Heroes Not Zombies

Health is a state of being of a whole organism. It isn’t reducible to either single elements, or to a cumulative total of elements. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.

A number of years ago, I read Hans-Georg Gadamer’s stimulating collection of essays, “The Enigma of Health“. He wondered about the strange invisibility of health. For example, at the moment I’m not particularly aware of having a left foot, but if something heavy were to fall on it, injuring it, I’d certainly be aware of it! I’m reminded of the Roger McGough poem, “Bits of Me”, where he refers to the bits of him which are making their presence know, when normally, they don’t! (a great, thought provoking, and funny poem)

I’m also very aware of how little “health” is discussed, taught or researched, what with both training and service delivery in health care being focused on disease discovery and management. But don’t we need to have some useful concept of “health” if we’re seeking to support and/or create it?

I recently came across some writings by the biologist, Brian Goodwin. He captures the issue beautifully here –

I take the position that there is a property of health of the whole organism that cannot be described in terms of the functioning and interactions of the constituent organs or tissues or molecules—whatever level of parts one wishes to consider. Furthermore, this property of the whole influences the functioning of the parts in identifiable ways; that is, it has causal efficacy. The absence of such a conception from mainstream biology and medicine is evident from the fact that there is no theory and practice of health taught to medical students that develops systematically such an emergent property of the whole organism with which one can work methodically. Health in the medical model is absence of disease, not presence of a coherent state that can be recognized and facilitated by an appropriate therapeutic relationship.

Wonderful. This is the understanding we need if we’re ever going to develop a science of health and a practice of health care.