By Roberta Bivins
As a historian who writes about the controversial topic of ‘alternative medicine’, I get a lot of questions about whether this or that therapy ‘works’. Sometimes, these questions are a test of my objectivity as a researcher. My questioners want to know whether I am ‘believer’, or a fan of alternative medicine, or have any stake in promoting or disdaining a given medical system. Other people are asking simply for advice: is it worth trying acupuncture, say, or homeopathy for a particular condition? From either angle, such questions ask me to take a stand on whether homeopathy is quackery, or whether I believe in acupuncture channels, or chiropractic manipulation.
My instinctive – if perhaps unhelpful – response to such questions is, more or less, to shrug my shoulders and reply that I don’t really care: the issue of therapeutic efficacy isn’t at the heart of my research on this fascinating subject. Instead, I want to know what lies behind the enduring popularity of alternative medicine, what is (or is not) really ‘alternative’ about it, and why so many of biomedicine’s current crop of ‘alternatives’ have been imported from very different global medical cultures. These are questions that a historian can answer. They are also questions that shed more light on the persistence of alternative medicine than would a yes or no answer about the efficacy of any given technique. After all, we know that once-respected mainstream therapies like bloodletting and purging enjoyed centuries of popularity despite being uncomfortable, potentially dangerous and (in light of today’s medical knowledge) ineffective. Even today, patients prescribed antibiotics for a nasty cold often report feeling better after taking them – despite knowing that most colds are actually caused by viruses, and thus immune to antibiotic therapy.
My position has not always been popular with my fellow authors writing on the topic. They are often passionately committed supporters or opponents of alternative therapies, and demand that I become one or the other as well. But history studies the interplay of light and shadow, not the boundaries between black and white. So I am happy to let the healers fight it out in the battle to prove or disprove the efficacy of their chosen treatments. My job as a historian is to remind them — and to remind us all as consumers — that even the most objective evidence remains historically contingent: no medical experiment can escape from its social milieu, since both its designers and its subjects are shaped by their own historical and cultural context and beliefs.
For example, in contemporary biomedicine, it is conventional to separate the mind and the body when designing a medical experiment: hence the rise of the double-blinded random controlled trial as medicine’s ‘gold-standard’ of proof. Yet physicians and researchers simultaneously acknowledge the impact of the mind on bodily processes. They call it the ‘placebo effect’. As understandings of the mind-body relationship become more sophisticated, it is possible that the blinded RCT will fall from favour, as a limited test of therapeutic activity which obscures an important variable. Such changes have happened in the past, as evidenced by the shifting balance between deductive and inductive reasoning in scientific experimentation since the Scientific Revolution, or the changing status of ‘empiricism’ in western medicine since the 18th century. Then again, it may not: history is not a predictive science! My point is that today’s objective truths are neither value-free nor future-proof.
More practically, it is also my task to point out that the arguments used on either side — for instance, ‘homeopathy is bunk; no trace of the medicinal substance remains in a homeopathic dilution’, or ‘biomedicine reduces h
From the Guardian:
The new lottery scheme will be organised by Malcolm Taylor, an expert in colloquial rhyme from the English Folkdance and Song Society, founded in 1911 by folklore revivalist Cecil Sharp. The project aims to encourage creativity and monitor the way in which songs have altered down the ages. Next year Taylor plans to return some of the society's archive recordings to the areas of Britain where they were originally made.
How cool would it be to be an "expert in colloquial rhyme"? Pretty dang cool.
Still searching for my copy of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts. It's got to be around here somewhere.
After being hit in the head during a gym class game of dodgeball, 16-year-old Tessa finds herself soaring towards Heaven... and ends up at the mall.
After being lead to the the Lost and Found, she is left to confront her memories and relive significant moments in her life, which will hopefully lead her to a Big Answer -- except that she's not really sure what the question is.
Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall is a verse novel. It begins:
For fifty cents and a Gobstopper
I lifted my shirt for the neighborhood boys.
My older brother Matt caught us
and chased the boys with a Wiffle bat.
Word got around, and at nine years old
I became the girl
other girls' moms
didn't want them to play with.
Like some other verse novels I've read, this book felt less like poetry to me and more like prose with a lot of extra line breaks. That isn't to say that I didn't enjoy it -- but I felt it was worth mentioning. I could imagine the book working just as well as a connected sequence of short stories or even vignettes.
I really enjoyed Tessa as a character. She's far from perfect, but that makes her more real, and I do think that most teens will find that they identify with at least a part of her. I also felt that Tessa's memory sequences were strong. (Especially those involving Ben -- the moment under the bleachers and the scene in the elevator both really worked for me.) They ranged from momentarily joyful to downright heartbreaking:
Just because Mom had, like a million
friends when she was my age
because she competed in pageants
(a concept that makes me shiver
just thinking about it) she thinks
there's something wrong with me
because I only have three real friends,
and they each have more
important friends than me.
I found myself less interested, less involved and less invested with the actual Heaven part of the book. Once the "Is it all a dream? Am I dead or aren't I?" questions started, I felt that I knew exactly where that angle of the story was going and just... lost interest. For me, that made her revelations anticlimactic, because, well, I've already read A Christmas Carol and I've already seen It's a Wonderful Life. I knew where it was going. I think, though, that the same aspect of the book that didn't work for me might make it a comfort read for others.
Again, her life story always held me and kept me curious -- and that makes up the majority of the book. My feelings about it as a whole are mixed, but more positive than negative.
This is the sequel to What My Mother Doesn't Know. I'm not going to give you a synopsis of the first book because, honestly, you should just read it. It's one of my faves.
Like its predecessor, What My Girlfriend Doesn't Know is a verse novel. It picks up during the cafeteria scene, just before the first book ended, and, as you may have deduced from the title, this time we get Robin's perspective.
When Sophie made her choice to publicly date the school outcast, she also made a choice to become a school outcast. While Robin is deliriously happy about his relationship with Sophie, he does wonder if it's all worth it. Especially when he sees how miserable she is when her friends dump her.
Then, when Robin begins an art class at Harvard, where no one knows his reputation (or his age), he discovers that he has his own choice to make: Stay with his beloved Sophie and deal with all of the strife that comes with their relationship, or end it and spend his time outside of high school with friendly, smart, cool college kids -- including a very attractive redhead named Tessa.
My reaction to the book is an immature one: I liked it better when Robin Murphy was perfect.
I can't help it. I'm a big baby, possibly overly romantic and newly anti-realism*, but it's true. I loved Robin and Sophie's perfect winter vacation, and the first book made me so very happy. Having to deal with the repercussions of The Big Moment at the end of the first book was almost too hard for me.
That isn't to say that it wasn't good -- if it hadn't been, it sure wouldn't have evoked that kind of reaction in me. And I still love Robin and Sophie.
Oh, hell. I'm going to go and re-read the first book again.
*I blame my newfound love of Georgette Heyer's romance novels.
Staff Meetings.
Repetitive and
unhelpful: I want to stab
myself with a fork.
Feel free to jump in here -- write a haiku about something work-related that you HATE.
I don't usually participate in Poetry Friday because:
A) I always forget and
B) I'm a big loser.
But this week, I am, because:
A) I don't have it in me to write up a book today, even though I have a huge pile of just-reads and
B) I feel like being a joiner this week and
C) I was inspired by the subject of this week's t-shirt.
So, my Leave it to Psmith haiku is:
flowerpot missiles
lemon yellow pajamas
monocled dreamboat
It might be time to bring back the haiku contest, if only occasionally.
