3. The role of the Healer and the role of the Patient

"The late 1970s and early 1980s were for me confusing, bewildering years. Convinced that the medical profession's full blooded support for an entirely mechanistic approach to health care was wrong, I resigned from my medical practice to spend my time writing about medicine and searching for a more practical solution that would enable doctors and patients to work together.

 

I had become disillusioned with the way that orthodox medicine is practised for a good many reasons. But the most important reason was that I felt it was quite wrong for doctors to regard medical care as an exclusive science. Nearly all doctors I knew caring considerate individuals. They desperatately wanted to help their patients get better and worried about them endlessly when they didn't. But they had all been trained to regard themselves as offering a complete, cating package. They had been taught to take over responsibility for the health of each patient they saw. And most of them seem to be uncomfortable when their authority was threatened in any way."

 

Doctors didn't like when their patients would seek advice from any other practitioner without their permission. The doctors would get upset. Some doctors believed that the patient's health belonged to the doctor looking after him and the patient had no right at all to look elsewhere for advice or treatment. This particular doctor's attitude caused many patients deep unhappiness.

 

There are some doctors who get upset because patients have dared to treat themselves. Now, under some circumstances, this is understandable. If a doctor is giving a patient pills for a heart condition and that patient then goes away from the surgery and buys an iver-th-counter remedy, there is a very real danger that the two grugs will interact badly. But, under other circumstances, it is less easy to explain why the doctor gets so upset.

 

Taking pills in case of Insomnia: Sleeping pills do not provide long-term answer. They merely provide a short-term solution. When they have been used for more then a week or two, sleeping pills stop helping people get to sleep and start keeping that awake. Even the companies which make sleeping tablets usually suggest that their products are best used as occasional aids.

 

Thus, people started consulting alternative medcal practioners like acupunctarists, homoeopaths, hypnotherapists, osteopaths for different reasons as:

1. They wanted more control over their own health and they felt that they would be allowed to share control if they visited alternative practitioners.
2. Some were frightened by the high incidence of side-effects associated with modern drugs and surgical techniques.
3. Others had failed to find either relief or cure from orthodox medicine.

Wjile some alternative remedies seemed silly and some seemed sensible, not one could be seen as a genuinely complete alternative to orthodox medicine. The best qualified alternative practitioners saw themeselves as offering a complementary service to orthodox medicine. The best acupuncturists, hypnitherapists and osteopaths all worked alongside registered medical practitioners rather than competing with them.

 

In 1981, a third of the French populationtried unorthodox types of medicine.
In 1983, the number of people in Britain seeking help from alternative practitioners had reached millions for the first time.
In 19484, a British survey showed that one out of every three people had used alternative practitioners.
In America, Germany, Australia, Scandivania and just about every other country, the picture was very similar.
By the early 1980s, there were huge numbers of orthodox doctors practising hypnotherapy, osteopathy, homeopathy and acupuntcure.
Even British Medical Association, the doctor's trade union, had began to take an interest in alternative medicine and had set up a special commitee to investigate it.

For however much we disapprove of the medical profession being paternalistic, having their short-comings and of the drug industry, and growing alternative health care industry, it cannot be that we could manage without any of these people.

Doctors and all the other health care profesionals have a vital role to play in mainraining and preserving our health, in dealing with sickness and disease when it comes threatening and helping to care for us when we become frail, weak or disabled.

The doctor, whether he be surgeon, physician or general practitioner, is there to offer technical advice and help. But he should see his role as techical advisor rather than anything else.

By putting an end to this traditional master-slave relationship, we will be benefit in 3 very distinct, practical ways.

1. Patients will have much more freedom. It will be easy for the patients to consult whichever practitioner they feel might be able to help them without having to worry about upsetting any existing relationship.
2. The outdated mechanistic approach will be weakened. Doctors find it ealy to think of the patient's body as a piece of machinery because they find it easy to think of the patients as an object rather than a person. In hospital, a man or women will frequently become "the liver in the end bed" or "the heart attack in the second on the right".
3. The doctor will be able to take full advantage of his potential as a healer.

* two different medicines when taken can act dangerously and be hazardous to health.
* In those countries, where doctors are paid an annual retainer or capitation fee for looking after patients, the system will have to be changed so that the doctors receive a fee for each consultation. The capitation fee strengthens the doctor's feeling of ownership.

Since time immorial, it has been established that doctors, priests, alternative medical professionals, kings, medicine men and all sorts of individuals can have a healing effect on patients simply by being close to them or touching them.

*No one wants to spend money going to see a doctor who never cured any of his patients.

Placebo Effect: During the Second World War when an A merican army medical officer had run out of morphine while treating injured soldiers. Rather than admit to the soldiers (many of whom were in terrible pain) that he had nothing to give them, the doctor found some vials of plain water and gave those by injection.  To his amazement, the4 water proved to be as powerful a painkiler as morphine. The soldiers' pains were eased though they'd been injected with nothing powerful than water.

So, if a doctor gives a patient a placebo tablet and says something like, "Try this, it might help you a little", tge chances of the placebo working are relatively slight.

If, however, the doctor hands over the placebo tablet with an enthusiastic comment such as, 'Try this. It's the most powerful and effective drug on the market. It will help you", the chances of the placebo working are increased enormously.

The fact is that there is now enormous amount of evidence to show that 'healing' works by producing a positive effect on the body and can be explained in straightforward physiological terms. All the healer does is to trigger the body's internal healing responses and enable the body to heal itself.

One of the reasons why alternative health care professionals have won so  many patients away from orthodox doctors i recent years is that alternative professionals tend to be friendlier and more obviously compassionate. They will follow the pld mechanistic philosophy, they are still interventionist, but they are far less paternalistic.

And yet most alternative medicine practitioners rely very heavily indeed on the placebo response, on their ability to heal and on their ability to trigger a healing response. A doctor who remains aloof and distanced from his patient will achieve a certain amount of healing effect through blind trust and faith. Patients who want to get better wil put an enormous amount of trust in those looking after them. But the doctors who cn shatter the now traditional barier between doctor and patient will be far more likely to produce a positive healing effect. The doctors must learn to have faith in his patient just as the patient is expected to have faith in his doctor. If the power of the healing effect is to be achieved, respect and trust need to be shared between both partners.

Patients should be encouraged to take advantage of the skills offered by the professionals only as and when they are needed. The patient must seek profesional advice when he is unsure about how best to treat specific ailments, symptoms or conditions. He must seek expert, technical help when he can no longer cope with symptoms which threaten his comfort or survival. He must always be prepared to ask for support and encouragement when he feels weakened or threatened. He must never be shy about calling in the professionals.

He can take ful advantage of health-enhancing and disease-devastating range of mental powers which have far too long been ignored, misundertood and suppressed.

Only the independent patient is in a position to take advantage od Mindpower. And it is the Mindpower which offers the solution we have been seeking.