VITALISM
much that I find successful with clinical practice is just supporting weakened systems using herbs for tonification , and generally establishing those conditions for health , removing the obstacles to cure and suddenly the body starts to right itself back towards health .
Then you ’ ve got the sixth therapeutic order which actually addresses pathology using specific pharmacology , that is , modern medicine . And then seven is suppressed pathology – you know , surgery or other more serious drugs . And that ’ s it in a nutshell . That ’ s how we traditionally practise . The reality is with the shift towards evidence-based medicine , and needing to be able to validate and show that our therapies work , we generally want to jump straight to five , and in many instances we forget how important all the orders are . In many instances the therapeutic order , I think , is categorised in order of importance . Establish the conditions for health – absolutely . What ’ s the point of giving anti-inflammatories if patients are not going to change their diet or look at exercise ? Stimulating the self-healing mechanisms , supporting the weakened or damaged systems are absolutely important . We ’ ve got to do all of those things before we even start to look at addressing pathology , because otherwise we ’ re not going to maximise the benefit we could get from using any of the “ antis ”.
… So when we look at addressing pathology most practitioners would agree that we ’ re using “ anti-this ” or “ anti-that ”, and that ’ s what many people call green allopathy , and that ’ s something I think we need to be very careful about . Again , understand that I love science . I think it ’ s very important when it comes to moving our profession forward , but I think that when we look at balance , I think we have moved a fair way down into the scientific side of things , and by doing so have forgotten a lot of the important natural philosophies like the therapeutic order .
After a few years of clinical experience , I think you can immediately tell when you see a patient whether their vitality and their constitution are strong . We don ’ t even talk about constitution much anymore . I think this is a shame , because when science lets you down , as it invariably will when you ’ re treating a patient ’ s disease and not actually treating the patient , then if you don ’ t have that really strong background of our own traditional philosophies to fall back on , we are doing ourselves a disservice not only as a profession but as a practitioner because we ’ re not maximising what we bring to the table therapeutically … I certainly encourage new graduates and students , if they do have an interest in science to pursue it , because we absolutely need good naturopathic practitioners and herbalists going into the scientific field . So that they can start to generate some really meaningful data that we can use as a profession , and indeed that modern medicine could use for the alleviation of symptoms of their patients as well . That ’ s all suggested by this changing knowledge base . So much has changed in herbal medicine . I want to give a call out to the wonderful Dr Sue Evans . She published this amazing paper in 2008 called Changing the Knowledge-base of Western Herbal Medicine 2 when she was lecturing at Southern Cross University . She basically looked at articles that were specifically about herbal therapeutics in the Australian Journal of Medical Herbalism between 1989 and 2008 and focused on herbal treatments of specific conditions that were done by actual clinical herbalists . I think she looked at 30 or 31 articles about herbal therapeutics during her review . One of the really interesting things that she pointed out was that the herbalists who were publishing in the journal overwhelmingly used the language and concepts of biomedicine . This indicates that herbalists ’ understanding of illness is congruent with that of biomedicine , and that ties in beautifully with what we were just talking about . Herbalists are taking this approach so that we can show our understanding of the field and that we still have the core teachings and underpinnings in anatomy and physiology and pathology . The review also looked at the evidence base for clinical practice through those references and of particular note was that in the first five years of the journal publication there were nine references to vitalism and about eleven references to herbal philosophy and that was no longer the case in the last 5 years . There were no references to vitalism or the vital force or our basic herbal philosophical tenets the last 5 years . That supports what we ’ ve been talking about that there ’ s that drive or push towards the more biomedical approach and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write up one of the case studies that I did on a patient with acute pancreatitis . I completely treated that patient literally with the therapeutic order and crude herbs . There was no standardised herbal medicines used whatsoever . I used herbal medicine as food and diet and just looked at building up the vitality of the patient , even though all of my background in the discussion was , yes , there were tests done and the amylase was elevated and all of the classical biomedical terminology was used but the treatment was the opposite . It was actually just traditional . The only reason I did it was because I was practising in the United States at the time because of a colleague who was quite unwell and I didn ’ t access to any of our scientifically validated herbal medicines over there and so I could fall back on herbs as crude medicine and got outstanding results with it and that was one of those things where my friend who ’ s actually a nurse practitioner over there said ‘ I can ’ t believe that you achieved the outcomes that you did just practising with crude herbs . You should write that up .’ And so I did . So the point is if you don ’ t have that knowledge base to begin with or you got trained in it but you forgot it , in an instance like that where I had no access to what I wanted and alcohol was completely contraindicated because that ’ s what
210 | vol27 | no4 | JATMS