Holism and Complementary Medicine

Origins and Principles

By Vincent Di Stefano

Allen & Unwin

Copyright © 2006 Vincent Di Stefano
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74114-846-6

Contents

Foreword,
Preface,
Introduction The making of a new medicine,
PART I ORIGINS,
Chapter 1 Antiquity,
Chapter 2 Middle times,
Chapter 3 Modernity and beyond,
PART II PRINCIPLES,
Chapter 4 Holism and reductionism in medicine,
Chapter 5 The healing relationship,
Chapter 6 The therapeutic aims of holistic medicine,
Chapter 7 Turning the medicine wheel,
Chapter 8 Firming the foundations,
Chapter 9 Completing the circle Chapter,
Glossary,
References,
Notes,

CHAPTER 1

Antiquity

The early origins of medicine

The history of medicine is as much the history of loss of ideas as it is the development of ideas.

David Sobel, 1979

In medicine, we are forever dealing with natural forces, with things in the body we do not understand. But with caution, experience, and discipline, we learn to use these things for the benefit of our patients.

Eric Cassell, 1976

To search out the origins of medicine is to search out the origins of our very humanity. Every culture has its own healing stories. They are carried in the myths that stretch back to times when the world was a fusion of forces and energies that moved us in mysterious ways. Those who could influence those forces became the healers of their respective tribes.

A close study of the principles and practices of any given cultural system of medicine will unearth a commonality that is shared in one way or another with many other systems. The ancient medical texts of India, China and Mesopotamia reveal that the practice of medicine was firmly established many thousands of years ago. Each group had its own herbal pharmacopoeia, its system of dietary regulation, and various restorative practices and rituals. Although each of these cultural groups has given rise to enduring systems of medicine that continue to be practised in modified form even in the present day, the following discussion will focus primarily on those systems of medicine that have specifically influenced the course of Western forms of healing.

We have become accustomed to thinking in very short time frames. Although biomedicine has only been in existence for a little over a century, it is often looked upon as if it has always been around. The medicine of ancient Egypt represents a system that was developed and maintained continuously for a period of more than two thousand years. It served a civilisation that gave rise to extraordinary manifestations of human endeavour in such areas as architecture, navigation, agriculture, metallurgy and social organisation.

As the Egyptian civilisation began to break apart during the time of the Later Kingdoms, many of its medical practices were carried over to Greece.

These Egyptian influences, together with elements of Mesopotamian medicine, in turn conditioned the medicine practised in Europe through the Dark and Middle Ages. The medical writings of the Hippocratic school, the texts of Galen and, later, the Canon of Avicenna served as primary sources of medical knowledge in European schools of medicine from the time of their establishment during the eleventh century until well into the post-Renaissance period.

The changes that we associate with the development of biomedicine have happened very quickly. They have altered the entire character of the practice of medicine in the developed world. Yet elements of earlier understandings continue to infuse the ongoing practice of medicine in its various modalities both consciously and unconsciously. In the following chapters, we will revisit the movement of Western medicine from the time of the Pharaohs to the present day. That process will enable us to more clearly discern the enduring principles that will always remain relevant to the practice of medicine regardless of our state of technological development or civilisational circumstance.

The medicine of Egypt

Egyptian medicine developed over an immense period of time. Approximately two and a half thousand years passed from the time of the Old Kingdom (approximately 3000 BCE) to the breaking up of the New Kingdom, a few centuries before the birth of Christ.

The magnificent works of architecture that flourished in Egypt were built at great human cost. Many workers were severely injured during the course of their labours. The ancient papyri show us that Egyptian physicians were familiar with both the physical and neurological consequences of bone fractures and other bodily traumas suffered by slaves and construction workers. In their more general healing work, however, Egyptian physicians relied on the availability of many hundreds of medicinal substances. They also called upon the intervention of healing gods whose presence could be awakened through the voicing of spells and the conduct of ritual. The Ebers Papyrus refers to Thoth as physician to the gods. The earth-mother goddess Isis was also venerated for her healing powers; temples of healing built in her name persisted well into the time of the later Kingdoms.

A thousand years before the birth of Christ, Greek physicians in search of knowledge began to make their way to Egypt. Some were to spend time in the temples of Isis. They carried their experiences back to Greece where, within a few centuries, over three hundred temples of healing had been constructed. These were based on similar principles to the healing temples of Egypt, but were dedicated to the Greek god of healing, Asklepias. They were the first hospitals in recorded history.

The ancient texts

Our knowledge of early Egyptian medicine comes from two primary sources. The historical commentaries of Homer, Herodotus, Hippocrates and Pliny offer rich observations of Egyptian culture made over a thousand-year period. More valuable however are the written hieroglyphic records of the Egyptians themselves. Although preserved for thousands of years on the stone walls of pyramids and buildings, and inscribed on numerous papyri and scrolls, the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics remained a mystery until the discovery in 1799 of a basalt pillar that was carved as a tribute to Ptolemy V. This pillar, the Rosetta stone, was erected around 200 BCE.

The sides of the pillar were carved in the three scripts that were in common use in Egypt at that time: the hieroglyphs of the Older Kingdoms, the demotic or vulgar later Egyptian glyphs, and the newer Greek characters. Egyptologists carefully compared these three scripts and eventually decoded the carved and painted images that held the stories of ancient Egypt.

Many new papyri were acquired towards the end of the nineteenth century, and archaeologists translated whatever parchments they could find. A few such documents related to the practice of medicine. The most detailed were the two papyri named after their discoverers, Edwin Smith and George Ebers. These are among the oldest written records that tell us how medicine was practised in earlier civilisations. These papyri were destined to open up the complex world inhabited by Egyptian priest-doctors.

The Smith Papyrus, discovered in 1873, was written around 1600 BCE. It carried a great deal of medical knowledge drawn from the records of the Old Kingdom over the previous thousand years. The papyrus consists of a well-preserved roll of parchment 4 metres long, written on both sides. It describes over 700 specific medicines of animal, vegetable and mineral origins that were available to the doctors of the Later Kingdoms. Also included are hundreds of prescriptions, many of which were compounded with rigorous attention to weight and measure of their constituent items.

The huge materia medica of the Egyptian physicians of the New Kingdoms contrasts strongly with the parsimonious repertoire of the Hippocratic physicians of later Greece, who tended to use only a small number of powerful drugs that often contained highly active alkaloids. The final draught of Socrates was prepared from hemlock, or Conium maculatum, which contains the deadly alkaloid coniine.

The Smith Papyrus also details a number of surgical cases. These include observations of the effects of head injuries such as skull fractures and sword strokes to the face and scalp, and describe fractures of long bones. Egyptian doctors recognised early that dislocations and fractures of the bones of the neck often resulted in paralysis or partial paralysis of the arms, legs and body sphincters. They also observed that such injuries usually had a poor prognosis. These observations were made during the time of the Old Kingdom, between 3000 and 2400 BCE, and were incorporated early into the texts of medicine used in the later teaching academies.

The reverse side of the Smith Papyrus describes the very different style of medicine that developed in subsequent centuries. This section was written sometime between 1600 and 1200 BCE. It details numerous substances used as medicines, and records many of the invocations, spells and hymns that were used in times of plague and sickness.

In 1872, a year before Edwin Smith found this priceless document, the Egyptologist George Ebers chanced upon another major papyrus while on his travels. On later translation, this proved to be an encyclopaedic compilation of medical knowledge from the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. It was written around 1600 BCE and is four times the length of the Smith Papyrus. It is believed to have been an important instructional text in the Pir Ankh, the ‘Houses of Life’ or sacred academies of learning. The Ebers Papyrus, as it became known, begins with a series of invocations and spells, and then goes on to describe many hundreds of formulae for medicines. It also details symptom pictures and treatment methods for a range of named conditions.

These two papyri and a small number of other preserved medical texts from ancient Egypt have provided us with considerable knowledge of the lived world of Egyptian doctors and their patients.

Priest and doctor

Early Egyptian medicine was ruled by a priestly caste. Disease was viewed as a bodily invasion by demonic influences that could create disturbance and disease. The task of the priest-doctor was to drive out such influences.

Doctors were trained to use their voices in the invocation of healing forces. Diagnosis largely consisted in the naming of the disease or of the demonic presence responsible for the disease. Treatment methods involved both the use of drugs and the commanding of the offending disease or spirit to depart from the patient. Such commands were probably accompanied by the ritual movement and dramatic vocalisations that are often a part of shamanic approaches to healing.

Those poor unfortunates deemed to be insane or possessed by evil spirits were dealt the worst of medicines. The most bitter and unpalatable plants available were often compounded with animal urine or faeces. Such ‘medicines’ were considered sufficiently shocking to drive out even the worst of demons. In more recent times, Western psychiatrists devised similarly extreme interventions, such as shock treatment (ECT) and surgical excision of the frontal cortex of the brain (pre-frontal lobotomy) to deal with intractable mental afflictions.

The Ebers Papyrus describes the preparation and use of many vegetable and mineral medicines. These include agents prepared from colchicum, gentian, castor oil and opium. The ores of antimony, lead and copper were also used in the preparation of medicines. And as noted earlier, doctors at the time were not averse to using such choice items as the blood, excreta, fats and viscera of birds, mammals and reptiles.

Despite the post-mortem manipulations of mummification, only a vague and rudimentary knowledge of anatomy was ever developed by the Egyptians. Although there were general names for the limbs, there appear to have been no names given to individual bones. The abdomen was conceived as a basin in which the organs floated. No distinction was made between arteries, veins, ducts, nerves and tendons, which were collectively known as metou.

Egyptian physicians took a microcosmic view of the body, drawing certain parallels between its activities and those that occurred in the outer world. According to this view, the metou were held to be vessels that maintained and nourished the body in a similar manner to the numerous irrigation channels that nourished the land and provided sustenance for the people. At the centre of this intricate system lay the human heart, which received and distributed the life-giving influences carried through these channels. Both blood and air were believed to circulate to all parts of the body through the metou. These channels were said to be particularly extensive around the anus, from which wastes were eliminated from the body. The Egyptians used emetics, purges and enemas as a matter of course from the time of the Middle Kingdoms. The Greek historian Herodotus records that Egyptians bathed frequently and wore simple, loose clothing. He comments:

They purge themselves every month, three days in succession seeking to preserve health by emetics and enemas; for they suppose that all diseases to which men are subject proceed from the food they use.

These monthly episodes of ritual cleansing were said to rid the metou of decaying intestinal matter. In retrospect, we now know that such practices would have carried great protective value in warding off chronic infestation by the numerous parasites that accompanied the yearly flooding of the Nile. And from a naturopathic perspective, such practices would also have conferred the benefits of regular fasting and elimination on general health.

Such direct methods of interior cleansing have historically been part of a number of healing traditions. The Essene communities of Qumram are said to have made use of enemas for both physical and spiritual healing. Such practices were doubtless carried over from the hygienic rituals of Egypt. The use of clysters and colonic cleansing have also long been part of yogic purification and the regenerative Rasayana practices of Ayurvedic medicine.

Within these traditions, colonic cleansing is undertaken in order to remove morbific or stagnant material from the body. Such practices are also consistent with the metaphoric perception of ‘the body as temple’, which is expressed in both Essene spirituality and the yoga tradition.

In the present day, colonic cleansing finds no place in the methods of biomedicine. Yet contemporary hygienists such as Bernard Jensen have actively promoted and documented the therapeutic value of enemas and colonic irrigation in the treatment of a number of chronic conditions. The intensive use of enemas was also integral to the cancer treatment described by Max Gerson during the 1950s.

Diseases and medicines in ancient Egypt

Much has been learned about the health of the inhabitants of ancient Egypt through examination of the mummified remains preserved in the pyramids and under the desert sands. There is much evidence to suggest that rheumatoid arthritis was relatively common among older Egyptians. The medical papyri reveal that Egyptian physicians had identified this condition and were familiar with its symptoms.

More recent examinations of mummies by pathologists have shown that Egyptians also suffered from arteriosclerosis, smallpox, bubonic plague and Potts disease. Cirrhosis of the liver was a relatively common finding, not surprising, perhaps, in view of the huge amounts of beer and wine said to have been consumed as part of daily life. Many Egyptians also appeared to suffer from trachoma and cataracts. Interestingly, green salts of copper were commonly ground up with animal fats and used as a make-up to highlight the eyes. This is clearly evident in many of the painted images that have survived into the present time. Until recently, copper preparations were used in Western medicine to treat trachoma.

The teeth of pre-Dynastic inhabitants of the older Kingdoms were remarkably free of decay, but appeared to have steadily deteriorated in condition with the increasing use of the softer and more refined foods used by the more affluent newer Kingdoms. It is tempting to draw parallels to the present-day use of processed and refined foods in the Western world which have contributed to the prevalence of the so-called ‘diseases of civilisation’.

The castor plant, Ricinis communis, was well known in Egypt. The Ebers Papyrus described it as having been ‘found in an ancient book concerning the things beneficial to mankind’. The oil pressed from its seeds was used to fuel the numerous lamps that lit up homes at the end of the day. This same oil was used as a purgative in the treatment of constipation and in the monthly cleansing rituals undertaken by many during the later Kingdoms. This particular use of castor oil as a purgative persisted well into the twentieth century. The Ebers Papyrus also records that Egyptian physicians used castor oil as an external application for surface wounds and skin irritations. Castor oil in combination with zinc oxide powder continues to be sold across the counter in many Western pharmacies as an application for skin irritations. The oil itself is known to contain fungistatic constituents.

Yet in more recent times, the castor plant has become a potential source of an influence that is less than ‘beneficial to mankind’. Castor seeds are also the source of a potent metabolic poison, ricin, which many in the Western world have begun to fear as a potential weapon in the new armoury of political terrorism. Early in 2003, a number of people were arrested in London under suspicion of producing the lethal toxin ricin from castor seeds. Ricin has been described as ‘the third most toxic substance known after plutonium and botulinism’.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Holism and Complementary Medicine by Vincent Di Stefano. Copyright © 2006 Vincent Di Stefano. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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