Clearing the Air Around Modern Versus Historical Terms and References in Medicine

Clearing the Air Around Modern Versus Historical Terms and References in Medicine

Listen to this article

While I don’t throw modern science to the wind as badly as some people around the Internet, tossing terms and understandings aside because they first heard them from mainstream medical and adjacent sources, apparently I do call enough into question that I was recently seen as an unprofessional lunatic for choosing to look at oxalyc acid studies with a bit more scrutiny. . . by a trained herbalist no less!

Apparently, even in the world of natural health, you have your stalwarts who know what they know and refuse to entertain any change to what they know, and who get threatened enough to slander and lambaste anyone who questions it. The level of lambasting and slander by this so-called herbalist, reminded me of the medical terminology problem rearing it’s head out there.

Most people tossing modern terms aside are replacing them with terms from Ayurvedic medicine or Traditional Chinese medicine, though I wonder how many actually know that for themselves. It’s the going fad right now to use those terms and claim that modern terminology for various illnesses is all a contrived profit-generating lie. The truth is, no matter what term you use to describe various illnesses, those illnesses existed in history and still exist today. The herbs and methods of treating them in centuries and millenia past still treat them today and do so successfully, with modern scientific research discovering why those herbs do what they do, even down to isolating the compounds in the herbs that do it. Ancient terminology for those illnesses was sometimes clunky and wordy, while we use more concise or cryptic descriptions now. What we are seeing, is an increased rise in the beliefs associated with two branches of medicine on either side of western medicine, and all three point back to the writings of Dioscorides as “the father of modern medicine”.

Contrary to misguided opinion from those who have tossed out the medical baby with the bathwater, continuing to use modern terms rather than those provided by alternative medicine streams, doesn’t mean also promoting harmful mainstream medicinal practices. I understand the betrayed rage many feel against mainstream medicine (my family and I were repeatedly “back-handed” by mainstream medical for over 20 years before the plandemic happened), but when it leads to unhinged name-calling toward anyone who can filter the bad from the good more carefully, there’s trouble, and trouble that can be used to turn the disillusioned masses against each other.

vaccineI hope, in the pursuit of medical practice that helps these people in their time of need, that they don’t revert back to many of the practices that characterized the 1800’s before institutionalized medicine really took hold. The medical practices going on in that time period really did need drastic change, because for whatever reason, they’d either forgotten, or tossed aside centuries of herbal practice that are being rediscovered in modern times. Not all doctors and practitioners during that time were doing questionable (often deadly) things, some wrote very useful books on dealing with prominent health issues of the day. But if you didn’t have access to those doctors or their books, you would have died from the “treatments” otherwise offered.

While many practices in medicine now could be considered just as deadly, it doesn’t mean they all are. Today, just like then, if you have access to a professional who knows what they are doing and do it safely to bring about actual, beneficial results, consider yourself blessed. We know far more today than we did in centuries past, and we can lay today’s research beside ancient how-to’s and understand why they worked, allowing us to tailor them to our own situations today. When we compare modern knowledge to ancient knowledge like that, we discover they actually knew more than we thought they did. We’ve just given different terminology to the conditions and methods.

We’ve also replaced many religious terms used in alternative medical practices that were/are heavily influenced by the religions those terms come from. As a Christian, if a given term or practice can’t be described via scientific understandings, and can only be understood within the context of the religion the term was pulled from, then I won’t research or teach it. If science has revealed that a given herb, herb blend, or method does what it does because of real, observable chemicals, compounds, nutrients, and actions/behaviours, then I’ll learn and teach those understandings using modern, scientific or street terms instead. Having said that, I won’t go grasping at straws to make a concept sound scientific when it isn’t. I’m seeing this happening in new age/gnostic/pagan circles where they try to use science to explain metaphysical or supernatural stuff. There’s no question that the spirit realm intersects and interacts with the physical realm, but dealing with that outside of Christ is problematic. See some of the links in my Spiritual Warfare vertical menu in the righthand column of my website. The methods required to deal with that intersection and interaction are not herbal. The side effects and physical damage may require herbal methods, but the interaction and intersection itself requires the Holy Spirit’s involvement.

Let me wrap this up now. You will find me using modern terms for conditions the human body has suffered for millennia. I don’t apologize! The herbs that helped way back then, continue to help now in the exact same ways for the exact same conditions under different names. If modern research calls into question long-held understandings, and that research isn’t trying to sway the disillusioned masses or swing over to eastern concepts of medicine, I will consider it.

Related Posts
Sharing is caring:

Leave a Reply