CB, I'm a cynic in regard to both Chinese and other traditional medicines and western medicine. Western medicine tends to the prescriptive ambulance at the bottom of the hill method. I won't bore you with the details, but the essential problem of 'western' and 'eastern' medical ideas and all of us is ignorance.
My parents watched a thyroid operation in China in the 1970s done with acupuncture. I have some photos my father took of it. I'm cynical about such claims too and as with Uri Geller's spoon bending, I'd like to check for little tricks like an epidural drip into the spine, or maybe a bit of opium and other stuff.
But it's obvious that harassing nerves can stop pain because people can have arms cut off, knives in the back, large, deep burns on their arms and generally be mutilated without feeling pain. For a while anyway! Our brains have endorphins or something which shut down pain zones, presumably so we can in extremus keep functioning to resolve the problem, which might be a wolf eating our arm or something needing urgent attention.
It's the little things which hurt, such as a hammer on a thumb! Our bodies must find it necessary to get our attention for what might otherwise be ignored as a minor issue. Therefore it takes major nerve messages to shut down the pain zone in our brains.
That process could be duplicated by acupuncture I suppose, if one knew how to harass sufficient nerves in the right way. After a lot of time sticking needles in people, I guess talented exponents can do it for a lot of purposes.
I'd prefer that to the suffocating, brain-damaging ether, or chloroform with which I was poisoned by doctors in the 1950s to remove my tonsils, which probably just needed a better diet, rich in vitamin C, E, zinc, selenium and other probably missing aspects of my diet. Maybe no wool and house mites would have been good too [to avoid allergy inflammation which gives easy access to bugs].
Opium presumably uses the same brain-deadening mechanisms that our natural endorphins do. So, with a bit of acupuncture, an epidural anaesthetic and some blood opium I dare say one could be wide awake with open heart surgery. A bit of traditional curare might be a good idea too.
The doctors should make greater efforts to avoid getting bubbles in the brain too!! I'm amazed that it's difficult to separate bubbles from a liquid. They should consult some chemical engineers. Bubbles float for a start, so that's a good start for a way to remove them.
The best strategy is to avoid both western and eastern doctors. They used to bleed people with leeches. Talk about wacko. The list of mad treatments is horrific.
Mqurice |
