Bully for the John Bulls!
Call it what you will: Alternative medicine, complementary
medicine, new age medicine – even non-traditional medicine
(which is ironic, since many of the techniques of this new
medical movement, like acupuncture and massage, are
centuries old)
But whatever you call the trend in medicine away from drugs
and surgery and toward more holistic, natural treatments for
disease and prevention, you just can’t refute that it’s
growing. And just recently, the entire alternative medicine
world got a huge feather in its cap – and it’s about time.
What happened, you’re asking?
None other than QUEEN OF ENGLAND has selected an alternative
medicine practitioner as her Royal Physician! This
appointment marks the first time the monarch’s medical needs
have been served by anyone other than a strictly
conventional M.D.
According to European online news sources, the Queen is said
to have been “won over” by the merits of what the Britons
call “complementary medicine” – perhaps in no small measure
because the Prince of Wales himself (Prince Charles) is an
unabashed and vocal advocate of non-conventional healing
therapies. In fact, he spearheaded his own Foundation for
Integrated Health in the U.K. (an adjunct to the Department
of Health) specifically to research and publicize
complementary medicine techniques. It’s also said that
Prince Philip and Princess Anne are also fans of alt-
medicine treatments.
Although a true medical doctor since graduating from
Westminster Hospital Medical School in 1979, the 43-year-old
Dr. Timothy Evans has branched out into many areas of
alternative treatment since founding his own private
southwest London clinic, The Westover House. According to
the clinic’s web site, Dr. Evans’ mission is to successfully
integrate the best of both conventional and alternative
medicine in a holistic approach that focuses on prevention
as well as treatment.
Sound familiar at all?
As you can imagine, this appointment is very big news in the
alt-medicine realm. Here’s my question, though: Why didn’t
this happen years ago? The proof of alternative medicine’s
benefits has been building for decades. But I guess I should
be happy – a leap of this degree in the visibility of
drugless natural treatments should really be cause for
celebration
And so, I say: Long live the Queen! She surely will, now
that she’s embracing ALL of medicine (unless this new doctor
turns out to be a vegetarian).
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Larval Marvels
When most people think of using maggots to cleanse and
disinfect wounds, they probably think of old-time medicine -
civil-war era or even older – when things like leeches were
used to drain a person of blood. Such a perception is
natural, I guess. Something about letting maggots eat our
skin seems so elemental, so archaic to our modern
sensibilites
But what people probably don’t realize is that even in this
high-tech, laser-and-antibiotic era, harmless, pennies-per
hundred maggots are still quite possibly the VERY BEST way
in which to clean and disinfect wounds and ulcers. Why?
Because maggots are the perfect scavengers – they ONLY eat
necrotic (dead) tissue. And they do it without any of the
risks or side effects of drugs.
How well do they work? One University of California study
(one of the few ever conducted, I’m sure — see the May 2002
issue of my newsletter for more details) testing maggot therapy
for non-healing wounds yielded incredible results: They completely
or significantly disinfected 86% of test subjects’ wounds,
and saved the limbs of a remarkable 62.5% of patients in the
same study who were slated for amputation!
Now, it looks like mainstream medicine (at least in the
alternative medicine friendly U.K.) is finally starting to
re-embrace this centuries-old therapy. Britain’s National
Health Service has now authorized the use of maggots as
wound cleansers because of ever-more-common problems
resulting from the overuse of antibiotics – and because
they’re far more cost effective (or just plain effective)
than conventional treatments, as confirmed by research
conducted at the Princess of Wales Hospital.
When these larval marvels will be embraced on these shores,
however, is anybody’s guess.
Letting you know when nature’s “grossly” better,
William Campbell Douglass II, MD
