David Greaves
The Healing Tradition: Reviving the Soul of Western Medicine
Radcliffe
2004 PB, 168 pp, £21.95,
1 85775 963 X
David Greaves has subtitled this excellent book ‘reviving the soul of western medicine’. He has a big project in mind. Readers will be delighted to hear that many of the powerful arguments the author advances to support his programme of professional rejuvenation place primary care at the centre of a new medical order.
Greaves begins with an introduction that is possibly the best short summary of medical philosophy in print. No reflective practitioner could fail to be interested in this survey of the intellectual background to the current state of our craft. The book proceeds with a series of chapters exploring problematic aspects of medicine from the status of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and dementia to the effects of preventative medicine and screening.
Of particular interest to GPs will be the chapters on the ‘enduring appeal of the Victorian family doctor,’ discussing literary representation of the GP as mediator between science and the humanely understood patient, and ‘the tradition of the healer,’ suggesting that this role continues to be fulfilled by GPs in Britain today.
‘… the healing tradition within orthodox medicine has been maintained principally by general practitioners. This role continues to be relevant and important, but has been threatened in the twentieth century by the rise and predominance of biomedicine, and most recently the increasing use of clinical guidelines, audit and evidence based practice.’ (page 67)
Throughout, Greaves emphasises that ‘healing practice’, as exemplified by the GP is qualitatively different from the specialist technical care offered by the hospital specialist. He provides powerful support for arguments to protect this role and prevent primary care from mutating into a purely technical speciality of data collection and risk analysis.
Greaves' work is rich in detail and requires a careful, considered reading. This is particularly noticeable in the wonderful final chapter, ‘Towards a new medical cosmology,’ which looks forward to new ways of understanding medicine that can more successfully re-engage the role of the healer with advances in medical science.
This book is ‘battle tested’ with a group of medical students who encountered it as a course book in the Cardiff Student Selected Component (SSC) in philosophy of medicine. It generated much debate, and they went away with a notion of ‘the healer’ situated in a carefully argued account of the Western intellectual tradition, not some fuzzy new age pseudoscience.
Greaves' work is essential reading for anyone with a notion of personal care as more than the unthinking application of medical science in the community. And I hope that includes you.
Notes
Competing interests
I commented on an unpublished draft of ‘The Healing Tradition’ for David Greaves. He is offering me informal assistance with my MD on ‘Philosophy in Undergraduate Medical Education’.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2005.
