When religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine, now when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic”
-Thomas Szasz
The dictionary’s definitions of magic:
- Any art that invokes supernatural powers
- Magic trick: an illusory feat; considered magical by naive observers
- Charming: possessing or using or characteristic of or appropriate to supernatural powers; “charming incantations“; “magic signs that protect against adverse influence”; “a magical spell”.
The dictionary’s definitions of medicine:
- The branches of medical science that deal with non surgical techniques
- (medicine) something that treats or prevents or alleviates the symptoms of disease
- The learned profession that is mastered by graduate training in a medical school and that is devoted to preventing or alleviating or curing diseases and injuries; “he studied medicine at Harvard”
- Medicate: treat medicinally, treat with medicine
The dictionary’s definitions of science:
- Science, in the broadest sense, refers to any system of knowledge which attempts to model objective reality. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on the scientific method, as well as to the organized body of knowledge gained through such research
Finally…
The dictionary’s definitions of
- The term ‘disease’ refers to any abnormal condition of an organism that impairs function. This causes discomfort, dysfunction, distress, or death to the person afflicted or those in contact with the person.
- A state in which a function or part of the body is no longer in a healthy condition.
- A general term describing a morbid condition which can be defined by objective, physical signs (eg hypertension), subjective symptoms or mental phobias, disorder of function (eg biochemical abnormality), or disorders of structure (anatomic or pathological change). …
In my last post I had posted a letter by Dr. Laila O’Africa on AIDS. For those of you who don’t know the good Dr. – Baba in the old African tradition of given reverence to a wise elder- may have heard of two of his seminal books, African Holistic Health and Nutricide. If you’ve had the opportunity to sit and listen to Dr. O’ Africa, then you would have had to acknowledge being in the presence of a true man of knowledge and healing.However, the post touched on something that I‘ve spoken about often and would like to revisit in this forum. The issue of which I speak can be summed up in the above quote by Thomas Szasz, as succinct and layered as any quote I have heard on the subject.
I guess my first foray in to the battle against “medicine”, started when I was challenged to explain my reasons for forgoing the cannibalism of those termed animals. My first attempts were clouded in zealtry instead of clear cut reasoning. I soon learned to handle my business and come correct by learning about my chosen way of living and how it stacked up against the ways of those whose path I had left.My sojourns over the years have rewarded my research to the point where I now know that self inflicted death (suicide?) is what we are committing daily.
19th Century Doctors
The so called scientific discoveries (more like butcheries) of the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution period (1750–1900) enabled European/Western (witch) doctors of 19th-century medicine to advance their knowledge. Take for instance the discoveries by 1900 of germs, inoculation, antiseptics, and gas anaesthetics. Doctors were able to give vaccinations against diseases such as smallpox. Between 1880 and 1898 the causes of eight of the most deadly diseases were discovered – typhoid fever (1880), tuberculosis (1882), cholera (1883), tetanus (1884), pneumonia (1886), meningitis (1887), bubonic plague (1894), and dysentery (1898). Women were eventually allowed to enter in this profession and the first woman doctor in the USA was Elizabeth Blackwell in 1849, and the first in the Britain was Elizabeth Garret Anderson in 1865. In the area of Public health, problems were increasingly tackled after the German bacteriologist Robert Koch discovered the bacillus that caused cholera in 1883.
Louis Pasteur’s discovery of micro-organisms in fermentation, and the subsequent development of his germ “theory” of disease in the 1860s, was one of the most important medical advances in history. It offered final proof that disease was caused by “bacteria” found in the environment, and not by the actions of God. By 1900 doctors had rejected the role of religion in causing disease, and rational techniques based on scientific proof were dominant. Today science/medicine has become magical in their incantation and abilities of practitioners to get folks to suspend reality and become enamoured by their incantations and illusionary feats.
Now don’t think me foolish, that if I was to get a bullet lodged in me or severed a finger, I would have second thoughts about seeing a surgical specialist for assistance. But this post is not about trauma specialists, but those who profess to offer preventative health care.
Health, healing and a dis-eased body
I have always maintained that context is the basis for viewing a situation from a panoramic stance. In language, context forms the building blocks for those who wish to over stand the here and now as well as the there and then. The term ease , should be quite self explanatory. I am easy, I am at ease, she moves with ease, each donates a freedom of movement and state of being. There are many variations on the word dis – and not in the hip hop sense, although that can be contextualized as well. Some of the descriptions can be used correctly in proper context (that word again) and when spelled out fully…disease, implies a state of death, dead, moving away from ease. Disease is over stood as a point of ill-ease, or lack of freedom on a cellular level. Disease is a state! I would type it in caps, but I am sure you get my meaning. The body is in a state of dis/un/ill-ease.
And its cause is?
Well when religion was strong, it was all manner of sin (?) from the seven deadly, to what ever the current religious leader could drum up. Today science/medicine is strong and modern day religious fanatics (medical enablers) claim that disease is caused by tiny microscopic “germs” or “microbes” that do an end run around your T-cells in order to wreck havoc on your immune system.
“Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician.”
-Matthew Prior (17th c)
Next articles in this series:
Pasture is full of shit!
The body the human temple
Death by doctors
Vaccination is experimentation
His-story of doctor led experimentation on Africa and Africans.
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