Human Medicine and Cancer (I)

Human Medicine is a Human Development. It is a Human Effort attempting to improve the well-being of mankind. Since it is a human intellectual design, there are limitations due to the finite wisdom of man. Man does not know all and will never know all of Medicine. Medical wisdom is developed when scientific research is passed down from generation to generation and recorded for the benefit of future living.

Medical practice is a human attempt to repair the damage on the physical body caused by civilized developments. That means the cause of all the physical sufferings is human initiated and now humans are using human wisdom to remedy the sufferings.

The motive of Human Medicine is superb. The attempt is worthy of praise but the results are far from the targeted expectations. That is why today, doctors are still crying, "we have no cure for cancer", even after spending billions and billions of public dollars. Could it be that human health is not dealt with in its totality? Could it be that the direction of Human Medicine is more profit orientated? Maybe, doctors are trying to treat the symptoms instead of the cause, thus "barking up the wrong tree".

This article does not discredit the medical profession. In fact, it opens the reader's understanding of Human Medicine. I want to encourage you to accept Medicine when it is good and to reject Medicine when it is contrary to good sense (which in my opinion means "divine wisdom imputed through our conscience").

In order to understand more about Human Medicine, I want to bring you back to how Human Medicine developed till the present days. Some of the medical mistakes that were made in the olden days were actually accepted as conventional break-throughs of Human Medicine. But today they will be sued or laughed upon as silliness or stupidity.

Similarly, in years to come, the future generations may look upon the present methods of curing Cancer using Radiation or Chemotherapy as barbaric, unscrupulous and stupid. Once I asked the doctor, that his proposed method to treat the cancer will cause brain damage, maybe even causing blindness or other severe disability if the cancer is radiated. His rather cumbersome answer was, "it is a matter of killing the greater of two evils". This is unacceptable to me. It is definitely not the Divine method of healing cancer - by destroying other organs of the body in the process. My good perception of conventional cancer treatment just took another dive. The "wisdom" of chemotherapy to kill all the immune and defense system of the body, just for the ambition of killing the cancer cells is ludicrous too. From what I have researched, many cancer survivors of conventional cancer treatments usually develop secondary cancers in other locations, or a repetition of the cancer metastasis after a few years. The doctor's statistical report may proclaim the patient cured, but to me, a patient is only truly cured, if he or she lives as cancer-free till a ripe old age. This to me is true Medicine. This is true wellness in its totality.

Early Medicine: How Human Medicine started?

From early Biblical writings, we found that mankind was always healed by divine intervention when they called upon the Creator God as their Divine Healer. God was known as the "God who Heals".

Subsequently, when people began to live their own lives, according to their own laws, after their own desires and wisdom, healing began to take on a whole new perspective. It became human-initiated instead of divine-initiated. When people live their lives apart from the leading of God, they had no one to turn to, and so they resolve to all kinds of other imaginative gods coupled with spiritual magic and a little bit of human experiences, to heal themselves.

People thought that their sickness was caused by evil spirits in their bodies or their sickness was a result of punishment from the gods for the wrong things they had done. Thus they needed a spiritual medicine-man (today we will call them doctors) to invoke the blessing of the gods for healing. Magic, witchcraft, charms and voodoo enchantments were commonly used to drive the sickness away. In addition, simple herbal Medicine learnt through the experiences of trial and error, was administered, and sometimes found to be the cure! It was the herbs that cured the sick, not the magic.

The medicine-man was the modern doctor of those days. He is the most important man in the whole community because he was thought to be able to communicate with the gods and thus feared by sickness-causing spirits. Sometimes healing of simple illnesses took place not because of the spiritual powers but because of the use of herbs for physical wellness. The type of Medicine existed in many cultures.

This in-born human instinct of using herbs for healing is not just confined to human beings but if you had noticed that dogs, cats and many other creatures do look for certain plants to eat when they are sick. Nobody needs to teach them but they seem to be created with the wisdom to do so. Isn't this Natural Healing and Didn't the Bible teaches that too:

Ezekiel 47:12 "...and the fruit (of plants) thereof shall be for food, and the leaf thereof for medicine."

Steven

In Africa, it is common knowledge that the medicine-man uses fetishes to exorcise spirits that cause sicknesses.

In India, some medicine men will cut up flesh from the healthy part of the body to patch up the diseased part especially in open wounds.

In ancient Egypt, some medicine men used ground up bones from Egyptian mummies as Medicine. Their medical practices may be considered more systematic and logical as compared to other cultures, since they had more experiences in studying of the human anatomy from the ancient art of mummification. For example, they learnt about sucking out the poison in the blood and binding up the affected part to control the spread of the poison.

The ancient Chinese civilization was also considerably advanced in Human Medicine as well. They had preserved and documented the highly developed use of various herbs for treatment of sicknesses including cancers. (In Malaysia, a Christian Chinese doctor called Dr. Chris Teo, is internationally recognized as a fore-running herbalist for curing many types of cancers. Many cancer patients from around the world are patrons of his Cancer Center, and he had been sharing much of his knowledge to others too).

Besides herbal Medicine, the ancient Chinese had also developed acupuncture, that is the insertion of fine needles into nerve endings (called meridians) located all over the body, for the treatment of sicknesses. Acupuncture was accidentally discovered when the Chinese noticed that soldiers wounded by arrows sometimes recovered from their sicknesses that they had been carrying for some years. Later, acupuncture was spiritualized and related to the system of "yin and yang", which is a brought over from the Taoist religion. The yin and yang supposedly stands for the two forces that rules in the body, light and dark, hot and cold, good and evil, strength and weakness etc. They believed that when the yin is balanced with the yang, the body is in harmony, and it will not be sick. The insertion of the acupuncture needles is claimed to stimulate the yin or yang, and to re-establish this balance for healing.

Early Greek Medicine

Much of today's Human Medicine theory can be led back to Greek Medicine practices made popular by the philosopher Hippocrates (460 - 370 BC), who is also known as the Father of Medicine. The Greeks eliminated much of the superstition and magic around health treatment, and contributed to guidelines for medical practices such as patient's symptomatic observation, historical documentation, and guidelines for health practitioners (doctors). Either Hippocrates or one of his students later formulated the Hippocratic Oath - which is a code of ethical practice adapted by doctors even until today.

The Greeks believed that the body contained four "humors" - blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. (Compare these with the different body systems found Here). Of course, these were an inadequate study of the human body but they were progressing in the right direction as far as Human Medicine was concerned. They believed that diseases and sicknesses were caused by an imbalance of these humors. In order to obtain healing, doctors try to regain the balance by methods such as bloodletting, purging, baths and special diets.

Besides Hippocrates, another Greek philosopher cum doctor was Aristotle who studied the basics of Anatomy (the structure of the body) and Physiology (how the body works) by dissecting dead bodies.

One of the gods that the Greeks worshiped was Aesculapius, who was known as the god of healing. The Greeks built more than 200 temples in honor of Aesculapius and these premises were also called healing centers. Ancient ruins show that there were baths, hostels, library, theater, gymnasium and patients' rooms. Some cultic followers of this god would sleep in the temples when they were sick believing that the god would heal them or tell them what treatment they should have.

Early Roman Medicine

Roman Medicine was similar to Greek Medicine. They believed that healing came from herbal remedies, healing practices and gods of healing.

Generally, the early Romans were healthier than the Greeks due to their greater attention to hygiene. They bathed and washed themselves regularly in private and public baths, and kept their homes and communities clean and hygienic. They had a proper fresh and clean water supply system coupled with a good sanitary disposal system. Aqueducts were constructed to channel in clean running water from water catchments. Sewage drains were laid to discharge feces and waste matter away from dwelling places. This good husbandry kept many infectious diseases away from the populace.

The Romans had many chemist shops dispensing herbs and plants for daily remedies. Elecampane, a common perennial plant, was used to help digestion. Fennel, an aromatic and flavorful herb with culinary and medicinal uses, was used to calm depression and nervousness. Some herbal mixtures were given to patients to make them vomit out toxins or as a paste to apply to wounds.

The Romans build many treatment forts (or hospitals) to care for sick patients. These buildings had operating theater, patients' rooms, latrines, baths, storerooms and a ventilated courtyard.

Though Human Medicine was practiced to the best of their ability during the early Roman Empire, many patients still die when they were sick with serious infections or ailments. When operations were performed, few patients survived.

Later, when the Roman empire broke up under the attack of the nomadic invaders such as the Anglo-Saxons, the Huns, the Vandals, and the Goths, the whole of Europe entered into almost a thousand years of stagnation known as the Dark Ages. The Roman's medical knowledge and civilization were lost. There was no advancement in Human Medicine. The invaders were poor in Medicine and together with destruction of towns and communities, society broke down.

Under this Dark period, people were taught that their sicknesses were a punishment from God. The authority of the then corrupt Christian Church misled the people to pray to dead saints or leaders if they wanted healing. Pilgrimages to shrines of dead saints and touching of holy relics or statues were made common, in the hope that such rituals would cure them.

The Plague (1348 - 1450 AD) and the Rebirth (or Renaissance) of Medicine

The whole of Europe went through a very terrible medical history called the Plague which killed more than three-quarters of the populations of Europe and Asia within a 20 year period. An excess of 100 million people died from the Plague also called the Black Death. It is important to mention the Plague here because it became the turning point for Human Medicine. After the epidemic, Medicine took on a renewed interest and there was a greater emphasis on the development and organization of medical health.

Historians believed that the Plague started in Asia and was carried aboard merchant ships by infested rats into Europe. The Plague was caused by bacteria that bred in rats. It was spread by the plague flea which sucked a rat's blood and then jumped off to suck human blood. The Plague had three forms: the Bubonic plague (infection and swelling of the lymph nodes), Pneumonic plague (infection of the lungs causing breathing difficulties) and Septicemic plague (infection of the blood and the most deadly). The Plague killed the victims very quickly and doctors did not know how to cure the patients. Human Medicine was still in the early process of development and there were many unknown and un-studied schools of health yet to be explored. The inability of the Catholic Church to stem the spread of the epidemic resulted in the people losing their trust in religious superstition and initiated a hunger for health knowledge.

At that time, some doctors taught the patients to place dried toads on the swellings hoping to draw out the poison but alas, they died faster. Some doctors carried sweet smelling herbs and flowers or sponges soaked in vinegar hoping to avoid catching the disease. Human Medicine was still at its infancy.

The Plague gave birth to a renewal of the people's interest in medical knowledge. People began to be interested in Science and in how the bodies worked.

New medical inventions helped doctors to increase in their knowledge about Human Medicine. Galileo (1564 - 1642 AD) invented the thermometer which became a standard apparatus for observation of patients. Curiosity about the body led to more dissections of corpses. Scientific Anatomy (study of the human body) was made a subject of study at European Universities such as the Padua University that was an important center for Surgery and Anatomy.

Human Medicine improved during the Renaissance period and doctors had an increased measure of success in their surgical operations and diagnosis of sicknesses. Medical books, such as the "Seven Books on the Structure of the Human Body" by the famous anatomist Andreas Vesalius, were published and studied.

My First Observation

Much of today's Human Medicine came from European medical history. By understanding how European Medicine developed historically as above, together with its flaws and limitations, it then helps us to understand that Human Medicine is still an on-going process of human development. We have not arrived. We have not fully understood everything about this marvelous creation called the human body. We are not the Creator or God and we will never understand everything about it. We may have great scientific and medical break-throughs, but we still will not be able to create even one living cell in our laboratories!

This Part One of Human Medicine gives us a greater insight on the following:

In Part Two of Human Medicine, we will look further into its development from the Post-Renaissance period until present day Medicine. You will see an increase in dependence on Science and Technology. Medicinal remedies began to switch from plant-based medical products to synthetic-based medications. Drug culture became the norm and herbal prescription became almost redundant.