PC-SPES -=- RE: more on general principals, life and tcm.

August 17, 2003

> so many people take western pharmaceutical medicines .. These same people are terrified of herbs...

Interesting point here.

In the UK (but also in other English speaking countries) there is great fear of plants, particularly fungi. Some of these are very poisonous as you know. We Brits, as a people have lost the folklore and traditions that helped to identify different grades of food - medicine - toxicity in herbs. This was was due to the habit of burning witches.

This 'culture cleansing' for want of a better word went on from the Medieval Period right up to the time of the Witches of Salem and beyond. Anyone, but anyone, who could be identified as different was singled out by the Church and their appointed witch hunters and brutally killed. The modern day story of PC-SPES is a good example of the way witch hunters do their evil work even today.

Of course, we lost our knowledge base in these valuable herbs, and we lost our naturalistic practitioners too. Hardly any wonder that for centuries Britain (and probably much of Europe) was a stinking foetid mess of open sewers and rampant bubonic plague. Hardly more than a hundred years ago Engels wrote "The Condition of the English Working Class" giving descriptions of the dire straights people lived in because they had no idea of sanitation and no effective medical system.

Modern medicine in the west grew out of a need to service the armed forces in their colonial adventures. It was practiced by those who cleared away the dead and dying from the ships' gun deck. It was basic and drew on a very limited knowledge base. Alcohol was used as an anaesthetic before opium was 'discovered'. The simplicity of first aid techniques and the little pharmaceutical knowledge that had been passed down was trusted as an option better than the big fat nothing most people lived and died with.

Thus modern medicine was created out of ignorance and fosters ignorance still. How many people believe the circulation system was discovered just a couple of hundred years ago in Europe? [ How stupidly arrogant can the medical historians be I ask ? ]. How many people people know about the ancient knowledge of TCM ? Maybe it is time to educate the West.

BTW - Fortunately the Chinese were not swamped by Christianity and did not have witch hunters to murder their TCM docs. But watch out for latter day witch hunters: they are not inspired by Christianity any more they are paid by 'Big Pharma' .

Sammy.

bobbiaqua [bobbiaqua]17 August 2003 03:05Chinese Medicine Subject: Re: more on general principals, life and tcm.

In a message dated 8/15/03 4:51:16 PM Eastern Daylight Time, acubapat writes:

many patients take western medicine. but> people don't know the> chemical actions of each western medicine on> chemicals in herbs. i

Even more amazing to me is that so many people take western pharmaceutical medicines for such a long time and have no idea of the chemical actions of the drugs on themselves, the other drugs (how many elderly people in your practice are on multiples of pharmaceutical drugs) or anything else. These same people are terrified of herbs. I am not saying that we can overlook herbal chemistry and also drug interactions with herbs but I am constantly shocked by how people so easily take drugs and are so scared to go with more natural remedies even homeopathic.

Just a thought,

BobbiFor practitioners, students and those interested in TCM. Membership requires that you do not post any commerical, religious, spam messages or flame another member. If you want to change the way you receive email message, i.e. individually, daily digest or none, then visit the groups homepage: Chinese Medicine/ Click edit my membership' on the right hand side and adjust accordingly.