Observations On Medicine

When Dr. Benjamin Rush was practicing back in the time of George Washington, he was an extremely well known physician. He was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He was one of three noted physicians who attended our first President before his demise.

They all bled him. This "accepted medical practice" was not entirely without controversy. Rush was one of the strongest supporters. Perhaps with a few more pints of his own blood left in him, Washington might have survived... Of course that was a couple centuries ago, but even then people still had a slavish devotion to the "experts" who could speak and write Latin phrases and write in secret code to the pharmacists.

But certainly doctors of today are more enlightened. So much new knowledge has accumulated; new devices, new nostrums, new surgical procedures, new protocols. Clearly progress has been made. But there has not been much improvement in the actual practice of medicine.

From what I hear, a typical patient gets perhaps five minutes with a doctor who generally seems from the patients perspective to be quite full of himself and the prevailing medical viewpoints (dogma).

Fifty years ago, there was a widespread medical "fad" called prefrontal lobotomy, done to many thousands of people with irreversible and tragic results. It went on for many years, making vegetables out of otherwise abrasive and annoying human beings.

"Shock treatment" is another procedure which was abusively used as "standard medical practice" on many, many hundreds of thousands of patients on several continents. In many countries, Psychiatric Medicine was, and still is, used as a means of control of dissidents by the all-powerful state.

But enough of this. Pretty unpleasant stuff. Today's enlightened doctors were not involved. And anyway, they are too busy, what with prescribing "paradoxical" stimulants for youngsters with ADD and ADHD, engaging in liposuction, stomach stapling, and installing silicone prostheses (or even giving SILICONE INJECTIONS) for purely cosmetic purposes.

Does anyone seriously believe that the eminent plastic surgeons who hacked Michael Jackson to pieces over several decades were practicing ethically? What they did was "standard medical practice." The foxes are guarding the henhouse.

Back in the early years of the twentieth century a new medical device became available to physicians. They were able, with this device, to treat female hysteria and depression. And my, how well this device worked. It was MANually manipulated with vibrations provided by that newfangled electricity.

These treatments produced the most marvelous and immediate effects on these troubled patients. And for the longest time, the husbands and family of the patients were in the dark as to the details of the treatment. The doctors were held to be miracle workers. Many of these patients went to the doctor several times a month for their hysteria. Nice work if you can get it. Of course these women or their husbands paid for each of these visits. What did that make the doctor? A wh wh wh what?