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The
American Medical Association style of medicine (a philosophy I will
henceforth call allopathic) has a model that explains the causes of
illness. It suggests that anyone who is sick is a victim. Either they were
attacked by a "bad" organism--virus, bacteria, yeast, pollen,
cancer cell, etc.--or they have a "bad" organ--liver, kidney,
gall bladder, even brain. Or, the victim may also have been cursed by
"bad" genes. In any case, the cause of the disease is not the
person and the person is neither responsible for creating their own
complaint nor capable of making it go away without medical intervention.
This institutionalized irresponsibility seems useful for both parties to
the illness, doctor and patient. The patient is not required to do
anything about their complaint except pay (a lot) and obediently follow
the instructions of the doctor, submitting unquestioningly to their drugs
and surgeries. The physician then acquires a role of being considered
vital to the survival of others and thus obtains great status, prestige,
authority, and financial remuneration.
"Perhaps because the sick person is seen to
have been victimized, and it is logically impossible to consider a
victimizer as anything but something evil, the physician’s cure is often
violent, confrontational. Powerful poisons are used to rejigger body
chemistry or to arrest the multiplication of disease bacteria or to
suppress symptoms; if it is possible to sustain life without them,
"bad," poorly-functioning organs are cut out. . . . .
"Hygienists usually inform the patient quite
clearly and directly that the practitioner has no ability to heal them or
cure their condition and that no doctor of any type actually is able to
heal. Only the body can heal itself, something it is eager and usually
very able to do if only given the chance. One pithy old saying among
hygienists goes, "if the body can’t heal itself, nothing can heal
it." The primary job of the hygienic practitioner is to reeducate the
patient by conducting them through their first natural healing process. If
this is done well the sick person learns how to get out of their own
body’s way and permit its native healing power to manifest. Unless later
the victim of severe traumatic injury, never again will that person need
obscenely expensive medical procedures. Hygienists rarely make six figure
incomes from regular, repeat business.
"This aspect of hygienic medicine makes it
different than almost all the others, even most other holistic methods.
Hygiene is the only system that does not interpose the assumed healing
power of a doctor between the patient and wellness. When I was younger and
less experienced I thought that the main reason traditional medical
practice did not stress the body’s own healing power and represented the
doctor as a necessary intervention was for profit. But after practicing
for over twenty years I now understand that the last thing most people
want to hear is that their own habits, especially their eating patterns
and food choices, are responsible for their disease and that their cure is
to only be accomplished through dietary reform, which means unremittingly
applied self-discipline.
"One of the hardest things to ask of a person
is to change a habit. The reason that AMA doctors have most of the
patients is they’re giving the patients exactly what they want, which is
to be allowed to continue in their unconscious irresponsibility."
Dr Isabelle Moser with Steve Solomon. How And When To Be Your Own
Doctor, 1996.
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