There is really a whole lot of culture in how we practice medicine. Even today with our world connected as much as it is by travel and the Internet, different cultures still have their own peculiar customs.
Orientals use the energy they call "chi" and try to balance it with treatments like herbs and acupuncture.
Ayurvedic treatments are aimed at balancing the body with particular foods, oils, and herbs; and
Indigenous cultures often deal with illness by looking at relational problems, both within the group and with nature.
The bottom line is that all try to deal with illness by balancing something that is perceived to be out of balance.
In our western tradition we have done this by trying to induce the opposite condition with herbs, specific treatments, and now, with our increased understanding of chemistry, with drugs.
If something is wet we use drugs to dry it, and if it is hot we use drugs to cool it.
But while pharmaceuticals have indeed been a blessing to many, too often we have used them without consideration for what we should have been learning from biology.
Too often what we saw as needing balancing with the wonders of modern chemistry were symptoms that were actually helping us deal with stresses from our environment.
For example when a person gets an infection one of the first things that happens is they get a fever.
A fever is what biologists call a defense--it actually helps us get better faster.
When researchers experimentally infect a group of snakes the ones prevented from moving into the sunlight, where they can warm themselves and get a fever, die more often than those who are able to raise their temperatures.
Similarly rabbits die more often when their fevers are blocked with drugs like the ones we take for treating a fever.
Similar experiments with people have not been done because they would be unethical.
But the sad thing is no one is asking the necessary questions to find out what happens when people take such drugs.
How many of the people, for example, who died of SARS were treated with drugs that decreased their fevers?
Biologists point out that every animal that can raises their body temperature when they are infected and that humans have the same protection.
Our immune systems work much more effectively when we have a fever and many infectious agents cannot operate as well with a few degrees of fever.
For close to four thousand years one of the most common treatments in our western civilization was bloodletting.
The diagnosis that prompted bleeding was too much blood and it was made when a person had a fever or any areas of redness and swelling.
When these symptoms were caused by gout or a sprain, bloodletting probably did not do significant harm, but if it was from infection then it often lead to the person dying.
The loss of blood causes the body to close down the circulation to the outside of the body to preserve the more important organs like the brain and the heart.
When a person was bled the redness on the skin would gradually go away as the blood was shunted; the same with the swelling.
You could actually watch you patient get better.
But as we know today it was totally wrong.
It was wrong because the inflammatory response, seen by its effects of redness, fever, swelling and pain is one of our major defenses in dealing with infection.
Blocking it meant that more people died.
Today we continue following the advice of the pharmaceutical companies who make lots of money helping us block bothersome symptoms like a fever, diarrhea, and a runny nose; and when we do, we make the same mistake our ancestors did when they bled people. Like the redness, swelling, fever and pain that were treated with bleeding these symptoms too are defenses and blocking them leads to more problems; and more people die.
Bloodletting stopped when doctors finally got around to questioning the practice and asking questions about what happened down the road. How long will it take before we start asking similar questions about our use of drugs to block these other defenses?