My friend Dr Joishy is a very well respected physician (an oncologist by training, with a special interest in palliative medicine). He also comes from a family of Ayurvedic practitioners and a long time ago he wrote a small article about ancient medical systems and modern medicine. He shared it with me, I liked it, one thing led to another, and here is his note about that article (unfortunately not available in etext form, only as a scan, see link in the following note).. I hope to do a podcast with Dr Joishy one day by the way..
ANCIENT MEDICAL SYSTEMS VS. MODERN MEDICINE:
BOTH CAN THRIVE TOGETHER IN THE EAST OR THE WEST
By Suresh K. Joishy, M.D., F.A.C.h.P.M.
My good neighbor Dr. Omar Ali and myself were having a mutually interesting conversation on ancient medical systems and modern medicine. I had published a paper on this topic titled “Towards Ideal Medicine: What Can Traditional Medicine Teach Us?” This paper can be accessed by copying and pasting the following link onto an internet browser:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zDhnS11SFkhEKUomFVpLuPY1n4wNhEyD/view?usp=sharing
After reading it, Dr. Ali suggested I submit it to “Brown Pundits” but we did not have an electronic copy. The scan is attached above.
My paper was written in 1981, when I was practicing Hematology and Oncology in the U.S., after a research assignment in Malaysia. Since I am a medical graduate from India, my grandfather was a physician in Ayurveda, and as I lived in several states of India, I was able to closely observe the ancient medical systems still in practice and thriving.
I am a practitioner of modern medicine. I believe in science and evidence-based medicine. Then why write about ancient medical systems? My paper addressed this very question as to why Ayurveda, Unani and Traditional Chinese Medicine were thriving despite the success of modern medicine in curing infections with antibiotics and no limits to what a surgery can accomplish to repair, replace, or transplant organs. I have described the science of modern medicine and compared it to Ayurveda,Unani and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).
Rather than dwell on the past again, here I will give my views on what has transpired since 1981, after which I was teaching and conducting research abroad in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, England, Japan, and New Zealand. I also observed ancient medical systems were still thriving over there. Continue reading Ancient and Modern Medicine