Stony Brook University - SUNY Digital Repository

under the aegis of Western medicine believed that illness and
disease could not only be predicted and measured but, perhaps
more critically, controlled. Western physicians sought to
arrive at a single unifying diagnosis of some cluster of
symptoms brought about by a single, underlying cause, which
could then be cured through a single, definitive treatment.
What resulted from this perspective of illness was an extremely
linear progression of medical phenomena: Bacteria or Virus A
begets Symptoms B which beget Disease C which begets Cure D.
This has become known as “The Germ Theory,” which, according to
alternative medicine author Dr. Dean Black in his book Health At
the Crossroads, contends that, “[D]iseases are caused by
microorganisms that invade us and disturb our inner chemistry.
[…] The medical goal here is to kill the germs before they kill
us” (14). In this way, the intended cure for those “germs”
works as a sort of “magic bullet”: one treatment, one kill.
This Western system that arose in the nineteenth century stood
in opposition to the far older Eastern Medicine, which perceived
multiple causes for illness and disease and, accordingly,
multiple treatments. From this Eastern perspective, illness was
not “predictable and measurable,” at least not with any degree
of certainty, because it acknowledged the “mystery” – that which
is uncertain – in human health and illness, as well as the
greater universe. This is more in tune with contemporary
67