There is an official medicine which, as explained in the section devoted to the history of medicine, dates back to the Corpus Hippocraticum. Its practice is based on knowledge accumulated over the years, on tradition and, fundamentally, on the scientific method.
Tradition indicates the use of a particular substance; that substance is used empirically, and an attempt is then made to discover its corresponding mechanism of action. It should be emphasized that, like the other natural sciences, medicine uses the scientific method. Its observations, hypotheses and theories must be verified; that is, they must be subjected to experimental control.
Official medicine is represented by the doctrines taught by professors and researchers in faculties supported or controlled by the state and accepted by academies and scientific corporations. It is also the medicine applied by international organizations in the protection of public health.
This medicine currently presents a set of ideas characteristic of a new spirit. Medical thought is in full evolution, partly because new research methods make it possible to discover physiological and pathophysiological mechanisms, and partly because human beings are beginning to be interpreted as total entities, as the result of biotypological, environmental, economic and social factors capable of determining specific reactions to different pathological factors.
In other words, once a disease begins, it adopts special characteristics according to the particular nature of each individual. In contrast to this official medicine, also called scientific or classical medicine, there are other schools, which will be studied below.
Homeopathy
Scientific medicine combats diseases with medicines that produce an effect opposite to the pathological process, which is why it is also called allopathic medicine. Thus, stomach acidity is treated with an alkaline substance.
Homeopathy begins from the principle that each medicine produces in a healthy organism a disease similar to the one that may arise spontaneously. For this reason, it combats each disease with substances whose effects are similar to the symptoms produced by that disease.
It is based on the principle similia similibus curantur, meaning “like cures like,” which is diametrically opposed to the principle of allopathy: contraria contrariis curantur, meaning “opposites are cured by opposites.”
It is also based on the potentiation of medicines, which means that the effect of a drug increases as its dilution increases. The essential problem lies in knowing whether these two propositions are correct. Both are possible, but neither has been experimentally demonstrated.
For official medicine, a therapeutic result is a fact that must be reproducible in a series of other individuals or tested in animals.
Naturist Medicine
The term expresses obedience to physiological laws and natural agents. Its main principles are: not intoxicating the organism, maintaining contact with external media such as air and water, following an eclectic diet with minimally processed foods and, whenever possible, foods in their natural state, and performing simple exercises.
Naturists consider that these practices contribute to consolidating a vigorous human race. For them, disease is a general state that occurs as the distant consequence of offenses committed against natural laws. They consider symptoms to be defensive reactions.
Therapeutically, they try to discover the type of reaction of each individual according to temperament and carry out an individual treatment, above all hygienic and dietary.
Acupuncture
Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese procedure, introduced mainly in France. It consists of making punctures two to three millimeters deep in specific areas of the body, using small pins with extremely fine and solid tips.
According to the theorists of this procedure, organs have resonators on the surface of the body at numerous points located along lines called meridians. The punctures are said to transmit a strong stimulus to the nervous controls of the organs.
They also recognize the existence of fourteen different radial pulses, which indicate the functioning of the internal organs.
Medicine and Imponderable Agents
Because they move entirely away from the practice of medicine, iridology will not be considered here, that is, the discovery of disease through the characteristics of the iris; nor chiropractic, a therapy based on displacements of the spinal column; nor miraculous cures through special procedures such as dowsing, possession of a sixth sense, palmistry and others.
Any of these medical schools may be right, but unlike scientific medicine, it has not demonstrated this. The weakness of such schools lies in ignoring that the therapeutic act is the product of a science based exclusively on the experimental method and not on mere practice.
Whatever their successes may be, they can only be considered as such: simple successes lacking the scientific rigor required in such cases. The mission of official medicine, in relation to these schools or practices, is not to reject them systematically, but to subject each of their procedures and results to experimentation, so that their truth or falsehood may be demonstrated and their aura of wonder may thereby be removed.
