Primal Health by Michel Odent

Author:Michel Odent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Clairview
Published: 2012-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

The Doctor

The history of medicine often seems like the history of new treatments. They arrive on the scene, are widely accepted and used, and are then condemned and disappear because the side-effects outweigh their advantages. This was already true in the time of Molière. During his epoch, however, the arsenal of treatments was limited. There was, for example, bloodletting, and drugs like antimony. Nobody will ever be able to estimate the harm done by blood-letting and antimony. Because Louis XIV thought he had been cured by antimony, it was not until two centuries later that it became completely discredited in France!

The history of medicine can only be understood properly when you compare the typical attitudes of a doctor with those of a gardener. On the one hand, the gardener cultivates his plants, looks after their health and makes sure that all their needs are met. On the other hand, the doctor who may be a much more educated man, thinks he can substitute physiological functions with drugs, surgery or irradiation. Of course, this comparison between the gardener and the doctor is simplified as well as being provocative; there are indeed aggressive gardeners, just as there are caring doctors whose first concern is to nurture their patients.

Drugs

During the twentieth century things have been moving very fast. In the last few decades the rich nations have spent an enormous amount of energy and money on researching new drugs, evaluating their short-term effects, making them, marketing them, using them and then forgetting them. In due course most of the drugs which were designed to fight various aspects of the disease of civilization have been found not to withstand the test of time. What also typifies the disease of civilization is the inability of modern pharmacology to cure it.

There have been some spectacular drug withdrawals from the market. Everyone knows about Thalidomide, the drug which was aimed at relieving morning sickness in pregnant women. It took several years to discover the link between horrifying abnormalities in babies’ limbs and the taking of this drug during pregnancy. Many people remember the story of DES, a synthetic oestrogen which was supposed to prevent miscarriage. Many women took it during the 1940s and early 1950s. It took several years before a clever team in Boston discovered that girls born to mothers who had taken DES in pregnancy often had abnormalities in the cervix and vagina, and had a higher risk of getting cancer of the vagina. The mothers who took DES probably had a greater risk of getting breast cancer. On top of all this, the drug was absolutely useless in preventing miscarriage.

The history of Phisohex (hexaclorophene) is another example of a sensational withdrawal. It is well known that the concentration of ill patients in hospitals together with the widespread use of antibiotics is the perfect breeding ground for bacteria such as staphyloccocus, which can become particularly vigorous and dangerous. Phisohex was a local treatment whose aim was to kill the most common bacteria. When many premature

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