“The average person 65 years or older in the United States takes an average of 15+ medications a day, each and every day of their lives. And only the first 1 or 2 drugs are actually prescribed to deal with the original symptoms.” – M Be
The advancement of modern science and technology has allowed for ways of studying the incredibly small and the commensurably big. Technical capabilities for research make possibilities endless, but private funding means that our great scientists work in silos, answering to competitive economic interests. Sadly, the system as a whole has been forgotten.
Modern medicine has roots in the Hippocratic, Newtonian and Cartesian school of thought, also referred to as reductionism. Though this way of relating to the world, philosophers and scientists defined the universe as a great machine; a complex system that is nothing but the sum of its parts, an account of which can be reduced to accounts of its individual constituents (1). Likewise, early physicians began to define the human body as a machine, studying it by breaking it down into independent parts, losing touch with the study of the whole.
According to this paradigm, the body could be analyzed, catalogued, adjusted, and repaired in parts, as required — just like any other machine. Disease was no longer viewed as a body state (much less an energetic state) but merely as a set of symptoms. From this foundation, modern medicine has become the observation, classification and management of individual symptoms, without seeking to understand the body as an holistic entity (2). Meanwhile, rates of sickness, disease and over-medication are steadily increasing.