Medical materialism. Medical materialism revisited 2022-12-10
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Medical materialism is a philosophy that holds that the physical body and its functions are the only things that matter in medicine. According to this perspective, all health problems can be reduced to biological malfunctions and can be treated through physical interventions, such as drugs, surgery, and other medical procedures. This approach to medicine is based on the belief that the body is a machine that can be fixed through technological and scientific advances.
One of the main arguments in favor of medical materialism is that it has led to numerous medical breakthroughs and has improved the lives of countless people. For example, the development of antibiotics has saved millions of lives by effectively treating infections that were previously deadly. The use of medical technology, such as MRI machines and pacemakers, has also helped to diagnose and treat a wide range of health problems.
However, there are also criticisms of medical materialism. Some argue that it oversimplifies the complexity of the human body and ignores the role of other factors, such as the mind and emotions, in determining health. For example, stress and depression have been linked to a number of physical health problems, yet they are often not addressed in a purely materialistic approach to medicine.
Additionally, medical materialism can also lead to an over-reliance on technology and a neglect of preventative care and lifestyle changes that can have a significant impact on health. While medical interventions can be important in addressing acute health problems, they may not always address the root cause of a person's health issues.
Overall, medical materialism has made important contributions to medicine, but it is important to recognize that it is just one perspective and that a more holistic approach may be necessary in some cases. It is essential for healthcare professionals to consider the whole person, including their physical, mental, and emotional well-being, in order to provide the most effective and comprehensive care.
On medical materialism and the value of subjective experience
When we think certain states of mind superior to others, is it ever because of what we know concerning their organic antecedents? The call to indigenous shamanism has similarities to that of the Western Medical professional. During the healing and fire ceremonies, participants reported emotions such as love, anxiety, fear, anger, and sadness. This kind of synchronization, Davidson writes, may reflect attention and affective processes, and is consistent with the idea that these are flexible skills that can be trained. Association of American Medical Colleges 2007. Within these nine participants there was a majority that claimed their parents influenced their decision to become a physician in some manner. Stages of Allopathic Medical Training The many rigors of allopathic medical training have similarities to shamanic training and practice. Four general forms of initiation have been described: traditional or cultural, instantaneous, wounded healer, and dismemberment Pratt.
So, even if a certain attribute is changes within our physical system, the corresponding change in the mind state will be attributed to other environmental features. Quite to the contrary, truly effective green healing will not be achievable until the left-brain of science welcomes the right-brain of emotion, intuition, the subjective, and the intangibles of human nature back into the equation of human health care. Reynolds, who developed the system of Constructive Living the Sage. Journal of Anthroposophical Medicine, 13 3 , 10. This data is not a representation of the American medical community as a whole.
Medical Materialism: Exploring the Allopathic Paradigm
Sometimes orthodox medicine is shockingly provincial. And medical materialism then thinks that the spiritual authority of all such personages is successfully undermined. Throughout the month long rotation, participants were exposed to multicultural healing modalities such as homeopathy, Reiki, chiropractic, osteopathic manipulation, Huna, and Traditional Chinese Medicine and After exposure to the elements and being surrounded by the blessings of the red earth, students were asked to privately reflect on their call to be a healer, and why they decided to follow this path. Independent thought is not permitted to gum up the works. Obstetrics and gynecology has a written examination immediately after graduation from residency. A major difference between shamanic and allopathic initiation is that shamans are initiated for life.
William James' views on Medical Materialism, by Dr. Tom Kerns
It is a flawed system, but it forms who we are as people. Imagine if you took all photos of departed loved ones, threw them away, and resolved never to talk about them with your family and friends ever again, because it was believed to be of no practical value to the present or future. The collected works of C. This was not reported as an understanding of shamanic practices, but as a deeper connection to their own allopathic practice. The physician as atheist and the medicalization of the soul. Many doctors plan to quit or cut back: Survey. If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
The impact of non-evidence based disciplines on allopathic medicine. Shamanism in Siberia and European Russia: Being the second part of Shamanstvo. Spiritual blocks would be gone, and science may be able to do what it does: examine the world as we see it, and try and make a few accurate predictive claims about this place we live. The four stages of shamanic training will be compared to a similar stage of medical education in this country. All such mental over-tensions, it says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter, mere affairs of diathesis auto-intoxications most probably , due to the perverted action of various glands which physiology will yet discover.
Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria. In my initial enthusiasm as a newly enrolled medical student, I initiated the formation of an alternative medicine club. Share on Pinterest Researchers say that materialistic people are more likely to be depressed and unsatisfied with life. Secularized versions of these views were common at the intersection of early anthropology and biblical studies, represented by scholars like Robertson Smith, and they left their mark on these disciplines in both subtle and not so subtle ways. Western medicine has lost its grounding, and in so doing, has become devoid of the natural healing processes on which it was founded.
Allopathic and osteopathic medical practice Personal experience has taught me that medicine is a graduated learning process. Physicians are combating the rising costs of managing an office, while the specters of malpractice insurance and decreased reimbursements are leaving physicians and patients disillusioned. Just as in the myth of Atlantis, where an advanced civilization was ultimately destroyed by greater cosmic forces because its advanced state of high technology had come at the expense of nature and soul, so too, twenty-first century technological society flirts with self-destruction when it arrogantly presumes to be able to master and control the forces of nature. Religion, values, and peak experiences. Traditional initiation is the ordered progression similar to a medical residency; the shaman will go through graduated stages as deemed worthy. Copyright 2010 by Larry Malerba. First, what is the nature of it? Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 24, 60-100.
Medical Materialism: Exploring the Allopathic Paradigm Through
The wounded healer may have emotional, physical, or mental challenges that result in a spiritual insight or awareness that comes once they have surrendered to their wounds. Would it surprise Maimonides to learn that we can map the brain functions that are enlivened by the practice of prayer or by contemplation? Stages of Shamanic Training As stated, the stages of shamanic training are the calling, instruction, initiation, and shamanic practice. Because scientific endeavor is usually not concerned with reflecting upon its own underlying assumptions, the vast majority of its energy is directed toward deepening what it already does know rather than expanding the breadth of knowledge into what it does not know. It will not deign to allot scientific resources to the study of, say, astrology, which it dismisses as pseudoscience, but it nevertheless reserves the right to pass judgment upon it. The continuation of spirituality in medicine is a critical conduit to healing the physician. The answer to the one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition.
Otherwise none of our thoughts and feelings, not even our scientific doctrines, not even our dis-beliefs, could retain any value as revelations of the truth, for every one of them without exception flows from the state of their possessor's body at the time. Elder physicians, through the power of the examination process, confer the rights of the Western healer upon the initiate physician. What immediately feels most 'good' is not always most 'true,' when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience. Indigenous shamanic healers practice healing in the community where they trained where the allopath has no overall sense of community. To recognize the extent of this wholesale yielding to scientific authority one needs only to observe how popular news programs and newspapers dutifully report the results of the latest scientific studies. But my excitement was quickly dashed when I was called to the dean's office at the last moment. Would it help us to better understand both prayer and the human condition if instead of fixating on the question of materiality we took that for granted and asked instead what kinds and degrees of materiality are implied by the different functions of being human? Their value can only be ascertained by spiritual judgments directly passed upon them, judgments based on our own immediate feeling primarily; and secondarily on what we can ascertain of their experiential relations to our moral needs and to the rest of what we hold as true.
Training for the shaman is community based, and this may be where the soul of medicine was lost. In conclusion, exposure to indigenous methods of healing might bring the allopath back to their calling to enter medicine and allow them increased connection to the community of patients they treat. An experience is constituted, in part, by the way it is interpreted by the person experiencing it, and it is the interpretation that makes an experience religious. As stated earlier, indigenous shamans also live in the community where they practice. Inner healing of the physician is an important aspect of bridging the gap towards healing the community. Inner happiness and serviceability do not always agree.
