I have just published the paper A Theory of Cure on Academia.edu. The paper is a concise summary of the concepts of cure published in the book: The Elements of Cure.
“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”
— SOCRATES
===== The paper begins with: ===================
Scientific definitions, in conventional medicine, are few. Historical medical dictionaries abound, describing signs, symptoms, diseases, and treatments in detail, while medical definitions of illness, disease, sickness, and disorder are poor and poorly distinguished…
Cure is not defined in any current theory or practice of medicine. The word cure does not appear in many medical dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, 2008) (Black’s, 1992) (Oxford, 2008) (Oxford, 2015). This is not a recent occurrence… No medical reference provides a definition of cure, much less an authoritative definition (Merck, 2011) (Harrison’s, 2011) (Lange’s, 2016) (Ferri Fred F. MD FACP, , 2019) (DSM-5, 2013). These references use the word treatment approximately 10 times as often as cure, and the word cure is not used consistently… A large number of references to cure are cannot be cured, incurable, or similar phrases.
===== Note: The phrase ROOT cause, does not appear in the paper. Root causes cannot cure. In the middle, the key to cure is presented. ====
A cure, or a curative, is an action… ending the illness by addressing the present cause and its consequences.
==== Every curable illness is PRESENT. The PRESENT CAUSE is key to cure =====
after an in depth exploration of the basic concepts of illness, cause and cure, :
======= the paper concludes with ====
Health is slow and steady. Health is honest and true.
We can’t trick health.
The Healthicine Creed
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was right: recognizing that cures come from health,
and from cause when he said “Diseases which arise from repletion are cured by depletion; and those that arise from depletion are cured by repletion; and in general, diseases are cured by their contraries.” Diseases are cured by contraries to their causes.
Hippocrates was not a surgeon, and his advice in the Hippocratic Oath “I will not use the knife, even upon those suffering from stones, but I will leave this to those who are trained in this craft.” Hippocrates did not recognize that many transformational cures that are much more subtle than surgeries. “What cannot be cured by medicaments is cured by the knife, what the knife cannot cure is cured with the searing iron, and whatever this cannot cure must be considered incurable.” (Hippocrates, 1849) He was wrong to assume that what he could not cure, and a surgeon could not cure, is incurable.
Most cures come from health, not from medicine or medical treatments…
As we study elements of illness and elements of cure, we will see that the cure for most
illness elements is an improvement in healthiness. We might have guessed that. As a result, most cures rely more on the actions of the patient than the actions of any medicine.
Doctors cannot cure causal illnesses. They need to facilitate cures by understanding illnesses, causes, cures, and patients, and communicating their observations and knowledge. The cure actions come from the patient.
Doctors cure when they facilitate or make transformations that address attribute causes.
We need to acknowledge that transformation cures can come from many sources, not just from surgeons, but also from the patient, their communities, and sometimes even from seemingly random events or changes in the patient or their environment.
You can view the entire paper on Academia.edu.
This is my second publication about CURE on Academica.edu. You can view the first paper, A Definition and Exploration of Cure, published in July 2018.
to your health, tracy
