Shamanism & witchcraft of the minor medical...

Having dealt with a minor medical problem this past week (of no intrinsic interest except to myself), I am beginning to think that modern medicine, at least with respect to the minor stuff, differs little from what shamans, witches, herbalists, naturopaths, homeopaths,  practitioners of the various Qi arts, etc. do...

I once did some casual research into Chinese traditional medicine.  It was a fascinating stuff & I was willing to accept it on its own terms, thinking that the rather exotic descriptions of the organ systems were probably metaphorical in some way for some underlying reality that perhaps modern medicine simply couldn't or wouldn't acknowledge.   As I read more, though, it seemed to me that the system was infinitely flexible in generating unverifiable explanations (see also sociobiology and evolutionary psychology)--that is, "just so" stories like Kipling's story "How the leopard got "his" spots, etc.

But after a week of consulting with my doctor and internet research, I feel like I'm dealing with the same kind of paradoxical mysticism I found in Chinese medicine.  Oh, I actually did get acupuncture for my hay fever about 12 years ago, and while it did not cure me completely, I quit missing work because of prolonged sneezing attacks and the attendant flu-like symptoms.  But the explanation I got was that because I ate a lot of ice cream my Qi was overcompensating and generating excess "moist heat"--or some such thing.

But I'm getting the same kind of paradoxical explanations from the doctor and from my internet medical research--it only SEEMS more sensible because it's cast in familiar terminology.  It is yet to be seen whether the modern approach will work as well as acupuncture...

R.
 
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