Book Review

A healing tale from primitive times to now

A Short History of Medicine makes delightful reading. As Dr. P.R. Anthonis in the foreword says, "the book presents medical history, supplying, challenging the examination of the field and encouraging one to question modern medicine's assumptions."

The author says in his preface, the history of medicine is the story of the art of healing from earliest times. As William Osler observed, "a look at the past will show that the philosophies of one age become the absurdities of the next and foolishness of yesterday becomes the wisdom of tomorrow."

The book reveals fascinating information regarding fossilized skeletons of dinosaurs over 200 million years old that show evidence of rheumatism and arthritis from which even today over millions of people suffer. There is also evidence of bone tumours.

Primitive man, Mr. Jayawardene writes did not distinguish between medicine, magic and religion. To him they were one - a set of practices intended to protect man against evil forces.

This is nothing strange to us since even today especially in the deep South "Bali ceremonies" are performed to drive away devils and sorcery.

Primitive men like villagers of today treated minor ailments like coughs, colds and fever with domestic remedies which "he encountered by instinct. In witchcraft the culprit had to be caught and persuaded to break the spell."

Foreign bodies, Mr. Jayawardene says, were also considered to be the cause of disease. "The medicine man located the area of the object or sucked it out with his mouth." So much for the forebears of today's antiseptic surgery!

The book also records that the now popular preventive medicine was not a new phenomenon then- even the animal kingdom practised it instinctively. As an example the author points to the water buffalo and other cattle who seek water "not only because it is cooler but because it keeps insects and parasites off."

The book is both interesting and educative with regard to the practice of medicine in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India and China and medicine as practised in the Middle Ages.

In Babylonia and Assyria Mr. Jayawardene points out the sick man addressed the gods directly with prayer, sacrifice and other magic rituals.

"In Egypt it is noteworthy that when various papyri found in tombs and graves were unveiled and arranged they contained 1200 prescriptions, case histories and spells."

The ancient Egyptians taught medicine in special schools called "Life institutes" built across the Nile valley in different parts of Egypt.

"When a student enrolled to become a physician he had to adhere to strict rules such as shaving his head, getting circumcised and wearing a leopard skin on his back and wearing special garments made from knitted thick linen cloth."

In India, medicine had its patron gods and demi-gods. It was, says the book an admixture of religion, magic and empirical views.

"The sage was designated a physician, destroyer of evil spirits and the extirpator of disease."

The author mentions Chinese traditional medicine -practised until 960 A.D. and Acupuncture which has been handed down over the centuries and practised even today to cure many ailments.

On the chapter on Graeco-Roman medicine, Plato's most famous physician Aristotle, a son of a court physician, gave a new impetus to medicine. Aristotle, it is said, was the first to link respiration to a particular organ and a specific movement of the thorax. On the chapter on "Medicine in the Middle Ages", an account is given about medicinal plants.

Writing about Renaissance medicine the author mentions Leonardo da Vinci, who was fascinated by the functions of the heart and the flow of blood.

In the chapter on 18th Century Medicine, Mr. Jayawardena says "the stethoscope despite various developments of sophisticated diagnostic methods like nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, remains the very symbol of medicine even today."

This book is simply written and makes good reading, to anyone interested in the story of medicine.

Book Review

Lord's Prayer: Not mere words but action

"The Lord's Prayer" by Christie Weeramantry. Reviewed by Vernon Abeysekera

In his book "The Lord's Prayer" Christie Weeramantry tells us that over 1000 books have been written on the subject of the prayer in English alone. There would be countless others written in French, Spanish, Italian and other languages. In making this added contribution he believes that he has some original thoughts to convey and that at no time this century, now that we are on the verge of a new millennium, has the message given by Jesus Christ been so important.

The 19th century began on a note of hope and optimism. It is now fast ending on a note of despair: the world is driven with wars and science has been perverted to develop new techniques of torture and mass destruction.

Christie Weeramantry analyses every word and phrase in the Lord's prayer, drawing inferences from them and extending their significance with quotations from parables and other teachings of Christ in the Gospels. He draws parallels between the lessons Christ taught and those which appear in the scriptures of the other main religions - Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam. He also finds similarities in other less well-known religious books, the Zend - Avesta and the Adi Granth. In fact a point he stresses more than once is that Christ's message, as encapsulated in "The Lord's Prayer", should have the same intellectual impact on those who practise other religions as it does on Christians.

Over one third of the book is devoted to the subject to "Wrong doing ", which is refereed to as "trespasses" in the Prayer. This concentration of attention of "Wrong doing" becomes understandable, as we read on. Five different kinds of "Wrong doing" or "trespasses" are enumerated and discussed– technological, economic, attitudinal, social and ethical. When Christ delivered his sermons and taught his prayer he was reaching out only to a small parochial society. Two thousand years later, the world today is a global village. The spoken word can reach the ends of the world through TV and the radio. Unfortunately the means of communications can at the same time be abused, as they often are. The heads of multinational companies can, if they are solely motivated by profit making, create social and economic distress in countries far removed from them in the Third world. They are then as morally culpable as the farmer who steals his neighbour's cattle.

Christie Weeramantry touches on world affairs from time to time. He believes that the end of the Cold War has introduced a new era and that a responsibility has devolved on the USA, the sole remaining superpower, to set up moral and ethical standards. But the question is how much confidence can we place on the USA? It has embroiled itself in many wars or started others, and in embarking on its latest adventure in Yugoslavia it has flouted international law and turned its backed on the United Nations.

Christie Weeramantry also refers to the breakdown of the governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe after the collapse of Marxism. A contrary view, however, is that these governments broke down because of the mismanagement, corruption and distortion of the Communist philosophy.

It could also be argued that Communism is not opposed to religion, which is a matter of one's individual conscience, but to certain established religions, which have identified their interests with the privileged sections of society and the owners of " the means of production".

"The Lord's Prayer" is a product of deep thought and wide learning. Christie Weeramantry is anxious that his readers should be fully aware of the wisdom in the Prayer with the connotations and implications of all its words and phrases.

He emphasises more than once the important fact that conviction alone is insufficient unless it is harnessed to action. Actually there are numerous men and women all over the world today, who work strenuously in the cause of peace and justice. In the final analysis, however, the destiny of any country is shaped by its rulers.

What the world needs today are rulers who are statesmen and more than that statesmen who are philosophers, moulded in the fashion Plato once dreamed about. It was a sublime hope then. It still is.

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