Doctors of old had very little by way of hard science with which to diagnose and treat disease. They were, by our standards, severely disadvantaged. Recent advances in medicine have provided us with some very real benefits in terms of what we can now achieve for many of our patients. However, the enormous strides we have made in research have brought a few problems of their own. One of these is our fondness for reductionism: the practice of dividing something up until it’s small enough to study. We start off with noble desires to study a complex being, such as the human body, but it proves impossible to study in all of its complexity. To get around this problem we decide to divide the complex being into several smaller parts. Thus we invent arbitrary divisions between one organ and another, and between one system and another. Then we discover that the organ or system being studied can itself be further divided and reduced. In this way, we delve ever deeper into the mystery of biological life, until we eventually reach the molecular level. At this stage, and in spite of all our genius, we have still managed only to touch the tip of the iceberg.
There are, of course, many good arguments for a reductionist approach to research. It has led to some very exciting discoveries, and it has increased our knowledge base beyond recognition. For this reason, we have now divided the practice of medicine into many different specialities; and further divided specialities into subspecialties. One of the consequences of all this medical science is that we too, as a society, tend to think in reductionist terms. We think of our bodies as being divided into separate organs and systems, and we tend to forget that every single organ and system in the body is inextricably linked with the next.
In this regard, we are not helped by the popularity of dualism — the philosophy of Rene Descartes (1596-1650). He argued that mind and body were distinct and separate, and that everything in life could be reduced to either one or the other. It is widely accepted that his influence on the development of science was beyond measure — a truth reflected in the persistence with which this question of mind-body has dogged us ever since. Ironically, the reductionism of science has turned dualism on its head. In the very recent past, scientists have discovered interactions at a molecular level between mind and body. What goes on in the mind has a very real effect on the body, whether positive or negative. The converse is also true, namely that the body exerts a direct effect on the mind. There is nothing new about this, of course. We have merely rediscovered an ancient truth. Socrates (c.469-399 bc), for example, said that ‘it is not proper to cure the body without the soul’. This principle was further promoted by Hippocrates, who told his students that ‘in order to cure the body, it is necessary to have a knowledge of the whole of things’. These men considered mind and body to be inseparable. In the true sense of the word, they were holistic in their approach to health and disease. We have come full circle, I hope.
Tags: bodies, health, level
