On Medical Tyranny

Friend (status plus ensuing comments, mostly quotes)

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom." -Benjamin Rush, MD., a signer of the Declaration of Independence and personal physician to George Washington

Feel free to share this! If there is no "share" button, just copy and paste.

"The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition." -Thomas Edison

"If we doctors threw all our medicines into the sea, it would be that much better for our patients and that much worse for the fishes." -Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, MD

"We must admit that we have never fought the homeopath on matters of principle. We fought them because they came into our community and got the business." -Dr. J.N. McCormack, AMA, 1903

"One of the biggest tragedies of human civilization is the precedents of chemical therapy over nutrition. It's a substitution of artificial therapy over nature, of poisons over food, in which we are feeding people poisons trying to correct the reactions of starvation." -Dr. Royal Lee, January 12, 1951

"The human body heals itself and nutrition provides the resources to accomplish the task." -Roger Williams Ph.D. (1971)

"Nutrition can be compared with a chain in which all essential items are separate links. We know what happens if one link of a chain is weak or is missing. The whole chain falls apart." -Patrick Wright, Ph.D.

Me (commenting on some quotes)

"If we doctors threw all our medicines into the sea, it would be that much better for our patients and that much worse for the fishes." - And for (which is relevant to Catholics) Gollum and any other Fisheaters.

"The human body heals itself and nutrition provides the resources to accomplish the task." - Except of course when a beggar is forced to live more of alms given in sweets than of what he can buy with money, because some jerks think if he gets money he will drink or because some jerks know that if I get money, I will not use all on eating, but also some one communicating.

Benjamin Rush failed to foresee another kind of dictatorship of the medical corps. The one exercised by Shrinks.

Even over Hollywood. When I was small there was a film called "And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". When I am in my forties, the main actor is now the hero of "Anger Management", the guy who "helps" a patient through therapy to use his anger correctly. That film would in my view have been better for the role of same actor ending with an axe* in his head (role, not live person, mind you).

I withdraw one word choice.

I said "medical dictatorship", but that is an insult to Mussolini. I meant medical tyranny, of course (you know, I AM in fact a bit tired)!

Friend

What a brilliant film. I greatly sympathised** with the main actor, and loved all of the other characters, too. Then, there's "Doc," before he became "Doc" (one of the actors later ended up being a main character in a famous film "Back to the Future").

Me

All the other characters? Even nurse Ratchet?

Friend

Well, although I did not like who she was, I did appreciate the character as part of the story.

Me

Well, that is hardly loving, is it? It is loving to detest.

Friend

What is "hardly loving?"

Me

If you appreciate the character in the story but do not like her, that is hardly loving but rather loving to detest.

Friend

Well, my point about Nurse Ratchet is that the character was needed to make the film what it was.

Me

Btw, did Benjamin Rush actually use the words "undercover dictatorship"? Sound a bit modern to me. Sure the quote has not been tampered with? Like "secret tyranny" in original?

Friend

I just confirmed the accuracy of the above quote by Rush.

Me

OK, what proximate source?

Friend

Source:

Gifts of Speech: Excerpts From Closing Argument
In The Trial Of Alternative Health Care Provider
Rodger Sless versus
The United States Food And Drug Administration
by Nancy Lord,
1992 Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential Candidate
http://gos.sbc.edu/l/lord.html.

Almost sure it comes from his "Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind."

Me

OK, you quoted your proximate source correctly. Now, I would like to know how Nancy Lord quoted. Can you get his "Medical Inquiries" etc?

Btw, one fault in your quote as per your source: she showed where she had left out parts, by giving three dots, you omitted them and made it look like a continuous quote.

Friend

Did you know: "Dr. Benjamin Rush, the 'father of American psychiatry,' was the first to believe that mental illness is a disease of the mind and not a 'possession of demons.' His classic work, Observations and Inquiries upon the Diseases of the Mind, published in 1812, was the first psychiatric textbook printed in the United States. Rush served on the Pennsylvania Hospital medical staff from 1783 until the time of his death in 1813." Source:

Pennsylvania Hospital History: Stories - Dr. Benjamin Rush
http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/paharc/features/brush.html

How ironic!

I found it available for free as an e-book:

Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind ("Livre numérique"*** Google)
Benjamin Rush
Grigg and Elliot, 1835 - 365 pages
http://books.google.fr/books/about/Medical_Inquiries_and_Observations_Upon.html?id=l-oRAAAAYAAJ&redir_esc=y

Me

Now, as to Rush, perhaps he was doing a favour to people wrongfully considered possessed who in fact were not. But then, perhaps, he was himself overdiagnosing and doing worse than even protestant pseudo-exorcists had been doing.

And thank you very much for the e-book!

Friend

It is not in that book.

Well, I initially saw the quote on another website, and only attempted to confirm its accuracy upon your request, which is why I might have accidently left out the ellipsis.

Me

One good thing about copy-paste is these things are not left out.

I noted the book hardly contained any info on his views on status of doctors. It very much DOES however contain his info on his views of which certain ones can abusively have entered DSMH, so I am glad you gave it me.

Friend

I wish I could find the original source of that quote, but I assume Nancy Lord already did that.

Me

And she might have been as sloppy on vocabulary as you on the ellipsis. Or she might have been quoting from memory.

I checked and saw there were no footnotes. Btw, since she was doing a speech, she would have been quoting from memory rather than looking at a paper!

Friend

…and? Her speech first had to be written though.

Me

Not necessarily word for word. She can have learned a list of points by heart rather than learning every word by heart or even worse looking at every word on a paper.

What I meant by being grateful for the book is that if you look at chapter XI and consider the kind of tone Dawkins takes, you can see how Rush's take can very easily be abused by Antichristians if they only adjust the concrete application of the criterium a bit.

I am not sure Rush was not already treating as madmen capable of believing ANYTHING people who had true stories to tell, but whom he did not believe. I am however very sure that right now that criterium is abused against Christians, against Creationists, against CCHR, against quite a few similar people.

And obviously, Jews are likely to abuse it both against any one believing Jesus is the Christ and against anyone not quite believing all details in the Shoah story.

This is why Jewish Community when overrepresented among shrinks is doing a great deal of harm. If one wants to get rid of it without harming the community as such, the ideal is to get rid of quite a bit of psychiatry.

Obviously they° are also often enough mediocres who simply do not know enough to judge correctly whether someone's story is correct or not.

I was confronted with a person one evening who considered me as having a very screwed up view of history simply because I did not share his and his girl friend's Dan Brown fandom (basically). But he did overbelieve the claims of one Théodore Monod, a French naturalist from a family of Calvinist pastors. Himself he was not of that family as far as I could see, but could be related to one young Rothschild I have seen.

* And no, the spellcheck program is wrong to suggest I replace "axe" with "ax". The latter is an US American reformed spelling. ** Just so I prefer "sympathised" over "sympathized". *** Yes, I am reading this in France. °Is as true of shrinks as of Jews.