This previously unpublished article was from a presentation made at the National Center for Homeopathy’s Annual Conference, April, 1988, San Mateo, California. References to events occurring prior to 1988 are based on fact. All other events after this time are based on conjecture.
Artikel av Dana Ullman
Captain’s Log, Star Date April 29th, 2096. Captain Dana T.Kirk reporting. Star Fleet has asked me to speak at this centennial celebration of the re-establishment of Hahnemann Homeopathic Hospital in San Francisco. It is also the 300th anniversary of Samuel Hahnemann’s first writings about the science and art of homeopathic medicine. It is indeed an honor to have these ceremonies transmitted to our Federation’s 38 space stations and to our colleagues in neighboring galaxies. This celebration is meant to honor this hospital and this city, both of which helped spawn a major revolution in medicine and science.
As some of you may know, this hospital was originally established in the early 1900s as Hahnemann Hospital and was a homeopathic hospital. Due to a temporary decline of homeopathy, the hospital was renamed after its owner, Marshall Hale, in the 1970s. However, due to the rebirth of homeopathy in this city and throughout the world, the hospital was renamed for the founder of homeopathy on this date in 1996.
The very nature of a centennial celebration is to remember what it took to get where we are today at Hahnemann Homeopathic Hospital. I am honored that Star Fleet has asked me to put into words the past hundred years.
As with most history lessons, the story begins even more than 100 years ago. The rebellion of the 1960s created an environment which questioned established institutions and entrenched thought. The 1970s ”me decade” seemed to provide an opportunity to retrench various progressive personal and political forces so that the 1980s could begin to mainstream new thought and practice. Of course, the bulk of the mainstream in the 1980s rejected these new ideas, and only small advances were made. But still, some of the mainstream was beginning to get the message.
The seed was planted.
In the 1980s, bizarre obstetrical rituals and somewhat barbaric birthing practices that turned birth into a medical and surgical event were finally beginning to be questioned, and what were then called ”alternative birth centers” became a part of many hospitals. At the same time that people were questioning the then conventional birthing practices, people began questioning the horrid way that we let people die. Although one would think that the mainstream would have long ago recognized their grievous errors, it really wasn’t until the 1980s that hospices and the humane treatment for the dying gained acceptance by such established organizations as the American Cancer Society.
Nutrition and fitness were initially thought to be fads that would pass with time, like the hula-hoop of the 1950s, the Earth shoe of the 1970s, and famous laser headbands of the 2030s. However, the 1980s saw the beginning of how healthy lifestyles were becoming an integral part of people’s lives. Good nutritional practices were not simply helpful in physical health but mental health too, and good nutritional practices, as we later discovered, was an important part of creating a healthy ecological relationship with our planet Earth. Ecological thinking was so essential for the preservation of the Earth’s oceans, which we today utilize as an invaluable source of farming of sea vegetables and fish.
The power of the mind to heal…and to cause illness too…was finally recognized. And from the integration of what was then segmented medical fields of neurology, psychiatry, and internal medicine grew the beginnings of ”psychoneuroimmunology.”
This research area and therapeutic approach recognized the inherent connection between psyche and soma. What is so obvious to us now in 2096 was obfuscated in much of the 20th century due to the then popular Newtonian mechanistic, reductionist thinking. Though this approach to science certainly has its place by helping us to understand how the parts of the whole work, it too often ignored the integrity of the whole, thereby decreasing the precision that the scientific method deserves.
As some of you may know, the concept of psychoneuroimmunology gained broad acceptance in the early 1990s. Researchers finally recognized the interconnection of the nervous system and immune system to the endocrine system, digestive system, excretory system, and other systems of the body. In lieu of calling the field psycho-neuro-endo-gastro-excre-immunology, we today prefer simply to refer to the study of the ”bodymind” which implies the interconnectedness of all with all.
Pioneering research in the late 1980s began to open the minds of scientists. Great numbers of people in the 1980s had already believed in the power of the mind, as seen by their various efforts to heal through prayer. The large number of people who became disillusioned with the evangelical and fundamentalist movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s transformed their use of prayer into self-healing and group healing experiences. The laying-on-of-hands became not only a spiritual practice but a healing ritual as well.
And what we today know and respect as the primary bioenergetic therapies, acupuncture and homeopathic medicine, were beginning to raise their head in the 1980s.
Läs resten: HuffPost
