Philosophy and Health - 1

by Doctor Ahmed YoussifEltassa

Chinese or Western, health is health anywhere, although the East fascinates the West and the West convinces the East.

So what is the secret of each one?
How can traditional Chinese medicine or eastern medicine in general, seduce thousands of western practitioners around the world, while other thousands of eastern practitioners are looking forward to becoming more western-minded in their practice and understanding of what is meant by health and disease?

Is this the proof that "the grass is always greener in the other side of the fence," or "a man is never a prophet in his own country," or "in the smith's (ironmonger) house the knife is made of wood?"

Maybe, but we should look for the common and essential points in them instead the differences between them.

Love is the great secret of both, not only in the two cultures' approaches to medicine, but in any aspect of life and nature.

Independently of any racial or ethnic differences, even before Confucius or Socrates, mankind has lived with four basic loves, from which all kinds of love derive:
1. Filial love (between children and parents).
2. Fraternal love (between brothers and sisters).
3. Marital love (between spouses).
4. Civic love (between citizens and leaders).

To these, you can add a special kind of love: between medicine and mankind, shown day by day through struggling and fighting diseases and pain.

Love between doctors and patients, in both medicines, is reponsible for at least 50 percent of a patient's improvement and cure. In the same way, at least 50 percent of all diseases are caused by lack of love.

For example, lack of love between the structures of the human body itself, causing autoimmune diseases; between the body and the environment, causing degenerative diseases; or between body, soul and mind, causing psychosomatic diseases.

The goal of any practitioner, whether in the West or in the East, is to seek a full comprehension of what is healthy and what is not. To keep people healthy and to cure patients is necessary to bring love firstly into the individual itself, then between individuals and finally between individuals and their environment.

The eastern-born Chinese medicine and the western-born Greek medicine both agree that illnesses sometimes can start and develop from simple misconceptions or wrong information, leading the patient to a real disease.

For example, to believe in superstitious things, such as that mixing certain foods can be life-threatening, or to believe that diseases are caused by spirits (both common in many cultures), can really influence the health of an individual.

Misunderstandings leading to complex situations and illness are sorrowfully common to experience in life, especially for those who have lived in Asia long enough to know how to communicate and how to express themselves well using the local language.

In fact, the "disease of the mind" is far more serious and less admitted than any other illness. When the soul or the body is ill, you just affect a person or a group in particular, but when the mind is puzzled, you affect the whole of mankind.

One of the most hateful "mind-disease" affecting mankind is the prejudice, whether racial, economical or cultural. All are inhuman and loveless. Even today, with only two years left until the 21st century, this disease still causes hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world each year.

Why not be happy with someone far different from you, interested in them, and exercising comprehension and kindness?

Health starts right here: be healthy means to be happy.

The search for an extensive comprehension and acknowledgment can reveal the powerful and curative love dwelling in the hearts.

Is it not worthy to try helping people to heal themselves? This is at least cheap and democratic comparing to today's prices and costs for health-care.

Being exclusively openhearted or sensitive to humanistic issues is not enough to promote health and well being. In the same way, it is not enough to be solely scientific or technically skillful to heal patients.

This has been perfectly clear for thousand of years in Chinese history and culture, not only in medicine, but also in other important fields, such as law and politics, thousands of years before any declaration of human rights.

To be healthy also means, be staid, grave and fair...

Through these two apparently opposite attitudes mentioned above - love and self-restraint - we can have quick, but sharp sight of what really is a good medicine or the good Medicine. Whether in east or west...Medicine is always...anywhere and forever a: "A way of the Mean".

The word "medicine" comes from the Latin word for "mean" ...
Medicine, in fact, means: "A way of the Mean".

As a western medicine graduate, Doctor Ahmed Youssif Eltassa is also a candidate for a master's degree in Chinese medicine of Academy of Social Sciences, and is working for renowned forgien medical establishments in Beijing.

Extracted from the WHO library Cataloguing in Publication Data,(World Health Organization 1993).