Reigenkai

　

Recently there are direct-to-consumer advertisements for drugs on television and radio, in newspapers, and in other media. Furthermore, drugs account for a large part of all advertising. However, few people understand the fundamental meaning of what medicine truly is. It is frightening how ignorant people can so carelessly use medicine based simply on mere words in advertisements.

Eastern medicine is built on the experience of several thousand years, so it has a longer track record than Western medicine, but the latter, under the influence of a material science culture that developed rapidly in a short time, treats human beings as mere material and is further divided into many narrow specialties, which in some cases has caused frightening harm. A small part of the overall difference is that Western medical science uses statistics to determine the average dose of medicine and specifies a certain dosage for a given age group. By contrast, Eastern medical science speaks of determining the dosage based on the physician’s long experience. Up until about the beginning of this century people had a saying, “Don’t see a doctor unless he’s at least the third-generation in his family,” which shows how much they valued a physician’s experience.

If fathers and sons for three-plus generations are doctors, they sometimes care for their patients from cradle to grave. This gives physicians an intimate knowledge of their patients’ physical constitutions and resistance and allows them to prescribe the dosage suited to each person. From long ago people have called this “administering medicine in accordance with the illness” and “the right dose.” Though it may appear as if medical science at that time was not as advanced as that of today, doctors hardly made any mistakes. But recently with the advancement of material science, there are microscopes, test tubes, and all manner of other instruments. As people gain knowledge of the unknown and a few people get better owing to the appearance of previously unknown phenomena, doctors have become overconfident that everyone can be saved, and make such pronouncements. Even though procedures may have become truly precise and rational, when, for example, a new drug is developed in Germany or the United States and announced to the world, every man on the street, every skilled physician and “quack”, uses the drug while believing in it unquestioningly, which can be truly dangerous.

This is even more so for lay people who use drugs based on looking only at their advertising and instructions for use. Nothing could be more dangerous. This is because, using eating a meal as an illustration, there are some people who cannot finish even a cup of rice, while others will polish off a huge bowl. Likewise with alcoholic beverages, for there are people who become intoxicated from a mere whiff, and those who can imbibe a large bottle with ease. With medicine as well, differences in resistance and physical constitution can make for very great differences in how people’s bodies tolerate those medicines. 

So to truly make the most of a medicine’s potential, its dose must be adjusted more in the Eastern way, i.e., to suit each person. New drugs too can demonstrate their full efficacy if administered in this way, but it is extremely dangerous to make everyone use them in the Western way, i.e., using averages based solely on age.

In actual fact not a single medicine exists, per se. But at the same time there is nothing without the potential to become a medicine. A medicine is a substance suited to an illness and given in the right dose at the right time, and used only to the extent that the illness is cured. At any other time the substance is not a medicine no matter how much people might call it that. People must be aware that too much or too little can render any substance toxic.

Although plant-based medicines are comparatively harmless, a mineral-based remedy can after long use become a poison and cause problems, no matter how specific and effective a remedy it may have been in the moment. Likewise with present agrichemicals, increasingly modified in the name of increased yields, have been observed to change soil quality, leach their toxins into plants, and over time adversely affect human beings. Although at first, they may cause little harm, the effects can accumulate over a long time and result in an irreversible situation.

Present-day scientists seem to lack a long-term plan, deciding instead whether something is good or bad simply based on virtues or faults apparent in the moment, which can be very dangerous. Therefore the imprudent use of new drugs warrants considerable caution.

There are in fact very many things that are abandoned after short-lived popularity, which happens because well-meaning people have knowledge of something’s characteristics, they overlook its detriment.

In the past, an often-used treatment for tuberculosis was to remove a pneumothorax or a few ribs, and to insert table tennis balls or synthetic resin balls into the resulting cavity, but this method too has fallen into disuse. And although people in those days feared tuberculosis would be the nation’s demise, after ceasing that treatment the number of deaths fell precipitously and sanatoriums had many empty beds. Similarly, there was a time when there were also many transplants of bovine pituitary glands into humans, but now there are hardly any.  Most of the new treatments and drugs that once enjoyed great nationwide popularity have fallen by the wayside, but their efficacy should have been in doubt from the very beginning. And assuming they were mistaken from the outset, they could be described as crimes worse than those committed during the horrors of war.

All the more so, therefore, that medicines should not be used imprudently by lay people, and that use of medicines be done only with the utmost care. 

Recently there are direct-to-consumer advertisements for drugs on television and radio, in newspapers, and in other media. Furthermore, drugs account for a large part of all advertising. However, few people understand the fundamental meaning of what medicine truly is. It is frightening how ignorant people can so carelessly use medicine based simply on mere words in advertisements.

Eastern medicine is built on the experience of several thousand years, so it has a longer track record than Western medicine, but the latter, under the influence of a material science culture that developed rapidly in a short time, treats human beings as mere material and is further divided into many narrow specialties, which in some cases has caused frightening harm. A small part of the overall difference is that Western medical science uses statistics to determine the average dose of medicine and specifies a certain dosage for a given age group. By contrast, Eastern medical science speaks of determining the dosage based on the physician’s long experience. Up until about the beginning of this century people had a saying, “Don’t see a doctor unless he’s at least the third-generation in his family,” which shows how much they valued a physician’s experience.

If fathers and sons for three-plus generations are doctors, they sometimes care for their patients from cradle to grave. This gives physicians an intimate knowledge of their patients’ physical constitutions and resistance and allows them to prescribe the dosage suited to each person. From long ago people have called this “administering medicine in accordance with the illness” and “the right dose.” Though it may appear as if medical science at that time was not as advanced as that of today, doctors hardly made any mistakes. But recently with the advancement of material science, there are microscopes, test tubes, and all manner of other instruments. As people gain knowledge of the unknown and a few people get better owing to the appearance of previously unknown phenomena, doctors have become overconfident that everyone can be saved, and make such pronouncements. Even though procedures may have become truly precise and rational, when, for example, a new drug is developed in Germany or the United States and announced to the world, every man on the street, every skilled physician and “quack”, uses the drug while believing in it unquestioningly, which can be truly dangerous.

This is even more so for lay people who use drugs based on looking only at their advertising and instructions for use. Nothing could be more dangerous. This is because, using eating a meal as an illustration, there are some people who cannot finish even a cup of rice, while others will polish off a huge bowl. Likewise with alcoholic beverages, for there are people who become intoxicated from a mere whiff, and those who can imbibe a large bottle with ease. With medicine as well, differences in resistance and physical constitution can make for very great differences in how people’s bodies tolerate those medicines. 

So to truly make the most of a medicine’s potential, its dose must be adjusted more in the Eastern way, i.e., to suit each person. New drugs too can demonstrate their full efficacy if administered in this way, but it is extremely dangerous to make everyone use them in the Western way, i.e., using averages based solely on age.

In actual fact not a single medicine exists, per se. But at the same time there is nothing without the potential to become a medicine. A medicine is a substance suited to an illness and given in the right dose at the right time, and used only to the extent that the illness is cured. At any other time the substance is not a medicine no matter how much people might call it that. People must be aware that too much or too little can render any substance toxic.

Although plant-based medicines are comparatively harmless, a mineral-based remedy can after long use become a poison and cause problems, no matter how specific and effective a remedy it may have been in the moment. Likewise with present agrichemicals, increasingly modified in the name of increased yields, have been observed to change soil quality, leach their toxins into plants, and over time adversely affect human beings. Although at first, they may cause little harm, the effects can accumulate over a long time and result in an irreversible situation.

Present-day scientists seem to lack a long-term plan, deciding instead whether something is good or bad simply based on virtues or faults apparent in the moment, which can be very dangerous. Therefore the imprudent use of new drugs warrants considerable caution.

There are in fact very many things that are abandoned after short-lived popularity, which happens because well-meaning people have knowledge of something’s characteristics, they overlook its detriment.

In the past, an often-used treatment for tuberculosis was to remove a pneumothorax or a few ribs, and to insert table tennis balls or synthetic resin balls into the resulting cavity, but this method too has fallen into disuse. And although people in those days feared tuberculosis would be the nation’s demise, after ceasing that treatment the number of deaths fell precipitously and sanatoriums had many empty beds. Similarly, there was a time when there were also many transplants of bovine pituitary glands into humans, but now there are hardly any.  Most of the new treatments and drugs that once enjoyed great nationwide popularity have fallen by the wayside, but their efficacy should have been in doubt from the very beginning. And assuming they were mistaken from the outset, they could be described as crimes worse than those committed during the horrors of war.

All the more so, therefore, that medicines should not be used imprudently by lay people, and that use of medicines be done only with the utmost care.