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    Can You Be Happy Without Being Healthy?: Wants, 1988. The Son of English Missionaries Working in India, Brand

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    The document discusses the relationship between health, attitudes, and behavior. It argues that (1) one's attitude towards their body can impact their health, as respect and appreciation for the body encourages healthy behaviors; (2) Western societies often show disregard for the body's needs through unhealthy choices, despite medical knowledge; and (3) historically, medical practices and what is considered "scientific" have changed dramatically over time.

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    Can You Be Happy Without Being Healthy?: Wants, 1988. The Son of English Missionaries Working in India, Brand

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    Brayo Hero
    51 views5 pages
    The document discusses the relationship between health, attitudes, and behavior. It argues that (1) one's attitude towards their body can impact their health, as respect and appreciation for the body encourages healthy behaviors; (2) Western societies often show disregard for the body's needs through unhealthy choices, despite medical knowledge; and (3) historically, medical practices and what is considered "scientific" have changed dramatically over time.

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    The document discusses the relationship between health, attitudes, and behavior. It argues that (1) one's attitude towards their body can impact their health, as respect and appreciation for the body encourages healthy behaviors; (2) Western societies often show disregard for the body's needs through unhealthy choices, despite medical knowledge; and (3) historically, medical practices and what is considered "scientific" have changed dramatically over time.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    51 views5 pages

    Can You Be Happy Without Being Healthy?: Wants, 1988. The Son of English Missionaries Working in India, Brand

    Uploaded by

    Brayo Hero
    The document discusses the relationship between health, attitudes, and behavior. It argues that (1) one's attitude towards their body can impact their health, as respect and appreciation for the body encourages healthy behaviors; (2) Western societies often show disregard for the body's needs through unhealthy choices, despite medical knowledge; and (3) historically, medical practices and what is considered "scientific" have changed dramatically over time.

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    Can You be Happy Without

    Being Healthy?
    Cheerfulness is the principal ingredient in the composition of health.
    [The following passage is from Paul Brand’s Pain: The Gift Nobody
    Wants, 1988. The son of English missionaries working in India, Brand
    went on to become a surgeon who developed new, innovative
    techniques for hand surgery. He also revolutionized our
    understanding of leprosy: the disfigurement is caused by the lack of
    respect for the body that results from the condition of painlessness
    (which is caused by the disease) and not because the disease causes
    the flesh to become “non-healing” or to change in any way.]

    The reason I encourage gratitude is that one’s underlying attitude (a


    product of the mind) toward the body can have a major impact on
    health. If I regard the body with respect, wonder, and appreciation, I
    will be far more inclined to behave in a way that sustains its health. In
    my work with leprosy patients, I could make repairs to hands and feet,
    but these improvements, I soon learned, amounted to nothing unless
    the patients themselves assumed responsibility for their limbs. The
    essence of rehabilitation— indeed, the essence of health—was to restore
    to my patients a sense of personal destiny over their own bodies.
    When I moved to the United States, I expected to find that a society
    with such high standards of education and medical sophistication
    would foster a strong sense of personal responsibility in health. I have
    found exactly the opposite. In Western countries, an astounding
    proportion of the health problems stem from behavior choices that
    show disregard for the body’s clear signals.
    We doctors know this truth, but we shy away from interfering in our
    patients’ lives. If we were fully honest, we might say something like
    this: “Listen to your body, and above all listen to your pain. It may be
    trying to tell you that you are violating your brain with tension, your
    ears with loudness, your eyes with constant television, your stomach
    with unhealthy food, your lungs with cancer-producing pollutants.
    Listen carefully to the message of pain before I give you something to
    relieve those symptoms. I can help with the symptoms, but you must
    address the cause.”
    Health is identical with the degree of lived freedom.
    Ivan Illich

    Given medicine’s history of magic poultices, blood-letting, ice-cold


    baths, and other “cures,” we should be grateful that at least doctors had
    the placebo effect working in their favour. Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer
    (who gave us the epigram mesmerize) “cured” patients with his animal
    Magnetism theories. . . . Two nineteenth-century French physicians
    advocated directly contradictory methods of treatment. Dr. Raymond
    at Salpetriere in Paris suspended his patients by their feet to allow
    blood to flow to their heads. Dr. Haushalter at Nancy suspended his
    patient’s head upward. Their results: exactly the same percentage of
    patients showed improvement. Norman Cousins has remarked,
    “Indeed, many medical scholars have believed that the history of
    medicine is actually the history of the placebo effect. Sir William Osler
    underlined the point by observing that the human species is
    distinguished from the lower order by its desire to take medicine.
    Considering the nature of nostrums taken over the centuries, it is
    possible that another distinguishing feature of the species is its ability
    to survive medication.” Paul Brand
    Time and time again, throughout the history of medical practice, what was
    once considered as “scientific” eventually becomes regarded as “bad
    practice.” David Stewart

    I tell you, the old-fashioned doctor who treated all diseases has
    completely disappeared, now there are only specialists, and they
    advertise all the time in the newspapers. If your nose hurts, they send
    you to Paris: there’s a European specialist there, he treats noses. You go
    to Paris, he examines your nose: I can treat only your right nostril, he
    says, I don’t treat left nostrils, it’s not my specialty, but after me, go to
    Vienna, there’s a separate specialist there who will finish treating your
    left nostril.
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky (from The Brothers Karamazov, 1880)

    There is one advantage of being poor—a doctor will cure you faster.
    Kin Hubbard

    Thoughts about Health &


    Doctors
    A cartoon shows a witch doctor standing dejectedly over the body of
    his late patient and saying to the grieving widow, “There is so much
    that we still don’t know!”

    Doctors put drugs of which they know little into bodies of which they know
    less for diseases of which they know nothing at all. Voltaire
    Beyond a certain level of intensity, medicine engenders helplessness
    and disease. Ivan Illich
    Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.
    Benjamin Franklin

    Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the


    mind as to the body. Joseph Addison
    He who laughs, lasts, but the surly bird catches the germ.

    Diseases have a character of their own, but they also partake of our
    character. Oliver Sacks

    The mind has great influence over the body, and maladies often
    have their origin there. Molière

    Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than
    those of the body. Cicero
    Mental health problems do not affect three or four out of every five persons,
    but one out of one. Karl Menninger

    Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.


    Norman Cousins
    The doctor of the future will be oneself.
    Albert Schweitzer

    Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook
    magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion is weak,
    men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz
    One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take
    medicine. Sir William Osler

    Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade
    and are tasteless without it. Seneca
    The greatest of follies is to sacrifice health for any other kind of happiness.
    Arthur Schopenhauer

    Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
    of nothing. Redd Foxx
    If I’d known I was going to live so long, I’d have taken better care of myself.
    Leon Eldred
    I have never yet met a healthy person who worried very much about his
    health, or a really good person who worried much about his own soul.
    J. B. S. Haldane
    The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy. Physical
    nature must not be made the direct object of obedience; it must be enjoyed,
    not worshipped. G. K. Chesterton

    If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors.


    Mignon McLaughlin
    Most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by
    morning. Lewis Thomas

    Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only


    make promises; pain we obey. Marcel Proust
    Health is not valued till sickness comes.
    Thomas Fuller

    Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.


    Hippocrates
    It is easier to change a man’s religion than to change his diet.
    Margaret Mead

    Natural forces within us are the true healers of disease.


    Hippocrates
    God heals, and the doctor takes the fees.
    Benjamin Franklin

    Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses.
    Molière
    No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other
    means. Maimonides

    Plato said that the body’s problems proceed from the soul, and that
    unless the soul or mind is satisfied first the body can never be cured.

    It is much more important to know what sort of a patient has a disease than
    what sort of a disease a patient has. Sir William Osler

    The miserable have no other medicine, / But only hope...


    Measure for Measure (Claudio)
    The best healer is the most ingenious inspirer of hope.

    The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is


    such a thing as physical morality. Herbert Spencer
    The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is
    so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
    G.K. Chesterton

    There is a great difference between a good doctor and a bad one; yet
    very little between a good one and none at all.

    Our doctor would never operate unless it was absolutely necessary. He was
    just that way. If he didn’t need the money, he wouldn’t lay a hand on you.

    Those obsessed with health are not healthy; the first requisite of good
    health is a certain calculated carelessness about oneself.
    Sydney J. Harris
    Attention to health is the greatest hindrance to life.
    Plato

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