Letter

Alternative medicine: the reality

Dear healthmatters — Rosalind Coward, in extracts from her book The Whole Truth, asks: ‘Who could have seen 15 years ago the current popularity of “alternative” therapies?’ Well, I for one, and many others who have argued the case of complementary medicine over the past quarter century. I also foresaw that as alternatives to allopathic medicine gained ground, books and articles whose purpose was to ‘expose’ such ‘quackery’ would proliferate. What Ros Coward does not seem to realise is that it has all been said before, but despite such books and articles, alternative medicine continues to grow because so many people have continued to derive benefit from their practitioners.

A recent survey suggest that 77% of the population would like to see alternative medicine available on the NHS. The Dunlop report made the point that 10-12% of hospital beds were being occupied by people suffering from iatrogenic disease — side effects of allopathic treatment.

No properly qualified alternative practitioner denies the advances of allopathic medicine: the diagnostic techniques, high level of training or surgical skills; all they say is that there is also a place for other methods. No discipline has all the answers.

We have much to learn from the Chinese, who use allopathic, herbal medicine and acupuncture. Such is their success, many Western doctors have taken acupuncture on board as an extra skill.

Homeopathic medicine is also an additional skill acquired by doctors who spend a year studying homeopathy after qualifying as allopathic doctors.

Herbal medicine is thousands of years old, and many other disciplines predate allopathy. In ancient times, many people possessed great knowledge of herbs, perhaps they had sensitive fingers, perhaps they had a natural intuitive empathy for people with pain or who were ill.

Such people were found in every village and community. They were the natural healers.

Today anyone with a good education and retentive memory can study medicine at university. If they qualify, the giant pharmaceutical companies will be more than willing to fill their bags with more and more wonder drugs which are soon discarded and replaced with new ‘scientifically’ advanced drugs.

Many doctors have realised that medicine has in many respects lost its way and are attempting to become better healers by taking on board other skills. Many of these skills have very limited potential and may be dead end. That is not the point. The point is that everyone is an individual. People respond in different ways to different treatments. As a homeopath recently said: ‘There is no such thing as allopathic, alternative or complimentary medicine — there is only appropriate medicine’.

Alternative therapies recognise that the greatest advances took place when hygiene, drainage, sewers and clean water became universal. Perhaps plumbers have achieved more than doctors. Now we are perhaps poised on the brink of the next major advance, which is dietetics.

Too often in the past, science has set out to conquer nature, with terrible consequences. By understanding nature we can work in harmony to our common good. That is really all that alternative therapies set out to do.