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In an irony of sorts, doctors from the United States are seeking to
popularise Vedic ideas about medicine and healing in India. Doctors
Barry Charles and Satinder Swaroop say Ayurveda, as it is practised
in India, is not complete.
The two doctors are currently on a seven-city lecture tour of India
to alert Indians to the hazards of modern medicine. According to
them, "The Indian Medical Association and Medical Council of India
should now come out truthfully about the uncertainties of modern
medicine. But admitting the weakness of the system is not enough.
They should honourably walk out and give the authority over health
care to those who can offer a more complete and better system of
health care."
However, Dr Virsen Ruparel of the Indian Medical Association told
The Times of India that holism in medicine was a matter of
perspective. "Everyone except specialists can claim that theirs is
a holistic system. Vedic medicine emphasises psychological stress
management methods like transcendental meditation. But modern
medicine also uses yoga, meditation and biofeedback, which have
been effective in treating chronic problems like asthma, psoriasis
and eczema."
Dr Ruparel said it would be a good thing for different systems to
coexist in the academy and profession. However, in the interests of
the consumer, there are legal limitations on how holistic a medical
practitioner can get, the doctor added.
Following a case against a homeopath whose patient died, the
supreme court ruled in March 1996 that a doctor qualified in one
system could not prescribe a drug from another system of medicine.
However, a practitioner could qualify himself in more than one
system, he explained.
Dr Charles said modern medicine had failed to understand and cure
chronic diseases. California cardiologist Satinder Swaroop said,
"Although the U.S. spends $800 billion a year on health care, a
third of Americans have chronic diseases."
According to Dr Charles, there was a growing body of research on
side effects of commonly used drugs. He said researchers had found
that the longer people stayed in hospital, the sicker they became.
Recent research at Yale and Dartmouth universities showed that some
brain cells acted as a "neural compass" and responded to vastu
shastra (principles of energy flow).
Both, Dr Charles and Dr Swaroop cited research that pointed to the
correlation's between Vedic texts and human physiology. They said
Dr Tony Nader, who studied in Beirut and Massachusetts, published a
study on the subject three years ago.
According to Dr Nader, "Human physiology (including DNA at its
core), has the same structure and function as the holistic,
self-sufficient, self-referral reality expressed in the Rig Veda.
Specialised components, organs and organ systems of human
physiology, including all parts of the nervous system, match the 27
branches of Vedic literature one to one, both in structure and
function."
For example, Dr Nader describes how the 18 books and 3.5 million
syllables of Itihasa (the Ramayan and Mahabharat taken together)
correspond to the 18 layers of the brain and the estimated 3.5
million neurons which animate muscle fibres.
Dr Charles, who is president of Maharishi College of Vedic Medicine
in the U.S., said, "The Vedas focus on the inner intelligence of
the body. We believe disease is the disruption of the flow of
forces in the body, and we can use this inner intelligence to cure
it."
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