MODERN CAPITALIST MEDICINE
Dr. V. Pugazhendi
Medical knowledge and practice was common amidst people. “People” means only the labouring, village based men and women folk. They are the fore fathers of the oppressed people of today. Medicine earlier was in consonance with nature. It was with the working women. They had the science and technology to take care of their day-to-day requirements. Food was medicine and medicine was food for them. Medicine was available as herbs in the immediate environment. Medical knowledge was in a language understandable by everyone. As people themselves attended on medical requirements, doctors, beyond the people as experts were non-existent. Both birth and death took place in the home itself. Grandmothers were well versed in child care with their experience. Life had time for both work and leisure. The environment was without artificial and non degradable waste. Today’s haste, tensions and psychological worries were not at all there. Hence the chance for disease was less. Body immunity played its primary role. Therefore, if someone fell ill, unnecessary tests and equipments were not at all needed for curing him/her. Knowledge, power and the ultimate right on themselves were all with the people themselves.
In due course, local doctors compiled the medical knowledge of the people. Religion stood in support of it. Putting the women to the background, male doctors came to the forefront. We read about the incidents in the West where the priests burnt alive the female doctors calling them witches. Private ownership society protects caste and religion, which in turn will protect it, by suppressing women using child marriage, sati and widowhood. But still the knowledge and practice of medicine was with the local doctor. It wasn’t with the profit-motivated industry. The local doctors collected the herbs around, prepared medicine and helped the needy people. The independence of people was not affected as much. The medical knowledge was in the mother tongue.
The joint family gave an option of rest if one member fell ill. Life had not become mechanical. Efforts were on to reason out, analyse and compile facts about diseases. As preventive methods change in food habits, change of place (pilgrimage) and fasting were observed by people. The basic reasons for diseases, namely the reduction in immunity and the degradation of environment were not of great importance those days. They had a saying that guesthood and medicine are only for three days. Psychology was also given its due place. Certain medical practices like ‘mandreegam’ were prevalent.
Since media and communication channels were not available, local problems had to be solved locally. But today, the media is helping foreign medicine to be dumped on people. Today, the modern, imperial, hi-tech capitalistic English medical system is reigning by condemning all the medical knowledge that was prevalent amidst the people, local doctors, in ancient texts and as oral tradition by stamping them all as ‘quacks’ and preventing their practice legally. Today the only aim of the medical profession is a huge profit. Technical knowledge beyond the understanding ability of common man becomes a power in the hands of an expert. Super specialists of today, considered above a general practitioner, only enable us to see ourselves as parts and not as a whole. The people have no right to their own bodies.
Earlier the division between rural and urban was not that severe. Medical assistance was available locally. Now medicine is more urban oriented. Rural is almost neglected. Earlier there were no medical institutions for learning. There was only the Gurukula practice. Now it has become specialised course and also declared legal. Due to the degradation in the environment, fast industrialisation, break down of families, mental problems, immediate relief has become the priority. This requires ‘heavy duty’ medicine. English medicine suits this requirement. This capitalism and English medicine protect each other.
Most of the medical discoveries are: (1) Made for the sake of and alongside war (2) Have huge profit as the motivation (3) Give only immediate relief and quickly enables the work force to serve the capitalistic institution.
Modern medicine developed along with the First World War. Many died due to infections of the wounds suffered. To prevent such deaths, discoveries of antibiotics became imminent. During the Second World War when modern weapons with the highest capacity for destruction were used, modern surgical procedures needed to be developed.
The world wars were primarily for the sake of huge profits and for ensuring the hegemony of private property owners. As a by-product of these wars modern medicine has developed. This being the case can we ever call this medical science as neutral or pro human welfare?
Capitalist exploitation has increased malnutrition among people. Tonics using chemicals were discovered to alleviate this problem. Due to malnutrition, capitalistic industrial greed, there is a compulsion to over work and not get enough rest, and due to the side effects of war pain has become unbearable. It became essential to numb the pain. Hence pain killers had to be discovered. Due to the urban culture based on the capitalist model and its resultant congestion, dirt and obscenities infections increased and hence antibiotics had to be discovered. Finally, with increased degradation of the environment and with the decrease in the body immunity a variety of allergies have started appearing. As a temporary relief for these allergies, anti allergens were discovered. Modern medicine has been introduced in this order only. We can even say that modern medicine can be confined to these four categories.
The health of human beings is not only related to the medicines they consume. In fact, tonics and tablets are enemies of health. When people are not provided with the basics of health and healthy food and clean water, when the entire environment is degraded and when the entire world is immersed in innumerable synthetic chemicals, the medical world is just doing the job of rolling out the tablets for the ‘consequences.’ All their attempts are nothing but a money minting war against the ‘consequences’ but not at all a sincere medical effort to throw out the real reasons behind the consequences.
Medicine today:
· Is in the grip of multinationals, whose sole aim is profit.
· Is more and more dependent on modern science and technology, which is by and large anti- working class people.
· Depends and makes us dependent on upper caste/class doctors who go through a curriculum where they memorise only one kind of medical practice suitable for today’s stratified social structure.
· Does not pay due regard to the immunity of the body which is the basic reason for the well- being of the body and mind. Instead pays attention only to immediate relief.
· Favours the well being of the foreign and upper class by using multi-storeyed buildings, costly equipment and unnecessary tests in the name of quality.
· Does not discover the basic reasons for the disease – instead spreads the culture that immediate relief is the proof of love and care.
· Does not give due respect to human rights but instead is supported by law and politics that take away the right of patients.
· Its language is alien to the people – it hides more than it reveals.
· Makes a common man undergo unnecessary tests, medicines and tablets and injections, cheats and enslaves him economically and ideologically.
Hence the dominant medical method is born and brought up in a specific historical context. As far as we are concerned the language from the West has also been forced on us by the government. Today it has brought us to the humiliating state of affairs where, even the positive aspects of local traditional medicine is neglected, insulted and made illegal. Practically today disease is dependent on doctors, the so-called specialists, modern alien equipment, English, complicated tests, pharmaceuticals and chemical industries, profits and ultimately very expensive for the people. Moreover, people lose their knowledge and power believing the capitalist advertisements.
We do not inculcate the practice of bearing with the symptoms of disease namely pain or fever even though symptoms are essential to learn about the body. Consuming medicine for anything and everything without any discretion has a negative impact on the development of body resistance. By using an alien language and by making medical education into a private property and power of the dominant class/caste who can afford it, modern medicine has denied the people their rightful share of medical knowledge.
The mechanisation being dumped on us in the name of development is there to protect the welfare of the upper caste/class. It has reduced human relations (say for e.g. the relation between the doctor and the patient) into plain commercial relations. (It makes one think what is the benefit one is going to get by having that relation). Such a capitalistic medicine and the capitalistic science which destroys relations, grabs what one has, and confuses feelings have only done harm to the people of the lower strata.
It is not incidental. It seems to be a well planned conspiracy. A stage has come when the innumerable labourers who constitute the basis for the formation of this civilization are considered not to be required any more. Hence capitalistic medicine is also functioning in the direction of eliminating them.
(Extracts from the booklet “Disposable People” by the author)