Heroes Not Zombies

In a French magazine I read – “since the dawn of time, cuts have sealed over, broken bones have knitted together and illnesses have resolved, well before the appearance of shamans, priests and doctors.”

Doesn’t that amaze you? Have you ever stopped, in awe, to wonder how a cut on your skin heals over? We put a sticking plaster over a cut or graze, or sometimes we need a couple of stitches to pull the edges together, but we know, don’t we, that plasters and stitches don’t heal. It’s the body which does the healing. It’s our natural, given ability to self repair which sends cells and chemicals to the right place to close the wound, stop the bleeding, then lay down scar material to make a permanent repair. When we break a bone, all a surgeon can do is align the two parts and hold them together for long enough to let the bone knitting powers of the body do their stuff. When you recover from an infection, even if you taken a drug to kill some of the offending bacteria or viruses, it’s entirely your bodies immune and inflammatory processes which protect your tissues and repair the damaged ones.

I lived with that knowledge throughout my medical career, never losing that respect and awe for our capacities to self repair, self defend and self heal.

Healing is always a natural process. Drugs don’t heal. Like splints or sticking plasters they might support the healing process, but they don’t replace it.

The magazine article I read wasn’t arguing about the value of shamens, priests or doctors. It was emphasising the often forgotten, or taken for granted, powers of natural healing. I’m not arguing against pharmacology or surgery. Both can be life saving. But I think it’s good to remind ourselves that it’s our incredible bodies which heal and which keep life flowing. It’s not our tools which are so amazing. It’s Nature.