and intervening before dramatic symptoms manifested. 

An effective healthcare system, if sound and supportive of life, is at the center of a robust community. In our inverted world, where medications having dangerous side effects are dominant, it is hard to imagine applying a traditional approach. 

However, even when the need for self-preservation eclipses the art of self-cultivation, the foundations of ancient therapies are still relevant. No matter at what juncture it is applied, a broader understanding of imbalance is essential for restoring progressive equilibrium.

And this is not some esoteric formula; it usually involves a simple combination of self-applied therapies or changes in habit.

With most patients, at any stage of suffering, relieving symptoms is a practitioner’s initial priority. This does not negate that all disorders, minor and major, acute or chronic, have a connection to the patient’s overall sense of well-being and ability to harmonize with the natural order. For any therapy to be curative rather than repressive, the underlying causes of illness need to be addressed. 

It is often difficult and sometimes disadvantageous to anatomize the complex and organic response in any other terms than the traditional model where harmony with nature is the ultimate objective, rather than just relieving symptoms.

The inability to completely describe how traditional medicines work in biomedical terms is a reminder that they initiate processes on a number of integrated levels. Treatment results can’t always be broken down into micro-elements or understood in numerical terms. General well-being is indescribable in modern biomedical terms; feeling healthy is not defined by a scientific model designed only to evaluate extreme conditions or symptomatic relief. 

The tendency to judge almost all traditional medical techniques with the narrow perspective of whether they work on isolated conditions is a symptom of linear scientific materialism. Humans are not machines needing individual components replaced or defective systems modified.

Understanding the dynamic processes of a healthy human being is quite different than hunting for pathogens, and diseased parts, or examining cadavers. When early European doctors arrived in China in the 18th century and explained their knowledge, the Chinese physicians understood immediately and declared, “Ah yes, the science of death.”

Effective Treatment 

The biomedical model is primarily focused on conditions that have become completely debilitating, at a stage where a cure is unlikely. There is little money in curing, but treatments can provide recurring, profitable income.

In the debates about the need to improve healthcare, the most important issue is never faced. If the medical and pharmaceutical industries make huge profits from the ill and suffering, there is little motive to ensure everyone is healthy. This is not to say that there aren’t altruistic and well-meaning members of the medical community, but they are not supported and are often repressed by the system or its methodologies.

It has been millennia since doctors were compensated for ensuring their patients remained in good health. And this model can only work if healthcare operates at the center of society, providing guidance for continuing balance and vitality.

The influence of a traditional practitioner on a patient begins with a combination of techniques based on understanding basic human needs; initially helping them understand their affliction and supporting their efforts to renew a sense of well-being. 

These skills are most effective when applied with a caring approach and the ability to listen and empathize.

Modern medicine denies the importance of compassion; concern is often compromised because of restraining economics and limited time. Again, this is not because there aren’t good-hearted physicians and nurses whose motivation is pure and whose presence is healing. But the over-taxed medical system and a panoply of poisonous drugs, reduce, rather than support, the effectiveness of human kindness.

While full attention to a patient and good bedside manner is undervalued in today’s healthcare system, it was considered an essential element in the techniques of most ancient medical systems.

Love and empathy are the catalysts that awaken the recognition that very often we create our own suffering. Yet each of us holds the ability to reverse our own distress, pain, or illness — and re-establish well-being.

The essential role of any physician is to engage with patients to catalyze this realization.