4000 Years of History of Philosophy and Principles of Medicine Towards Lyfas Modern Greek Medicine

Babylon

However, Medicine as a science was practiced almost 1500 years prior to Plato, in the ancient Mesopotamian empire of Babylon on and around 1800 BCE, after Hammurabi transformed a rather pocket of a rural colony of workers namely Babel into one of the major Multinational businesses, and trade center city. Babylon was also the first empire, where medicine schools were opened, and investigative medicine was started. Babylon was the first place where the chaotic world was transformed into law by codification. Hammurabi’s Code is recognized as the first and most well-structured state law.

Medicine reached Egypt from Babylon. Imanhetop is considered as Egyptian father of medicine. Thereafter in the 12th Century BCE, during the time Ramses III, arguably one of the greatest Egyptian pharao, who lived past 90 years, when the average age of Egypt used to be around 30, took the medicine to the next level. Ramses III made girls’ education mandatory, and they were taught extensively the art of healing. In fact, Nursing got prospered in Egypt and Babylon.

Babylon+India

Babylon and Indian Harappa and Mohenjodaro shared trade and cultural relationships long back in and around 3000 BCE. Furthermore, Harappans had a genetic admixture of northern Siberians. Therefore in Babylon, medicine was not only flowers and leaves, but they mastered the art of surgery too. When Samskrit became a prominent Indian language in and around 1500 BCE, Sushruta composed the first treatise for surgery, known as Sushruta Samhita.

Alexander the Great

When Alexender the Great conquered Babylon in 333 BCE, he was awestruck by the city and its progress. Alexander took Babylonian medicine with him. This is where Greek Philosophy and Babylonian laws married. Now the medicine was Logic+Laws+Experiment.

When Alexender the great finally reached his last conquest of India, he failed to conquer India. however, his general Seleucus fought a long war with the then-united Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya for almost a decade. Finally, they agreed that war was not worth it, and Seleucus married his daughter to Chandragupta Maurya. Chanakya was the teacher of Chandragupta, who is identified as one of the sharpest political minds in history. Chanakya composed Politics and Economics, two books that are to date assets of humanity.

Seleucus’s intellect traveler in the Gupta empire, Megasthenis studied Indian Vedic literature and took Indian knowledge of Vedic science to Athens. Vedic medicine is metaphysical where the emphasis is to purify the soul and body and keep them in balance.

After Alexander the great’s untimely death in 323 BCE, his teacher Aristotle feared that Athens would persecute him the way almost 150 years back they persecuted Socrates, arguably the father of modern philosophy. Aristotle then spent the last five years of his life, away from Athens combining the knowledge of Medicine Alexender had brought from Egypt, India, and Babylon.

Foundation of Ancient Greek Medicine

The Greek Medicine after 318 BCE was Body+Mind, and the balance of them is called homeostasis, which needs to be investigated by understanding the organs(anatomy). The body needs to be seen as a system(like the Babylon theory), and laws of functioning need to be established. Any disease is similar to an antisocial element or criminal breaking the state laws. Such anomalies were called diseases, and if the disease was notorious, then surgery needs to be performed on them, in line with Sushruta+babylonean theory. This was called treatment. After the treatment, the body needs to be healed through nursing in line with the Egyptians.

African Medicine of Antibiotics and Preservatives

Much prior to Aristotle’s work, almost around 3200 BCE in Eastern Africa(now Sudan), the first Pyramids were built. In the Kush empire of ancient Sudan first Antibiotics and preservatives were developed. Egyptian pharaohs adapted the Pyramids of Kushaites and combined them with Mesopotamian Ziggurat(temples), to create Egyptian theology. Due to advancements in material science and metallurgy in Egypt, the standard composition of medicine was created there.

Roman Empire

Romans took Greek medicine with them wherever they went. One of the key components of Roman success was their healthcare which could treat and heal their soldiers and helped them recover much better than any other armies at that time.

One of the amazing contributions of the Roman empire to the modern world is its documentation. Romans were data fanatics. First state civilian Census and data keeping was started by the Romans in the 6th Century BCE, even before Romans were an empire or a republic, and in the absolute infancy stage of Roman city-state. Roman administration was littered with Eutroscan people, who were of Greek Origin settled in parts of Italy. Roman culture is an extension of the later vanished Eutroscan people.

Etruscan civilization brought its administrative documentation and adapted Latin. European language, culture, and people got disseminated with the Latin people.

Roman+German

When Julius Ceasor the Roman empire set out his conquest towards the east and defeated Galls(French people), he set foot to conquer the germanic people. Germans fought in the Roman army for almost 250 years and were the most invincible wing of the Roman army. Later, Germans had a love-hate relationship with the Romans. Germans and Romans fought many wars together, and also fought many wars against each other. That is when Germans got influenced by Greek medicine. Germans lagged behind the intellect of the Greeks had, but were Pagans, who were close to Nature.

Foundation of Neo-Germanic Medicines

Germans took the Upanishad’s Ayurveda, combined with Egyptian healing, and Kushaites composition, to look for Homeostasis, as paganism revolves around the balance between humans and ecology. This is precisely why German women became healers. Much later from the 16th to 18th century AD, the Church persecuted almost 50,000 Germans, a majority of whom were healers on the charges of Witchcraft, which was in reality a continuation of Germanic Paganism, Egyptian healing, Vedic homeostasis, and Greek’s Mind-body synchrony.

Today, Germany is the hub of alternative medicines like Homeopathy and German new medicine based on the same principles of Greek medicine and Roman documentation.

Galen’s Lifestyle Medicine

When the Roman empire was at the peak of prosperity, and around 160 AD to 180 AD, Clinician Galen from Greek, whom the then the Roman empire Marcus Aurelius had hired to solve the problem of Epidemic and metabolic disorders spread across the Roman cities introduced lifestyle intervention. The introduction of metabolism and lifestyle intervention introduced by Galen is used to date for chronic disease management.

Destruction of the Medicine Era

After Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine in 313 AD, slowly all the ancient knowledge was destroyed, and Europe went into a dark age. After the collapse of the Roman empire in the subsequent centuries, in the northern Italian town of Bologna in 1088 AD, the first modern university was created. Bologna University is the world’s oldest university, which lasted over a millennium. It is here, the medicine started getting revived. Because Bologna was essentially a law college, medicine started the way 2800 years back Babylonians had started medicine, by codifying health.

Arab’s Unani Medicine

All along, Arabs ruled the region of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and parts of ancient Kushaite starting empire from 523 AD, once Islam unified the people of the region. Arabs were neither intellectually like the Greeks, nor codifiers like Babylonians, institutionalized like the Egyptians, nor even documentation frantic like Romans. However, Arabs were good at discipline. Once they knew what to be done in what situations, they can follow that till the end of their lives without any anomaly.

Arabs combined Greek medicine knowledge with their discipline to create the “if this then that” ruleset. Mari, which is in modern-day Syria, used to be the hub of trade exchange between Greeks, Egyptians, Lebanese, and Mesopotamians Greek medicine was codified in Arabic, after simplifying the philosophy and making the medicine compatible with Quran and Islam.

From Mari, the Unani medicine reached Turkey. This survived to date because the Ottman empire has been one of the longest-lasting modern-day empires. The Turk conquerors spread Islam and conquered most of the Asian and Arabian world from 1000 AD till the 16th century AD when the rise of European monarchy and imperialism spread slowly put Turkish growth on the burner.

Indian Alternative Medicine(Unani+Homeopathy+Ayurveda)

Mughals brought Unani medicine to India. Whereas Samuel Hahnemann‘s Homeopathy, which was practiced extensively in Germany was brought to India by Subhas Chandra Bose, an Indian Freedom fighter through his collaboration with Hitler in forming the Indian national army. Bose was diabetic, but Homeopathy kept him in good health and spirit. it is when INA, which was essentially an army of released war prisoners to fight against the British Raj.

First Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and then Kolkata was the intellectual capital of India because Koltaka was the Capital of the British Raj. Rushi Aurobindo, who founded the Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, is the father of the Indian armed movement against the Britishers. He combined Freedom Fight with Intellectualism. From Subhas Bose, Homeopathy reached Aurobindo, and then Bengali intellects took it to the next level by Indianising Homeopathy.

Bose was probably the most popular amongst Muslims and had a large number of Muslims from both Lahore as well as from UP supporting him. The intellects of Lucknow(who are particularly of Turkish origin) started modernizing the Unani Medicine(which essentially is the Arabic Version of greek Medicine- Greek Philosophy).

Aurobindo Ashram took Indian spirituality to the next level when the modern-day father of revival of Vedic Spirituality, Swami Vivekananda’s disciple sister Nivedita got involved in the Kolkata freedom fighters and Ayurveda reached Aurobindo.

Modern Western Medicine and England

Even though French, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese spread their imperialism across the globe starting from the 1492 expedition of Vasco da Gama, European Monarchs were following the Christianity of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which was more or less on Greek Philosophy, and thus were not as vigorous documents as the Romans. Long back in 122 AD, when Roman emperor Hadrian conquered Britain, he established Roman administration and schooling in Britain. The first modern-day school was established in Kent, Britain on and around 400 AD.

Thereafter Britain followed the Roman Catholic Church, like Spain. Even though in the early 16th century Britain established a protestant version of Christianity, for 1500 years they had continued with the culture of Roman documentation.

When British Raj finally reached Africa in 1886, they discovered the ancient Sudanese medicine of Antibiotics. During the first world war, which was to be taken place in another 20 years, Britishers came close to Italy. Almost 400 years prior to that in the 16th Century, Oxford and Cambridge, two British universities collaborated extensively with Bologna. Therefore from the very beginning, Greek Philosophy, Bologna Codification+Etruscanian Documentation has been a hallmark of British progress.

It was during the first world war that medicine, as we know it today, got developed because there were too many numbers of wounded soldiers, and healthcare had to be massively scaled.

British Bangladesh and Fusion of Indo-Buddhist Chinese Medicine and Industrial Scale

China and India always had large populations. However, unlike India, Mainland China is surrounded by a large number of terrains unsuitable for agriculture. Therefore, China had to invent from the beginning and produce things at scale. Many modern-day machines like currency, printing, and the compass are Chinese inventions. By the 16th century, Dhaka, the current capital of Bangladesh was one of the modern Global industrial economies.

Dhaka was far away from India and had suffered much lesser attacks by outsiders than mainland India suffered. Therefore Dhaka was a rather peaceful center where Chinese industrialization prospered, largely due to massive unrest in mainland China with their continuous conflict with the Japanese and Koreans. Though Britain conquered China, Chinese culture and language were much beyond British brains.

On the other hand, India already had Greek influence since 323 BCE, and therefore English was no foreign language for the Indians, and Bengalis in particular adopted English almost as their mother tongue.

Bengali intellectuals’ fast adaptation of English, enabled the Britishers to understand the Dhaka industrial region and Dhaka global economy. Britishers dismantled all the mills of Dhaka and took the machinery to Machester. The industrial revolution in Manchester started Engineering as an independent branch in England. Interestingly Engineering was nothing but opening Indo-Chinese machinery and then documenting them. You can say engineering was essentially reverse engineering. Britain killed Dhaka to build Manchester. Dhaka was also the hub of Chinese medicine such as acupressure and acupuncture.

These were of not much interest to the Britishers. However, when Britishers observed the efficiency of trauma and wound treatment by the Japanese, where surgery was a large and essential component, systematic surgery got evolved.

Americanisation of Western Medicine

Native Brish citizens were infected by Roman material culture and the hardworking Anglo-Saxons were now Beurocrats and Rich thanks to plunders around the globe. British knew how to take an idea and scale, but they did not have the ability anymore to produce without the slaves. African slave trade not only enriched the British but also drove their 1750 industrial revolution, which later continued even during the Victorian era post-1820. Africa was becoming a hard market for slaves due to competition against the other European monarchs.

When Britishers America, it was a gold mine for the Britishers. Noncorrupted hardworking natives, still a virgin mainland. America was to become new England even after its independence in 1776. You can drive people away, not the idea. And thus American dream was created. The American dream was simply showing big dreams to natives, and keeping economic control to British masters.

During the second world war, new England(read America), and the old Romans(read England) collaborated against new Athens(read Berlin), which dated Romans, but married Greek culture. After this combination, western medicine was scaled.

Sigmund Freud and Psychology

In and around 1892, Sigmund Freud, who was a Neurologist unfortunately came under influence of the Greek Philosophy and literature. Philosophy in Germany prospered due to their Greek influence with philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Fredrick Nietzsche.

Freud was a Viena Neurologist who soon discovered that the medicine he was practicing was minus philosophy. And when Freud, influenced by Nietzsche went deeper into philosophy, he discovered that Greeks investigated mental health conditions thoroughly. He started a private practice and brought his understanding of Neuroscience with Greek-German philosophy to start Psychology.

As usual, Freud was extensively criticized for his ideology, because that needed a brain. Philosophy empowers individuals, doesn’t keep individuals dumb, and therefore can not be scaled. Roman masters did not like the idea. And so Freud and his ideas were brushed off, and put to the sideline.

Anna Freud War Trauma and Americanization of Psychology

During the second world war, Freud’s daughter Anna was healing the children who were traumatized by the Nazi concentration camps. It was then the British and Americans adopted Psychology, but only for counseling of their soldiers to help them recover from war trauma. During the 1971 Vietnam war, once the Vietnamese started beating the American soldiers, Psychology became popular, because the family and the soldiers needed counseling and Medicine did not have any answers for trauma.

Thereafter, Sigmund Freud’s Philosophical Psychology became American Psychology.

American Psychology=Behavioral Observation-Philosophy- Vedic Spirituality -Germanic Naturism

The Principles of Diagnosis

The human body is a physical system. When the system is stable(keeps functioning autonomously), it is said to be in HOMEOSTASIS or EQUILIBRIUM.

Consider balancing a pencil on your finger. That’s your body system. You blow air to one side, and you will see the pencil shaking. However, you will still balance the pencil by adjusting your finger.

Every time you blow and readjust, there is a displacement of the pencil. This is called a STRUCTURAL or PATHOLOGICAL anomaly. A structure is permanent like a building.

Then there are finger shaking for balancing every second. This is the FUNCTIONAL or PHYSIOLOGICAL anomaly.

When finger pain increases in an effort to balance(SYMPTOM), you go to the doctor.

There may be no wind or pencil shaking. But you somehow may feel that it is shaking. It is all in the mind or PSYCHOLOGY.

So the doctor has to first be sure that there are anomalies. This is called SCREENING. He then INVESTIGATES through tests and questions and asks you to OBSERVE the changes.

PATHOLOGICAL TESTS give structural changes in the body whereas PHYSIOLOGICAL tests give functional changes. A DIAGNOSIS is the confirmation of a SPECIFIC ANOMALY or DISEASE.

Disease Diagnosis=
Symptoms➡️Screening➡️Detection➡️Investigation➡️Monitoring➡️Diagnosis 

Screening is used to detect if there is anything wrong with the body in the first place and possible anomalies. Once an anomaly is screened, it needs to be determined whether the anomaly was an exception/response to some temporary requirement of the body or if the anomaly is more consistent.

This is done by a period of observation when the condition is monitored. Just an anomaly doesn’t mean the need for treatment. Only when the condition is observed consistently, there is a need for treatment. Then the clinician needs a diagnosis.

A diagnosis is a term used to confirm a clinical condition or disease through different evidence. The evidence that is commonly used is- Physical Examination, History, Questions, Pathological Tests, Stress Tests, or response tests.

Furthermore, diagnosing a clinical condition isn’t enough. The clinician needs to also understand the mindset of the patient. For example, even an early diagnosis of cancer makes the patient stressed just by the name.

It is also very important for a clinician to know the genetic predisposition or family history.

Therefore,

The components of diagnostics are:-

Diagnostics=Physiology+Pathology+Psychology+ Physical Examination+ History+ Questions+ Family History

Lyfas Modern Greek Medicine

Core components of medicine

From our history of medicine and healthcare, we learned that medicine has been a combination of Philosophy, Principles, Processes, Documentation, and Research.

The key components of the Process are diagnosis, treatment, education, healing, and spirituality(for mental recovery).

The key component of principles is structuring codification, law, and methodology.

The key components of research are Multidimensional observation, experimentation, and converting data to wisdom.

A key component of Philosophy is investigating Why something is happening or why something exists in the first place. Philosophy provides the meaning of life, without which the brain can not function, because the brain always searches for meaning.

Spirituality is the correlation of our current state of mind and the body with our ancestry and the ecology and universe.

Problem with Modern Medicine

The advantage of modern medicine is it is massively scalable.

However, the problem is that modern medicine is all about treatment-specific diagnosis and diagnosis-specific medicine.

Because modern medicine is based on the material culture of the Romans and adopts the principle of scalability, it eliminates the patient education, philosophy, and spirituality from the medicine. Because after the treatment, if the patient heals, then he is no more an existing and repeated customer. Furthermore, once the patient starts observing, learning, philosophizing, and taking care of his/her own health, the need for the actual scalable component, is medicine.