I believe this study is important not only for its content, but because it represents a new departure – the measurement changes in function in the organs of man, in health and disease, in relation to life situations and emotional states. It may well be the beginning of a new chapter in our understanding of illness.
Health
It seems inescapable that sooner or later we shall come, or indeed we shall be driven by the economic pressure of the cost of sickness, to regard the prevention of disease and promotion of health as more important than the curative or more often palliative medicine to which at present we devote so much more attention. One of the main difficulties seems to be that we have no clear idea of what constitutes health. So far as I can remember, health was not mentioned when I was a student.
The mechanismic view of disease which was then the rule left no room for a concept of health, other than in terms of no disease. Just as a machine which was in working order ran, so the body was regarded as healthy so long as there was no break-down or disease. But good health is something more than no disease, and we can all recognize it when we see it, even though we cannot say just what constitutes it or how to go about getting it. I believe it is our professions lack of concept of health, other than as a state of no disease, that leaves the way open for widespread exploitation of the average persons natural desire to enjoy as good health as he can.
My object in raising this question is not to attempt to settle the meaning of health. We are asked to believe, indeed, that this has already been done by the World Health Organization, which has laid it down in most authoritative and uncompromising terms that “health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being; and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity”.
Here, adds its Director-General, as a kind of warning to meddlesome intruder, is one word concerning the meaning of which the dictionaries will not have to worry from now on (Brock chisholm, 1949). I need not spend time on this definition (with its necessary implication that all of us are sick, since none of us enjoy complete physical, mental and social well-being), because it has already been ably examined and criticized by Curran (1952). With all deference to the Director-General of the World Health Organization, I believe we are still far from a satisfactory idea of what constitutes health.
The Oxford Dictionary defines health first as “soundness of body; that condition in which its functions are duly discharged”, and gives as a further meaning “spiritual, moral or mental soundness”. I imagine it would be generally agreed that health cannot be fully explained in physical terms, and, whatever opinion we hold about disease health is certainly psychosomatic.
One of the most interesting discussions of health and disease I know of, occurs in a small book by Crew (1949) on Public and Personal Hygiene. After pointing out that the individual must be capable of adjusting himself to the conditions and circumstances of his external physical and social worlds, he defines health “as that state of the individual in which harmony exists between the various component parts of himself and between the individual as a whole and the circumstances and condition of his external world”.
This definition is a distinct advance, but does not seem entirely satisfactory for at least two reasons: first, no one enjoys complete harmony either in himself or with his external world; and, secondly health is not so much a state of harmony as the product of a process of continuous adaptation or adjustment, by which a reasonable degree of harmony is maintained.
The nearest I can get to an explanation of health – I would not say a definition – is that a persons health depends first on the constitution he is born with, and then on the success he has in constantly adjusting either himself to his environment or his environment to himself, so that a reasonable degree of harmony is maintained both within himself and between himself and the social and material world in which he lives.
But my object is raising this question was not to attempt to settle the meaning of health. It was to point out the need for such a concept, and some of the difficulties in formulating it – difficulties which are, I believe, intimately connected with the questions that I have been discussing. It is no accident that academic medicine has no concept of health; for the mechanismic idea of disease leaves no room for one, other than in terms of no disease, which is clearly inadequate.
Discussion
I would now like to try to pull together some of the apparently disconnected threads of my discursive and eclectic review of some changing concepts in medicine.
Thinking in medicine seems too often to be based on unexamined or insufficiently examined assumptions. It seems often to be taken for granted, for instance, as I have tried to point out, that we can usefully study diseases rather than diseased persons; that all disease or most diseases can be explained in terms of direct mechanical cause and effect; and that diseases can be divided into physical and psychological, with the implication that so-called physical diseases can be studied and treated satisfactorily by exclusively physical methods. In general these individual assumptions add up to a main one, that disease – no one seems to have worried much about health – can be explained in mechanismic or physico-chemical terms.
The rise of so-called psychosomatic medicine, which in America appears already to have assumed very considerable proportions, can best be regarded in a social sense as a revolt against this main assumption; and it is significant that this revolt has coincided with a growing tendency among some physical scientists to question how much their methods can be expected to explain.
Strictly, as I have also tried to emphasize, there can be no such thing as psychosomatic disease, for these terms involve a confusion between the methods of examination and the objects of study. Health and disease are necessarily psychosomatic, so there cannot be part of medicine or some diseases which are psychosomatic. What the psychosomatic method does insists or rather reiterates, for its teachings are as old as medicine is that in health and disease man must be studied by both physical and psychological methods.
It is perfectly true that, in some, much information may be given by physical and little by psychological methods, and in others much by psychological and little by physical methods; but we must not be tempted to conclude from this that there are physical diseases and psychological diseases.
It is often assumed that there is an antithesis of some kind between science and art in medicine. If one were to hazard a guess, a time will come when this too will be regarded as having been a mistaken assumption. When this has happened we shall recognize sciences of pathology, pharmacology, experimental medicine, and so on (for many aspects of disease are explicable in terms of mechanism); and possibly a science of psychology.
But strictly clinical medicine will, I believe, regarded neither as an art nor as a science in itself, but as a special kind of relationship between two persons, a doctor and a patient. It will be recognized that this relationship is the essential feature of clinical medicine; and that the degree of success that it has depends, as in other human affairs, on the skill with which both science and art are called to its aid.
$ Appendicitis [Appendicitis].
The Homoeopathic Herald By Das N C.
# 1953 Nov Vol 14 No 8.
^ Bose N C.
~ Cases.
` Lach / Lyco / Puls / Med / Sulph / Nux-v.
APPENDICITIS
Appendicitis is a sycotic disease. It is caused by deficient peristaltic movements of the intestines. Unhealthy intestine cannot evacuate faeces properly and some particles of faeces enter inside the appendix and rot there, hence the inflammation comes on. A sincere physicians duty is to find out the cause of the disease and treat the patient to make his intestines healthy. If the peristaltic movement is restored entered faeces come out of the appendix and the patient improves all-round.
We have nothing to do with the name of the disease as it often misguides us. Our one correct remedy according to symptoms can cure the pain, either it is in gall-bladder or in duodenum or in appendix or in colons. It is not quackary. Cure is definitely better than diagnosis. Nobody should ignore the fact. Sometimes gall-bladder pain is referred to appendix region and Allopaths diagnose it as appendicitis and remove the appendix. But the pain continues. They realize their mistake soon and declare that the trouble is in the gall-bladder and so on.
Stomach pain is relieved by eating from Allopathic point of view, indicates, ulceration in the stomach, as the acid hydrochloric irritates the affected part in empty stomach and the food when taken absorbs the acid and so the pain stops. We need not bother about the name of the disease; our LYCO-200 can stop this pain in no time.
