Bathing


 * The innovative doctor Hastings has recently published a new book, where he claims that most medical methods of today are nonsense. He alleges that there is no such thing as the four humours, which general practitioners work to the rules of. In stead, he presents what he calls the blood circulation. His controversial assertions is very argued against.**

A week ago the rethinking doctor published his debut book; "Your Health (What your doctor can't tell you)". In the book the writer severely calumniates most of today's medical methods. Hastings has declared his distrust to the medical methods of European doctors. He does not approve of several already endorsed methods of curing illness, like wrapping a patient hit by smallpox into red cloth. Without doubt, this is today's most advanced medical treatment for smallpox, thus it even saved Elizabeth I from a mortal attack of the disease.

//__"Who has ever seen a unicorn?"__// Hastings also defames medical methods like blood-letting, the use of opium and hemlock as anaesthetics, and even a dependable method like examining urine by its appearance, smell or taste. The astrological and herbal part of medicine also gets its pepper by the supercilious doctor. In China plants and herbs have been used for medical purposes for 4500 years, and many of these methods have been brought to Europe. Also horns from unicorns and bezoar stone (tears of a petrified stag) are popular methods of curing diseases today. Hastings, the total counterpart of any average Britain doctor, is content that there is no use in herbs and plants, and that unicorns and petrified stags are fictitious objects! "After all, who has ever seen a unicorn or a petrified stag?" says Hastings. "An old granny and some cubs looking for attention?"

//__Criticising our hygiene habits__// The so-called authority on hygiene claims that diseases are spreading by germs which thrives on dirt. He claims that bathing is healthy, and he has even tried to persuade normal, innocent Londoners into washing their hands before eating, or dressing a wound! One can only imagine what amounts of germs would be scattered around Britain if everyone started to wash their hands before eating!

//__"The Circulation of Blood"__// In his book Hastings also accuses British doctors of not knowing much about the factors that cause diseases, and of having little idea how the human body works. General practitioners are working to the rules of humouralism, which is the medicine of Galen, a Greek physician. It says that the body is ruled by four humours, which determine what a person's personality is and how this person's body reacts to different diseases. The four humours are in charge of different sides of a personality, and it is the balance between these that decides a person's characteristics and health. In a healthy person all four fluids are balanced. If there's too much of any of them, the person will become ill. The four fluids are blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. Blood represents a hot, fiery personality, phlegm a cold, calm one. Yellow bile means a bad-tempered personality, while black bile, on the other hand, a moist, melancholy of those. Instead of these rules, Hastings holds that doctors should work to the rules of a system he calls the Circulation of Blood, in defiance of today's approved medicine of the Greek physician. Hastings alleges that this circulation is an organ system that moves the blood around inside the body. The system is supposedly also transporting nutrients, gases and waste to and from the heart, which is said to be the centre of this obviously fictional system.

"This obstinate "doctor" should be locked up or hanged, and that's no exaggeration!" Claims dr. William Butts, physician of King Henry VIII. "He is a danger to our society!"

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