The document discusses the role of the mind in healing the body. It argues that traditional medicine focuses too much on treating diseases with drugs rather than addressing the underlying causes or the patient's mental state. It presents evidence that negative emotions can increase susceptibility to illness while positive emotions like hope and laughter support the body's natural healing abilities. The most powerful example is Norman Cousins, who recovered from a serious disease by employing positive emotions and willpower. The conclusion is that the mind is the most important factor in health and healing, so doctors should treat the whole person rather than just diseases.

1. MIND OVER MEDICINE 1
Mind Over Medicine
by Carl Mahlmann
"It's supposed to be a professional secret, but I'll tell you anyway. We
doctors do nothing. We only help and encourage the doctor within."
-- Dr. Albert Schweitzer
Although we live in a scientific age which has given to mankind such medical
advancements as laser surgery, CAT scans and the artificial heart, we cannot depend
entirely on the power of technology or the knowledge of physicians to cure us of our
ailments. Elements other than those which can be provided to us by the medical
profession must be brought into play in returning a disrupted body back to its normally
harmonious condition. One must accept responsibility for one's own health, and become
an active participant in the recovery process, for it is the infinite power of the mind -- not
the prescriptions of external forces -- which is the most important factor in determining
one's state of well-being.
It is popular contention that illnesses may be alleviated through the consumption,
injection or application of medicines which have been specifically designed by medical
practitioners to combat those illnesses. This practice of medicine is commonly known as
Allopathy: "the treatment of disease by remedies that produce effects different from or
opposite to those introduced by the disease..."1
-- typically through the administration of
a counter-acting drug. However, any drug administered to the body in an effort to combat
disease may very well have an effect not only on the disease -- if that -- but also on
other, normally-functioning systems of the body. Norman Cousins puts it accurately in
his Anatomy of an Illness:
"No greater popular fallacy exists about medicine than that a drug is like an
arrow that can be shot at a particularized target. Its actual effect is more
like a shower of porcupine quills. Any drug -- or food, for that matter --

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goes through a process in which the human system breaks it down for use
by the whole.
"There is almost no drug, therefore, that does not have some side-effects.
And the more vaunted the prescription... the greater the problem of
adverse side-effects."2
Not only may drugs adversely affect a patient, but they will invariably affect different
individuals in different ways -- and in some cases, may not be effective in alleviating the
illness at all. One of the reasons for this may be that prescribed drugs are not geared
toward the individual. As stated by Dr. D.P. Jaggi, Head of the Department of Clinical
Research at V. Patel Chest Institute, Delhi University:
"There was a time -- this still prevails, to an extent, in Ayurvedic*...
systems -- when the physician prepared and compounded medicines
himself for his patients. He took all the trouble and time to make the
required medicine. But during the last thirty years or so, huge international
pharmaceutical companies have come up. They manufacture and propagate
scores and scores of drugs each year. While the motive of the physician
who prepared the medicines for his patients was to cure the patient, the
real motive of many of the pharmaceutical companies is to make enormous
profits. A majority of the new drugs that come to the market get prescribed
by the physician and used by the patient on the basis of sophisticated
propaganda and superior salesmanship."4
So, with drugs being mass produced for the greater public, without specific regard for
the individual, and having effects other than those intended by the physician, the
physician's purpose -- to cure the patient is undermined.
Let us consider a moment the purpose of the physician. Is it not to cure the patient?
Although a patient's illness may be diagnosed, and a remedy ascertained, there seems
to be only minimal effort by the physician to determine the cause of the illness. This --
more than the disease itself -- is what needs to be diagnosed in order to prevent the

3. MIND OVER MEDICINE 3
inevitable recurrence, thereby truly curing the patient of the disease. Unfortunately,
traditional medicine (Allopathy) places more importance on treating the disease than on
treating the patient as a whole.
"The emphasis on the search for organic disease is precisely what has been
most responsible for the decline in confidence in orthodox medicine. The
great majority of patients with 'rather vague symptoms' are now beginning
to be aware that they are psychosocial, rather than organic, in origin and
that it is increased susceptibility to germs or viruses, rather than the
virulence of those organisms, that makes us ill... The public is turning
toward alternative practitioners because they concentrate on building up
resistance to disease rather than on looking for organic culprits."5
Holistic health practitioners, who treat "the whole person -- mind and body -- as an
inseparable unit,"6
realize that human illness is more than just the bacterial invasion of
an organism. Emotional factors play a vital role in a person's susceptibility to disease.
"Negative emotions produce negative chemical changes in the body... adrenal exhaustion
could be caused by emotional tension, such as frustration or suppressed rage."7
Indeed, the impact of negative emotions on a person's health is far greater than most
people realize. In his book, Bodymind, Ken Dychtwald writes of the relationship between
negative emotional states and illness: "All illness, whether cancer or schizophrenia or a
cold, originates in the bodymind.** On his deathbed, Louis Pasteur*** acknowledged
that a medical adversary of his had been right in insisting that disease is caused less by
the germ than by the resistance of the individual invaded by the germ. The old saying,
'Name your poison,' applies to the semantics and symbols of disease. If we feel 'picked
on,' or someone gives us a 'pain in the neck,' we may make our metaphors literal -- with
acne or neck spasms. People have long spoken of a 'broken heart' as the result of a
disappointing relationship; now research shows a connection between loneliness and
heart disease. So the broken heart may become coronary disease; ambivalence, a
splitting headache; and the rigid personality, arthritis."8

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So, it has been shown that negative emotions will determine a person's susceptibility to
illness. However, are negative emotions the only emotions which have an impact on a
person's health? While he was afflicted by a crippling collagen disease, from which doctors
told him he had "one chance in five hundred" for recovery, Norman Cousins asked himself
this question:
"...what about the positive emotions? Is it possible that love, hope, faith,
laughter, confidence and the will to live have therapeutic value? Obviously,
putting the positive emotions to work (is) nothing so simple as turning on
a garden hose. But even a reasonable degree of control over my emotions
might have a salutory effect. Just replacing anxiety with a fair degree of
confidence might be helpful. "A plan began to form in my mind for
systematic salutory emotions..."11
In Anatomy of an Illness, Mr. Cousins goes on to tell the story of how he beat the odds
against recovery by becoming "more than just a passive observer"'12 in the treatment
of his illness. By doing such things as relocating himself from the hospital -- which he felt
was "no place for a person who is seriously ill"13
-- to "a place somewhat more conducive
to a positive outlook on life;"14
by foregoing his prescriptions of pain- killing drugs, which
-- although alleviating some of his pain -- he discovered to be toxic, and were therefore
inhibiting positive chemical changes to take place in his body;15
by doing intense research
on his own disease, and hypothesizing that administrations of ascorbic acid might be
useful in combatting it (he had such faith in this remedy that he admits he may have
been the recipient of a self-administered placebo);16 and by developing his sense of
humor through the viewing of Candid Camera and Marx Brothers films, Mr. Cousins
exercised his positive emotions, thereby "enhancing his body chemistry" and setting into
motion "the body's natural mechanisms of resistance to disease."17
Thusly, Mr. Cousins was able to overcome his disease -- which doctors believed to be
irreversible -- through sheer force of will.
There is no greater proof of the mind's ability to cure the body's illnesses than that which
is illustrated by placebo therapy. Reporting on faith healing in America. Mr. Bernhardt J.

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Hurwood has cited how -- at the Harvard Medical School in Boston of "1,082 people with
colds, angina, headaches, seasickness, anxiety and post-operative pain, more than a
third were relieved of their symptoms by a placebo!"18 And how do placebos work when
they obviously have no allopathic validity?
"...no one is 100-percent certain. Among others, neurochemist Leo Abood,
PhD. at the University of Rochester (New York) Medical School, suggests
that the answer might be endorphins. Produced by the endocrine system
and by nerve cells scattered throughout the brain, endorphins act on the
same brain receptors as opiates, producing a similar euphoria.
"Endorphins have been under scientific scrutiny for only six years, so there's
much to be learned about them. But according to Dr. Abood, it's distinctly
possible that external as well as internal factors can lead to the production
of endorphins. Could absolute belief in the powers of a healer be such a
factor? Certainly. What's more, with endorphins flowing, the patient might
feel healed, and a positive mindset -- as even the most skeptical physician
will agree -- makes a better environment for real healing."19
Dr. Bernard S. Siegel, a surgeon teaching at the Yale School of Medicine, agrees:
"When patients think positively about their treatment and take active roles
in curing a disease, the progress is impressive..."20
In light of all the above, it can be said that the body, with its built-in healing mechanisms-
-subject to activation by the state of one's mind has the capacity to be its own best
doctor. This being the case, what is the role of the physician in the curing of an illness?
The physician must first take into account the whole aspect of a patient's being: both his
psyche and soma. Practitioners of Allopathy must look beyond their "twentieth-century
beliefs, conceived largely in the eighteenth- century Age of Reason, (which) have
dichotomized body and mind, and virtually exiled spirit altogether."21 For, as illustrated
by the experience of Norman Cousins, "there is no real separation between mind and
body. Illness is always an interaction between both. It can begin in the mind and affect

6. MIND OVER MEDICINE 6
the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of which are served by
the same bloodstream. Attempts to treat most mental diseases as though they were
completely free of physical causes and attempts to treat most bodily diseases as though
the mind were in no way involved must be considered archaic in the light of new evidence
about the way the human body functions."22
Secondly, they must learn to "encourage the doctor within" all of us -- the innate
recuperative power of the mind -- rather than simply prescribing a drug which may do
more harm than good.
Fortunately, more people -- including doctors -- are becoming aware of the holistic health
movement, and are moving in that direction. The receipt by Norman Cousins of "hundreds
of letters from doctors" in response to an article he wrote about his experience shows
this to be true. The doctors' letters "reflected the view that no medication they could give
their patients is as potent as the state of mind that a patient brings to his or her own
illness."23
"It is the Perfect Power alone that heals; all external methods of stimulation
only cooperate with the life energy and are valueless without it."
-- Paramahansa Yogananda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* A traditional Hindu system of medicine practiced in India since the first century A.D.
and using combinations of herbs, purgatives, rubbing oils, etc. in treating diseases.3
** In his book. Mr. Dychtwald explains his use of the term "bodymind:" " ...I use the
word body to refer to the purely 'physical' aspects of a human being. As long as a person
is alive, he is never just a body separated from mind. Yet for the purposes of descriptive
observation and theoretical discussion, I will use the word in this fashion. I use the word
bodymind where 1 wish to refer to both the 'physical' and 'psychological' aspects of and
individual"9

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*** French chemist and microbiologist, whose accomplishments were among the most
varied and valuable in the history of science. Pasteur proved that microorganisms cause
fermentation and disease.10

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NOTES
1. "Allopathy," Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition, p.37.
2. Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, p.52.
3. "Ayurveda," Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College Edition, p.99.
4. Dr. O.P. Jaggi, All About Allopathy, Homeopathy, Ayurveda, Unani & Nature Cure,
pp. 38,39
5. Brian Inglis, "To the Editor," The New England Journal of Medicine, CCCX (May 3,
1984), 1196.
6. "Medicine: More than Mechanics," Technology Review, LXXXVI (April, 1983), 74.
7. Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, p.34.
8. Ken Dychtwald, Bodymind, p. xvi.
9. Ibid., p. xii.
10. "Pasteur, Louis," Encyclopaedia Brittanica, XVII p. 439.
11. Norman Cousins. Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, pp. 34. 35.
12. Ibid., p. 31.

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13. Ibid., p. 29.
14. Ibid., p. 35.
15. Ibid.,. p. 36.
16. Ibid., p. 47.
17. Ibid., p. 15.
18. Bernhardt J. Hurwood. "Healing and Believing," Health, XVI (June. 1984).
19. Ibid.
20. "Medicine: More than Mechanics," Technology Review, LXXXVI (April, 1983), 74.
21. The Berkeley Holistic Health Center, The Holistic Health Lifebook, p. 7
22. Norman Cousins, Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient, pp. 56. 57.
23. The Berkeley Holistic Health Center, The Holistic Health Lifebook, p. xv.

10. MIND OVER MEDICINE 10
OUTLINE
THESIS: The most important factor in determining a person's recovery from an illness
is not medication, but is, rather, the person's state of mind.
I. Epigraph
A. Albert Schweitzer quotation.
II. We must depend on more than the provisions of the medical profession to cure us of
our ailments.
A. Offering of thesis.
III. Discussion of negative aspects of traditional medicine.
A. Define Allonathy.
B. Drugs used in Allopathy affect normally-functioning systems of the body.
1. Cite Norman Cousins.
C. Drugs used in Allopathy are not geared toward the individual.
2. Cite O.P. Jaggi.
D. Conclusion: The physician’s purpose to cure the patient is undermined
by drugs.
E. Traditional medicine places more importance on treating disease than
on finding cause of the illness.

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IV. Emotional factors influence susceptibility to disease.
A. Negative emotions produce negative"chemical changes in the body.
1. Cite Ken Dychtwald
B. Positive emotions produce positive chemical changes in the body.
1. Cite experience of Norman Cousins.
V. The mind can cure the body's illnesses.
A. Offering of placebo case.
1. Cite Bernhardt J. Hurwood and Leo Abood's studies on endorphins.
2. Cite Bernard S. Siegel's experience of positive thinking. B. Conclusion:
The body is its own best doctor.
VI. Offer role of physician in treating illness. VI. Show that doctors are agreeing.
A. Restatement of thesis {cite Norman Cousins receipt of letters reflecting views
of doctors. VII. Closing remark.
VII. Yogananda Paramahansa quotation.

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Student: Carl Mahlmann
School: Adelphi University
Class: Writing & Rhetoric
Instructor: Stuart Kaufman
Assignment for August 19, 1986:
Term Paper (Research)
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