In "Healing Wise" I discuss different medical traditions; The Wise Woman Tradition, the Heroic Tradition and the Scientific Tradition. They overlap, but, in general, the Heroic Tradition is called alternative medicine. It dates back to ancient Greece and the idea that there are four "humors." Disease occurs due to disruption of the humors. George Washington got the flu. The best healers of the day, who were heroic healers, puked him. He didn’t get better, so they purged him. He got worse, so they bled him. He got worse. They puked, purged, and bled him again. He died.
That was the best medicine of the day. Today, we think of the humors as toxins, and people continue puke, purge, and poke, only now, we call it "cleansing." My experience has shown me that cleansing does no good and can cause great harm. The Heroic Tradition prefers stimulating, sedating, and potentially poisonous herbs; and they generally use complicated mixtures of herbs. They want to be the heroes. The problem with these very potent herbs, however, is that they must be given in very accurate doses. This is the beginning of the pharmaceutical industry. The active poisons were extracted from plants, and crude plant drugs became "safe" pharmaceutical drugs.
That is the Scientific Tradition, which tells us that our bodies are machines and they need to be fixed. In the Scientific Tradition, health is a measurement. We eat by the numbers. The advantage to treating bodies as machines is that it allows us to deal with intractable problems. My sweetheart’s grandfather died of a heart attack at 57. His father had his first heart attack at 57, survived that one, and died of a second one at 59. My sweetheart, at 59, had a triple bypass, not a heart attack. Now, you might say, “Well, couldn’t you have done something to prevent that, Susun?” No. Very, very high cholesterol runs in his family. But consider this: The surgeon said to him, afterwards, “Your heart was getting about a third of the blood it needed; it ought to have been damaged or even dead. But you have one of the healthiest hearts I've ever seen. What's up?” He's been drinking nourishing herbal infusions for 20 years. He doesn't eat any vegetable/seed oils, doesn’t take supplements, does do yoga, and leads a vigorous, healthy life.
My friend, Ellen, was hit by a tractor trailer, which ran a red light. Her neck was broken in three places. She was picked up by a helicopter and taken to a major medical center, where they took a piece of her thigh bone and fused it into her neck. She can walk -not well, but she can walk. I couldn’t have done that with comfrey, love, or my drum. But two weeks later, everybody in the hospital wanted to know what we were doing because Ellen was healing so rapidly. That's comfrey, love, and my drum. I’m one of the people who coined the term, "integrated medicine." I want all three traditions to be recognized for their strengths and weaknesses, so each person can have the health care that is best suited to them and their situation.
The third tradition is the oldest tradition of them all and the tradition that I speak for: the Wise Woman Tradition. In the Scientific Tradition (linear) we fix the broken machine; in the Heroic Tradition (circular) we cleanse the filthy temple. In the Wise Woman Tradition (spiralic), we nourish the unique wholeness of each individual. Nourishment certainly has to do with what we eat, but it is more. Everything we take in - sights, sounds, thoughts, stories, smells, everything - becomes part of us. Many people who eat well are on a diet of junk food when it comes to what they take in other than food. No, I don't watch television.
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Susun Weed
PO Box 64
Woodstock, NY 12498
Fax: 1-845-246-8081
Author Resource:-
Susun is one of America's best-known authorities on herbal medicine and natural approaches to women's health. Learn more at Susun’s site.
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