Grateful for medicine

September 13th, 2006

A thought struck me out of the blue a few days ago.

It suddenly occurred to me how dependent we are on medicine, medical technology and the availability of medical services. Looking around at my family and friends, I realised that very few of us would be here now if it hadn’t been for medical treatment at some point in our lives.

I, for one, wouldn’t be here now. I probably would have died from some infection when I was very young, but if I hadn’t, then an attack of acute appendicitis would certainly have killed me when I was ten, however medicine, or more accurately, surgery saved me.

Almost everyone I can think of has had some form of life threatening disease, condition, or accident at some point in their lives, however they have been fortunate that medical intervention was available when needed.

Thinking through this is more detail, I started wondering about Ayurveda and other forms of traditional medicine. Two thousand years ago, when people realised that they could cure themselves and each other with concoctions made from the plants and substances naturally available to them, they started to increase their chances of surviving diseases and accidents.

Imagine the mortality rates then though. Local plants and natural substances can only go so far and even simple infections would have been hard to contain. There must have been a desperation to learn more, experiment more and strive to increase their life expectancy.

So here we are today with our sophisticated drugs, diagnostic and surgical equipment and advanced medical knowledge. I, and everybody else, I suspect, owe our lives to the medical advances that are available for us, however there is still a place for the holistic natural alternatives that can offer treatments, and even cures, that conventional medicine cannot.

Entry Filed under: Healthy Lifestyles