Where Medicine Fails

First published in 1986, this landmark classic exposes medicine’s central problem: a philosophy of dualism undergirding medical theory and practice. Unseen and unquestioned, mind-body dualism lies at the philosophical hard core of medical thought. It defines reality, dictating what can and cannot exist, making psycho-somatic events like placebo effects, wart cures by folk-healers, and blisters caused by hypnotic suggestion, insoluble mysteries. Dualism bars the existence of self-healing. Thus our potentially greatest healing resource goes unfathomed and untapped. Where Medicine Fails traces the history of this conceptual dilemma, showing the hopeless corner into which Cartesian thinking has led modern medicine. It calls for fundamental rethinking since nothing less than paradigmatic revolution will bring medicine in accord with the reality of human nature. As a sage wrote: only he who grasps the innermost nature of man can cure him in earnest (Paracelsus, 1493-1541).