"Retro" Healing Techniques Make a Big Comeback

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"Retro" Healing Techniques Make a Big Comeback
Medieval medicine not "evil" at all
In recent months, you've heard me laud the benefits of
several medical practices that may well owe their origins to
the dark ages or before — things like bloodletting (Daily
Dose, 11/9/04) and maggot therapy (Daily Dose, 5/11/04).
But apparently (and incredibly) it's not just me who's touting
these tried and true healers. If certain modern trends are any
indication, these "retro" healing techniques are making a
big comeback. Here's what I mean:
Last January, the FDA (in one of its rare enlightened
moments), finally granted its blessings to maggots as a
therapy for healing stubborn wounds — which remain a huge
problem for modern medicine. For example, diabetic foot
ulcers alone strike over half a million Americans and cause
thousands of amputations each year. Maggot therapy might
soon slash this number by 75% or more. And in another
remarkable move, the millennia-behind agency approved
leeches last June for clot removal and circulation issues.
What's my point in mentioning all this? That there's hope
that the medical lessons our ancestors learned over hundreds,
if not thousands, of years might not all fall prey to the
arrogant assumptions of modern medicine — that if a
treatment's not drug-based or involving lasers, isotopes, and
all other manner of new-fangled-ness that it isn't worth
doing. This is a way of thinking modern MDs (especially
western ones) have fallen prey to en masse in the last 50
years.
However, the doctors of ancient times weren't so stupid —
quite the contrary. In fact, they often performed complex
surgeries, as some evidence from the UK proves yet again.
According to a BBC News report, among the 700 or more
skeletons recently unearthed by archeologists near Yorkshire
in Great Britain, at least one showed unmistakable evidence
of cranial surgery called "trepanning," a procedure that
involved removal of portions of the skull to relieve pressure
on the brain following a blunt force trauma of the type
typically caused by weapons of the age (maces, battle-axes,
war-hammers, etc.).
Approximately 1000 years old, the skull predates written
accounts of the procedure in the region by more than a
century — proving that early Anglo-Saxon healers weren't
relying on potions and spells as is commonly thought, but
sound medicine (like their Greek and Roman forebears).
What makes this discovery even more remarkable is that the
man in question was a peasant. As such, his social standing
did not permit him the resources to afford that era's
equivalent of a doctor — which means his surgery was likely
performed by a fellow peasant or some type of itinerant
healer. In turn, this suggests that medical knowledge was
widespread enough to have been akin to an esoteric trade,
and not the sole property of the aristocracy.
But I digress. I began by speaking of therapies the
mainstream would, until recently, have considered somewhat
"medieval" in their antiquation. And along those lines...
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The electrifying truth about drug-based depression treatment
It's a running sight-gag in movies and an embarrassing
skeleton the medical mainstream tries to keep hidden in its
closet: Electric shock therapy. In the late Victorian era and
the first part of the 20th century, as it became ever-cheaper to
generate and experiment with electricity, electric shock
therapy was touted as a cure for everything under the sun.
Of course, much of this was pure quackery — hucksterism of
the highest order. Anyone with a hand-crank generator and a
suit could tour the countryside and fleece gullible folks into
paying to be shocked senseless. Funny, but all too true.
However, according to some recent Wake Forest University
research, properly administered electric shock therapy has
real medical merits — like improving the mood, quality of
life, and daily activities of severely depressed patients...
And much better than antidepressants!
That's right: ElectroConvulsive Therapy (ECT) helped more
of the research's subject patients (66% of them, in fact) to
live with less despair and greater functionality than did the
current crop of Cox-2 inhibitors, SSRIs and other
antidepressant drugs. Currently, ECT is heavily restricted in
the U.S and UK, but there is a growing body of support for
more widespread application of the technique — much like
the leeches and maggots we talked about before. But will it
be abused as in the past? We will have to be very careful with
this one...
Again, the moral of the story's the same: There are lessons to
be learned from the "medicine" practiced in the long ago —
whether it's an herbal cure, a creepy critter bleeding us dry,
or a jolt of electric shock. Not all of it was scientifically
sound, of course, but SOME of it most certainly was.
To assume otherwise is the height of arrogance.

"Charging" forward by looking back,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
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Find out how the FDA is playing "hired gun" for the drug biz!

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