In ancient times, sickness was seen as a punishment from the gods; alternatively, witchcraft, demons and evil spirits were thought responsible for medical problems. The exorcism of evil spirits played an important role in the ministry of Christ, who was able to cure conditions ranging from blindness to insanity. "Madness" was an especially terrifying phenomenon — innocent sufferers were believed to be possessed by the devil and were often persecuted or killed. At other times the mentally ill were thought to have been touched by the gods and were treated as holy beings.

Western medicine has its roots in the teachings of Hippocrates, a Greek physician who lived around 460–370 B.C. Doctors still invoke the ancient gods of Greece when they take the Hippocratic Oath, which opens with the lines: "I swear by Apollo the Healer and by Asklepios, by Hygeia and Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witness, that I will fulfill according to my power and judgment this oath."

At the time of Hippocrates, Hygeia and Asklepios represented two different approaches to healing.

Hygeia's followers believed that health was the natural order of things and that the role of medicine was to help the body use its own innate powers of healing to cure itself. Many therapies in existence today, from both the Eastern and Western systems of healing, come under Hygeia's rule. Scientific medicine comes under the rule of Asklepios, who represented the belief that the physician's chief purpose was to treat the symptoms of disease caused by accidents or infections.

One of the chief roles of shamans and so-called "witch doctors" is to treat illness in the community. Chant, dance, prayer and powerful hallucinogenic drugs are used to provoke visions that reveal the causes of and cures for sickness. The two most common diagnoses are loss of soul, and possession. For the former, the shaman will attempt to find the patient's soul in the spirit world and persuade it to return to the body. When treating a person who is possessed, some shamans suck out the evil and vomit an actual object from their own mouths; others remove objects from the patient's body by psychic surgery. The shaman attempts to weaken the spirit of the perpetrator by magical means, thus safeguarding the strength of the patient.

The healing power of belief, which may have been under-emphasized in Western medicine, is at the heart of many traditional schools, which believe that the body has the power to heal itself if the correct energies are accessed. In Chinese medicine, doctors rely on the technique of acupuncture — the insertion of needles along special lines, termed meridians, on the body — to effect changes in the flow of energy to specific organs. An imbalance in the body's energy flows may be treated as soon as there is a general feeling of malaise, rather than waiting for more violent symptoms to develop. Chinese medicine is therefore well equipped to deal with illness in its earliest stages. In The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, healing was compared to ruling a country; it was said that guiding those who were not yet rebellious was more effective than attempting to put down full-scale riots.

While Western medicine is spectacularly successful in treating the physical body and organic disease, more holistic healing methods may be better equipped to sustain our mental and spiritual welfare. Many healers do not see a conflict between their medicine and that of conventional doctors. They believe that their role is to address the fundamental imbalances that cause our bodies to fail — the deep spiritual roots of disease — while leaving scientific medicine to clear the more obvious, physical symptoms of illness that the body's own systems have failed to heal.




From The Secret Language of the Soul by Jane Hope (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997).
Copyright © 1997 by Jane Hope

Used by arrangement with Chronicle Books.