Traditional versus Western

I am glad that everyone seems particularly interested in this weeks readings due to its medical relevance, so I am really excited about the discussion for this week as well.

As I read through the reading entitled "Someone is Making You Sick", I kept asking myself about the fundamental differences between the western and traditional medical systems. What keeps them so separate and is it possible for them to be reconciled? It is interesting how two people from different backgrounds can have what seems to be the same exact disease but have completely different ways of classifying it and thus completely different ways for treating it. For example, the traditional system describes what appear to be symptoms in the Western system as the actual disease; however, in the Western system, these symptoms are indications of the an overarching disease. Perhaps this could be due to the Western point of view from which this selection was written; however, this makes it appear as if the traditional system of medicine simply falls short of delving deeper to cure the root of the medical issue as opposed to superficially responding to symptoms. On the other hand, I tried to make some connections between the two systems of traditional and western medicine. For instance, a lot of the causes of the "diseases" such as cold or diarrhea could find some kind of overlap in the Western system, but once again, this would lead to further explanation of what the disease/medical issue is in the Western system.

Even in reading this, I think many people have a tendency to try to decide which medical system works better, but I don't think this is necessary. We can simply agree that they are just different. From the reading, I got the sense that the Western system is more comprehensive than the traditional system in terms of curing some of the diseases that the traditional system cannot. For instance when the young boy was asked if there were any diseases that could not be cured by herbs, he finally stated that dolor de corazon, dolor de pulmon, and operation could not be handled using the traditional system. Despite Westerners' tendencies to believe that their medical system is superior, it too does not always have all of the answers in which case some people try the traditional system. This goes back to the question that I believe was posed by Rachel down below: who is to say whether the Western system is better or not (in reference to the safety of hospitals)?

One conclusion that I pondered was that if a certain disease does not have a cause in a certain medical system, then it cannot be treated under that medical system. For instance, when the guy described dolor de corazon, dolor de pulmon, and operations as things that could not be cured by the traditional system, I wondered if the traditional system had a cause for it. Perhaps these diseases are of the more modern times (that the ancestors had not experienced) and thus did not have cures developed for them under the traditional system.

I believe one reason that the traditional system seems to be more shunned or less highly regarded in the Western system is due to our constant need to reason through everything and have evidence to support our explanations for everything. As a pre-med student, I can certainly appreciate the power of science, but perhaps due to faith or religious background, I am also aware that some things just may not be able to be explained. For instance, when people who battled certain illnesses that their doctors had no answer for were healed once taken to the church and prayed over. Another example includes when the midwives such as those in the other reading "Your Destiny is to Care for Pregnant Women" just know that it is their calling to be a midwife, and there is no explanation as to why she is chosen. We depend on explanations and hard evidence for everything, and the problem comes when that explanation is beyond us or cannot be provided. I think this is similar to some of the reasons why there is a clash between the Western and traditional systems of medicine. Thus, I don't know if the Western and traditional system can ever be reconciled because they seem to be based off of very different fundamentals.