“Doctor, heal thyself!”

Medicine is the Art of Healing.

It is an (almost) exact science, but at the same time it is one of the most beautiful, most noble Arts.

Being an Art, the one who practices it must be an Artist – someone who has understood the secrets of the respective art, who has studied them by applying them (on themselves as well), someone who has felt them from the inside…

For Medicine means to feel, first and foremost. “How are you feeling today?“, the doctor ask his patients on each visit. We’re not working with machines, but with sentient human beings – and to heal the human being means not only to “mend” it, or to replace one used part or another, as would an assembly line for machines do, but to restore the Well-Being… to help them feel Good, as they were before illness appeared, or before they felt pain.

In order to practice this Healing Art skillfully, in order to restore Health in the others, the doctor should first understand what Health is (i.e. more than the mere absence of disease symptoms), and at the same time to know how to maintain and re-create it, re-establish it in themselves – in order to be able, in turn, to re-create it in the ones seeking his help.

That is why Lifestyle is so important (that “Lifestyle” that naturopathic doctors always emphasize, and too many allopathic physicians mock). For how could – for instance – a doctor who smokes actually heal a patient suffering from bronchial asthma, or various pulmonary diseases, or coronary disease or myocardial infarction… or even lung cancer? Or how could a doctor who is overweight heal a patient suffering from diabetes?

Could someone who has lost their tactile sensitivity speak about the refinement of the sense of touch? About the fineness of silk, about the velvety skin of a young woman, about the various fabrics of cloth, or textures of medicinal herbs?

Could a deaf person understand and describe a great symphonic masterpiece?

Or could a blind man paint a sunset in all its splendor?…

Yes, calculated application of certain maneuvers and techniques learned in the Faculty of Medicine will most often take the patient out of a state of emergency, in the most effective and spectacular way – but from here until truly becoming healthy again is a (more or less) long way.

The word “doctor” comes from the Latin “docere” = “to teach“; therefore, the doctor should be a teacher for the one coming to ask for his help… he should be an example for them, he should be able to actually teach him about what it means to be healthy (on a physical, mental and spiritual level).

And, in fact, during the therapeutic (medical) act, there is that certain “something” that’s being transmitted – that certain “something” that’s specific to that doctor, which instills confidence into the patient, which helps him glimpse the hope for healing.

That certain something that makes the patient leave the doctor’s office healthier than when they entered there – more optimistic, more “Well.”

This is why – if we speak about a Medicine that cultivates Health – the Doctor should be able to transmit harmonious vibrations, harmonious energy, harmonious information, which will increase Health and Well-Being in the one that he’s helping, and to direct him on the path towards the ideal that we all wish for: Health and Happiness.

However, for this, the Doctor should cultivate these qualities these virtues, in himself/herself – to do so that they will become his/her very nature.

– Adrian Petre, M.D., D.M.D. –

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