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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866 |
I'm not setting out to challenge or support any branch of medicine being of the opinion that if it works for you - great.
However, in so saying, it's always struck me how the same symptons presented to a range of practitioners are diagnosed and treated in such different ways. Take migraine headaches for instance - and allow me some latitude in making my point.
Western GP's will often diagnose a slipped this or a pinched that and prescribe pain killers. It's also a good opportunity to do an MRI or CAT scan to identify any malignancies or circulatory system malfunctions.
A physiotherapist will diagnose likewise, but concentrates moreso on manipulative therapies and/or exercise.
A herbalist will propose a range of teas.
A chiropractor always seems to find a miss-aligned pelvis or shoulder girdle and sets about correcting this.
An acupuncturist fills you full of needles.
A naturopath links the problem to diet and proposes a whole new food regime.
And so we go. Obviously each of the practitioners is batting to their strengths - what else could they do? My problem arises when the practitioner OR the patient dumps on the other methods - a sort of unwarranted cultural arrogance.
In my opinion.
stales
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 3,146 |
I think that my GP's willingness to suggest non-pharmaceutical remedies may have been formed during the ten years he spent practicing in some remote Inuit community in what is now Nunavut. A similar situation, where isolation and poverty had forced a reliance on herbal lore
Ah. I knew when you said in a previous post that he didn't like prescribing that he couldn't have been a proper New Zealand doctor. Most doctors I've encountered (mercifully few - I have little faith in the medical profession) reach for their prescription pads before you've had time to sit down ...
Having said that, my doctor in Wellington actually listened to your symptoms before prescribing one of the penicillin equivalents!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Aug 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 3,409 |
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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
most pharmaceuticals today, are simply the refine, filtered active ingredients from former "herbal" remedies.
herbalist where using "foxglove"--in latin digitalis-- to treat "dropsy" in the middle ages.. many cases of what they called dropsy where visible edema, caused by congestive heart failure.. which to day is treated by --digitalis...a drug that contains the refined active ingredient -- found in the herb foxglove!
repeat for willow bark as a treatment for fevers, and (though much less effective) cherry bark for soothing sore throats and reducing coughs.
treatments persist because practitioner's ( and sometimes patients) think they work. and modern medicine, for all its claims to scientific, blind studies has persisted in using treatment proven to be either ineffective, or more dangerous than the ailment they are treating.
routine hysterectomies, radical mastectomies, prefrontal lobotomies, shock treatment, sedatives used during birth delivery that cause hallucination's, drugs to treat miscarriages, --treatement and drugs that were never proven effective, and had a long term impact,(especially on the mother, and child ) continued to be used simple because some doctors believed them to work, even when the facts proved otherwise.
while individual doctors might be competent and caring, modern medicine is far from perfect, and has had glaring examples of creating and using treatments that are worthless and dangerous.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Once again Helen speaks sooth. We were practicing herbal medicine before we were human if evidence of the practices of our cousins the gorillas and chimpanzees is any indicator. When we got to the point were we could think about what we were doing we developed theories about how things work and we went off on our little tangents. Sometimes allopaths will seem to treat symptoms rather than diseases. When we have a fever the fever is a symptom of the body fighting some invader; treating the fever, unless it is so bad that it threatens to fry our little brain, would be counterproductive. So too would be prescribing nothing more than pain killers for a broken leg.
I find AnnaS's point about vaccination being essentially a homeopathic technique to be interesting (No bias here, no sir!).
So what's the difference between allo- and hetero-? Just to keep this post word oriented
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
I think it could be truthfully said that digitalis is the most useful herbal agent so far discovered. BUT it took a good many years of study to derive from it a safe yet effective dose. The amount of active drug varies immensely. There is simply no way an herbal practitioner could have told whether his/her leaves contained enough digitalis to be effective, and when it contained a poisonous overdose.Oh, what fools these mortals be!
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Joined: Apr 2000
Posts: 10,542
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Apr 2000
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>So what's the difference between allo- and hetero-?
oh, those Greeks and their excessive combining forms.
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