Spiritual Healing
eri HE British Medical Association's policy deci- sion that healers should be banned from treating patients in hospitals was inevitable: the only surprise is that the BMA allowed itself to be caught napping by the National Federation of Spiritual Healers, who had managed to secure permission from management committees all over the country to visit—which in practice meant to treat—hospital patients. There are obviously dangers in allowing two sets of treat- ment, not even complementary to one another, to be used on the same patients. Yet the medical profession would be wise to walk warily. The 'reason for the spread of spiritual healing (and other forms of 'healing,' too, not taught in medi- cal schools) is less the invincible gullibility of patients than because the medical service is not giving them the treatment they require. The rapid disappearance of the family doctor has been severing the last link between the patient as an individual and the service as an organisation : he often enters hospital without knowing why, and with no clearly diagnosed complaint—and comes out none the wiser about what was the matter with him. Many doctors would argue that there nothing the matter with him; little in their training qualifies them to do anything to help the substantial proportion of patients who present themselves at surgeries and hospital out-patient departments with nervous disorders. Nor is it a convincing argument that some of the treatment given by healers is bogus; for as even a casual reading of medical literature shows, the profes- sion itself is busy dispensing quack remedies, and has been for years. The view put forward by Dr. Richard Asher of the Central Middlesex Hospital in this month's Medical World. that the great bulk of cough medicines, tonics and liniments currently prescribed are worthless, is shared by many of his colleagues—yet they con- tinue to be prescribed. The profession will do itself and the community a disservice if it tries to maintain that quackery is something which can only happen when patients are treated by un- qualified medical practitioners. The harassed GP is often the worst offender and it should surprise nobody if patients, tired of being fobbed off with useless remedies, turn to.the spiritual healers—or to much less reputable organisations—for help.
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