Prevalent in India and China, pulse is a traditional diagnosis technique used to answer the mystery of what’s going on inside the bodies of ailing patients. Noah Volz with The California College of Ayurveda said that, “Ayurvedic Medicine has been using the pulse as a form of diagnosis since it was created 5000 years ago. Those who are familiar with modern Ayurvedic medicine think of the scenario where an Indian doctor takes your pulse and looks at your tongue and then can tell you what you've eaten for dinner the night before.” (pg. 1) The idea that someone can touch your wrist and tell you what’s wrong is fantastical to the western world perspective. Should it be dismissed out of hand or are there requirements for a doctor to be considered a “Quack”? In Jean Langford’s article “medical mimesis: healing signs of a cosmopolitan ‘quack’,” she targets three areas of identifying one. Namely: mimicry of medicines, methods, or qualifications; mimicry with intent to deceive; and mimicry with intent to deceive for mercenary motives. Like Langford, I would like to challenge if these criteria are suitable to identifying a “quack”, the cultural trap of authenticity, and is magic really magic or science.
As I read through Langford’s article I realized that the question of medicine wasn’t fully being addressed. More and more the article became one where the pulse technique wasn’t in question but rather the authenticity of the doctor. If the actual medical moment is when a pulse doctor reads through his and the patient’s skin the diagnosis, then that is the moment of truth, or rather, the point where medicine originates. Generally, a pulse doctor learns from a credited Ayurvedic school or a swami. If he has learned his trade well, he will be able to receive the ailing body’s communication then treat the patient for it. Do pictures on walls, questionable certification, advertising, and ego alter the degree of truth established in that medical moment? I will take the side that it can’t. These are external factors and not related to the actual practice of medicine. Then why are they used to determine a doctor to be a false practitioner of medicine or a quack? Perhaps medicine is not solely about a cure, but the culture and its symbols. Which leads me to the question if cultural medicine can heal?
“It is unlikely that I would have thought to test his medical authenticity had his cultural authenticity been clearly intact,” states Langford. (pg 31) As she continues on her investigation of Dr. Mistry she notes the effectiveness of his symbols to his patients and that they take on almost a magical image. Admittedly Dr Mistry tries to increase his cultural symbols and their perceived “magic” in his practice as he sees it inspiring his patients to have faith in his treatments. However, development of that mysticism justifies him lying or fabricating the definition of what he does, and to taking unwarranted credit for “faith healing”. For example, Dr Mistry tells Langford that the four parts of Ayurveda he tacks on one called “anchoring”. By saying this, he has in essence anchored the lie of “anchoring being a part of Ayurveda” under the practices umbrella. It cleans up nicely with the exception that Ayurveda has eight parts, not four, and none of them are called “anchoring”. In addition, when something unexpected happened he would hold his palms up and give the credit to “magic” which in turn credited him as the purveyor of faith or similar to that of a Zen master. Therefore, if taking on an image generates a healing process through faith or magic, then indeed cultural medicine can heal. But, is pulse magic or science?
Dr. David Frawley, Author and CCA Advisory Board member may be supporting pulse a mystical power when stating that, "Ayurveda is based upon a deep communion with the spirit of life itself and a profound understanding of the movement of the life-force and its different manifestations within our entire psycho-physical system,” or does he? I had the privilege a few years back to get a bio-scan from a homeopathy practitioner. As I sat in a chair, wires were connected to my legs, wrists and forehead as a machine asked my body through electrical signals what ailed it. The list was incredibly detailed with parallels between the bio-scan and my personal health history down to where my skin scars were located. In a fashion, what Dr. Mistry does is the same. As the body communicates its ailments, he listens. So is it magic or just undefined science? Langford states that, “one could say that magical medicine exists to conceal the fact that professional medicine is also magical,” (pg 41-42) and Leon Hammer states that, "the Normal pulse is a sensitive and precise measurable standard of health. It enables us to detect early deviations from health. It provides us with a preventive medicine.” (pg 1) Perhaps, at some point a comprehensive form of directly communicating to the body can be achieved in our medical practices, but it doesn’t exist currently. And until then medicine will have to rely on cultural medicine to fill in the gap with mystical or faith defined practices while science tries to catch up.
Even had the mimicry turned out to be a suitable test of “quackery,” it would have been undefined by the production of wellness in Dr. Mistry’s patients. In addition, if perceived quackery is allowed to stop the cultural practice of pulse then it runs to trap the medicine because its authenticity cannot yet be defined by science. “Pulse is a simulacrum that owes its meaning not to its use value, its relationship with an objectively real disease, but to its exchange value, its relationship with those other signifiers, the symptoms.” (Langford, pg 41) Unfortunately, there will be doctors that are quacks and there will be cultural medicine that has no benefit as, “Quackery seems to be composed of qualities that slip back and forth between falseness and authenticity.” However, as time has permitted the emergence of various forms of healing to persist, so will folk medicine persist by the very success of its patients. Even within the past week I found a testament to that as I was ordering supplements online at Swanson.com, a prevalent and popular marketer and manufacturer of health products, and came across products for pitta, vayu, and the kapha dosa’s from the Ayurvedic that is currently available to any who wish it. The question remains, however, of whether the products work tangibly or are they marketed from cultural popularity? Individually, we’ll have to decide.
Bibliography
Langford. 1999. "articles - Medical mimesis: Healing signs of a cosmopolitan "quack". American Ethnologist. 26 (1): 24.
Hammer, L. 1993. "Contemporary Pulse Diagnosis: Introduction to An Evolving Method for Learning an Ancient Art-Part I". AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ACUPUNCTURE. 21 (2).
Hammer, L. 1993. "Contemporary Pulse Diagnosis: Pulse Taking Method-Part II". AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ACUPUNCTURE. 21 (3).
“Pulse Diagnosis: How do we read the heart beat.” California College of Ayurveda. http://www.ayurvedacollege.com/AyurvedicPulseDiagnosis_000.htm (submitted Dec. 2005)
