"There is no better textbook than the patient himself" - Gjuro Armen Baglivi, the personal doctor of Pope Innocent XII and Pope Clemente XI.
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"If in anything, than without any doubts in medicine, you should know many things and use a little, especially when you start to heal very complicated illnesses. My dear students, we must heal patient with small amount of drugs, for how many mixtures of drugs already taken patients away. One thing must concern every doctor and that is how to help without harm. It is more reproaching if it seems that doctor harmed than if he didn’t help at all. The doctor's inability is the second illness for the patient.
I don't follow neither old nor modern medicine. I, as a miner, collect gold and silver from the both sides. Some particular circumstances of illness should be expounded with diligence, fiducially and methodologically to be seen are they caused by nature or by life's distresses.
When we assemble patient's history, on that road of many crosses, anybody can miss. But in doing this, the method of carefully observing can help, the method which is the rule of skills and the teacher of the sanity. It must remove everything that is hard, explain everything that is unclear, and simplify everything that is complex.
All patients cannot be healed. If a doctor would be able to heal all illnesses, he would be superior to God's power. To doctor is allowed to mitigate the pain, to stop the flow of illness and to remove the symptoms. Only then you will be able to at least predict the outcome, which will earn you a great respect."
That's how spoke Gjuro Armen Baglivi, Croatian doctor who lived on the transition from 17th to 18th century, the personal doctor of Pope Innocent XII and Pope Clemente XI.
Hippocrates noticed that human's soul and body cannot be separated and that man has the biggest healing potential in himself that just need to be started up. Modern civilisation changed the structure of illnesses bringing us strokes, diabetes, chronic tiredness syndrome, allergies, obesity, depression, stress... Many of these illnesses are caused by disability of the organism to adapt to the new conditions. Today, even Hippocrates would have hard time to defend his own thesis.
Old China's proverb says: "Until 30's you deceive illness, and after 30's illness starts to deceive you." But, we can also joke and say that in certain ages the volume of our stomach becomes the index of our success...
It is the end of the year, so allow us to be relaxed and make fun even on that holly field as the health section. So, dear readers, in the New Year develop the symptoms from which your doctor is trying to heal you. Don't ever ask for the explanations about things your doctor do and why. It is nonsense to believe that professional things may be explained so that you can understand them, and above all, don't complain if the treatment doesn't help you.
Stay well, with love and respect, your poandpo.com. ■