What we often don't realize in our search for healing is that many of the concepts and theories that are being touted these days have been around since a time when it was OK to believe in myth, a time when legend was passed from generation to generation. Finding a way to wellness dates back to an era when legend could become reality. Today we have come to a threshold in which we understand what our ancestors perhaps took for granted—that healing is everyone's business and responsibility, and that it is something that involves our understanding and active participation.
The healing traditions of our neighbors in the East, which go back centuries of generations, are steeped in parables and evidence a connection between health, spirituality, and the cosmos. In China, Han dynasty tombs preserved fragments of exemplary medical information, which, according to legend and generations of believers, were first penned by the mythical Yellow Emperor, who is said to have reigned from 2696 B.C. to 2598 B.C. Beginning with conversations between the emperor and his physician, the Nei Ching Su Wen, or The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, establishes the concept that supports the need for a positive doctor-patient relationship. With information on drugs, surgery, medical theory, spirituality, life force, the balance of yin and yang, the five elements (wood, fire, metal, air, and water), and the four seasons of healing, this comprehensive record remains a main source of guidance for many Eastern cultures and health practitioners today.3
Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets, dating from somewhere around 2500 B.C., tell tales of illness and list the details of medicinal plants and animal parts prescribed for treating the ills of the time. Historians are unable to determine whether the Sumerians actually discovered these healing arts or whether the concepts were borrowed from other cultures. Many of these medicinal remedies were divided into organic and inorganic categories, with plant remedies such as figs, dates, anise, jasmine, juniper, coriander, caraway and willow.4 Passing this legacy of knowledge and healing on to the Babylonians, the Sumerians set in motion a generational chain of curative information that formed the rudimentary foundations of Western medicine. The embryonic Sumerian teachings traveled history's course, crossing lands and time. Eventually uncovered by Egypt's Pharaohs, these healing arts evolved to yet another level. And as writings preserved in papyrus tell us, elaborate theories explaining the cause of physical ills took on dramatic proportions. The Egyptians believed that sickness originated in the supernatural realm, and that healing took place on the physical and spiritual planes.
As the discoveries of healers became paradigms for their culture, the integral rhythm of contrasting internal and external forces was seen as reigning over the body. Chinese healers set forth the delicate balance of yin and yang: yin, the feminine force of darkness, night, moon, moistness, quiet, and earth; yang, the masculine force of light, sun, day, dryness, fire, heat, heaven, noise, and function. Yin, representing the internal, descends; yang, the external, ascends. It was believed, and is still believed today, that each of the body's organs has an element of yin and yang, and that health is achieved by keeping the two in balance.
Similar to Chinese healers, Greek physicians looked at the nature of disease as sets of opposites: hot and cold; moist and dry. They also described and diagnosed illness based on the four humours—blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile. The thread that binds these ancient beliefs is the theory that a vital life force, when kept in balance, can ward off disease. And whether it is called qi (Chinese, pronounced chee), lung (Tibetan, pronounced loong), or prana, meaning breath, maintaining or restoring balance was the physician's secret for preventing disease.5
Ancient healers developed an intimate bond with their patients; they believed, above all, that nothing must be done to injure the patient. Whether taking a history, feeling the pulse, or gauging the heat of the body, each practiced the gentle art of his or her respective beliefs. Medical advice, even in more primitive times, paralleled much of what the adventurous preach today—diet, exercise, prevention. The Chinese, much like the Tibetans, talked openly about combining tranquil, moderate exercise with seasonal diets, stressing the importance of a serene mind. They believed that it is better to prevent illness than to try to cure it once it occurs—a concept we're just getting around to understanding in this modern age of Western medicine. We've certainly made a lot of progress in the last two thousand years!
The use of plants and herbs was already highly developed in many cultures many centuries ago. Thriving pharmacopoeias were produced in China, Egypt, and Greece. The Chinese, who were using acupuncture in addition to herbs, massage, and gentle exercise, had delineated points on the body that could be needled or cauterized to cure or alleviate pain associated with most ailments. Historians indicate that the Chinese may have filtered water and prescribed boiling water and eating hot dishes as a means of avoiding infection.6 Because Egyptians actively engaged in embalming the dead, they began to learn the delicate intricacies of the human anatomy. Egyptians and Greeks used herbs and foods to balance the humours, often using St. John's Wort, yarrow and plantain to heal wounds and ward off illness. And whether Chinese, Egyptian, or Greek, disease prevention teachings, along with suggestions for keeping the body in balance, were a major component of these early beliefs.
During medieval times and even later, setbacks were not uncommon. Wars, cultural revolutions, plagues, malnutrition, and rampant disease left many victims in their wake. Keeping pace with the turbulence and magnitude of disease and death was challenging for physicians, at best. And in the 1500s and early 1600s, when the ancestors of some of us first set off across the Atlantic in search of a better life, scurvy and rickets were taking thousands of lives before the historic ships ever reached America's shores. Unprepared for the primitive life of the New World, women and babies died in childbirth, and nature's bitter elements took many lives as well. Native American healers, familiar with the restorative powers of their lands, shared shamanic teachings about the healing properties of plants, grains, and community. Recognizing the value of these natural remedies, the earliest settlers continued the medical evolution by sending these ideas back to Europe to incorporate them with the European healing tradition.
As the oceans' waters ebb and flow across sand, pebbles, and jagged rocks, so has medical theory over the centuries. The eclectic blend of Native American, African, Eastern, and European traditions eventually evolved into the new medicine: the Western way—the path that continues to dominate our medical treatments today. Corresponding with the U.S. industrial revolution, the mid-1800s marked an end to the free-spirited, anything-goes medicine of earlier times. Just like factory managers, physicians began to value the importance of fixing parts and keeping our bodies working like finely oiled machines. This type of thinking, along with the concept that bacteria produce disease and that antitoxins could be used to ward off these bacteria, formed the early roots of biomedicine. The American Medical Association was formed in 1847, and by the end of the nineteenth century its members were lobbying for state licensing laws. In the twentieth century, Western biomedical theory, as the conventional route to caring for the sick, was designated the one true path to health. Virtually every state in the United States passed laws governing medicine and its practice.
Because the medical establishment was quick to label alternative approaches to the Western way as hocus-pocus and quackery, chiropractors, homeopaths, and practitioners from other schools of thought (often women) were pushed out of the mainstream medical arena. The Pure Food and Drug Act, regulating the prescription of medicinals, was passed by 1906. With the release of the Flexner Report, Medical Education in the United States and Canada, in 1910, competing forms of medicine were virtually obliterated. Abraham Flexner, a U.S. educator and founder of the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, New Jersey, developed the report to set standards for American medical school education. In some instances the report helped regulate education, which in the 1800s had been far from adequate, ensuring that doctors were qualified to care for the ill and infirm.
But the Flexner Report certainly had its shortcomings: it was rigid, leaving little room for innovation and flexibility in medical education, and it never addressed the patient-doctor relationship. At the time that the Flexner Report was written, this relationship was taken for granted. Of course, the patient would always be considered above all else, Flexner reasoned. So he did not write that concept into the standards. As generations of doctors learned how