What’s the difference between curing, caring, and healing? Are they the same, different? Sometimes? All the time? Historical and modern medicine have many confusing, sometimes even conflicting definitions of and distinctions between the three. To create a scientific theory of cure, applicable to all curable illnesses, we need clear definitions that aid understanding and facilitate further analysis and success.
Does an aspirin cure a headache? Sometimes? Some headaches? Sometimes? All the time? How might we know? The answer is not found in the aspirin, but in our definition and understanding of cure.
“Selina and Chris hope that, by studying the activity of genes in mini-brains cultured from the tissues of people with those genetic mutations, they might come to understand more about the causes and ultimately find clues that could lead to possible cures.” Philip Ball, How to Grow a Human: Adventures in How We Are Made and Who We Are, 2019
This is one of many quotes by or about well meaning scientists who believe that their research might lead to wonderful new cures for mystery diseases.
A few weeks ago, I noticed my eyes were itchy again. This problem has appeared on and off over the past few years. When I was in Arequipa three years ago, my right eye was very itchy. I went to an ophthalmologist who said “esta irritado,” – (it’s irritated), prescribed some medicine, mostly vitamin and herbal supplements and sent me on my way. Over a few weeks, the problem faded. I forgot about it.
Now it was back. My right eye was quite itchy. The problem waxed and waned, over a few weeks, never going completely away.
Yesterday, I took some time to ask Microsoft’s BING AI and Google’s ChatGTP about “theory of cure“. I have copied their responses in full at the bottom of this post.
Apparently, Microsoft’s Bing AI knows who I am. Google’s ChatGTP? Not at all.
“In April 2020, shortly after the beginning of the pandemic, anecdotal reports from patients started to emerge that previously healthy individuals were experiencing lingering symptoms and were not fully recovering from an infection with SARS-CoV-2… Long COVID is not one condition. It represents many potentially overlapping entities, likely with different biological causes and different sets of risk factors and outcomes.” – COVID.GOV, What is Long COVID?
Quote Summary:
Long COVID is a condition affecting a small number of COVID patients
Long COVID patients were considered “previously healthy“
Conspiracy therapy is a treatment (not a cure) invented by US military intelligence, to treat victims of war (actual and virtual), terrorizing, physical and mental abuse, intentional misinformation, cognitive dissonance, and mass formation psychosis, resulting in Stockholm syndrome. The patient is trained that when any inconvenient truth is presented, by anyone, they need only accuse the speaker of being a conspiracy theorist. The result is a Dunning-Kruger effect, where the patient acquires a sense of power and control such that they immediately feel better. As a result, the treatment is self-reinforcing as well.
This treatment, by intention, does not cure. Military intelligence forces have no desire to cure, only to maintain disorder and control. This therapy has been tested and found effective in every country and almost every language around the world.
How many cures do we know or know of? It’s an interesting question. When we search the labels in our medicine cabinet or our local pharmacy, we might be surprised to learn – there are few, if any ‘cures.’ How many cures do our medical systems recognize? Do the cures we know fit the medical definition of a cure? Do real cures actually occur? What do we know about what we know? On February 12, 2002, Donald Rumsfeld famously said:
Today, after several months of writing and editing, I published a new version of the Theory of Cure on Academia.edu and also on Researchgate.net, titled Theory of Cure – 2023 Update. I have opened discussion on Academia.edu, such that anyone registered can access and comment and discuss the material.
Have you ever had an illness, and then it was cured? Has anyone ever cured your illness? Can you prove you are cured? Can you prove you’ve been cured?
I’ve had many colds – all cured. Officially, “there is no cure for the common cold.” I can’t prove I had a cold, nor that I’m cured – although both claims are obvious and trivial.
Several years ago, I had a hernia, cured by surgery – but my doctor never used the word “cure.” Am I really cured? Did she really cure me? How can I tell? Where’s the proof?
We might easily be led to believe that cures are rare, even impossible. After all, “there is no cure for the common cold.” However, after studying the concepts of cure for several years, I made an interesting discovery:
“Most illnesses are elementary, having a single cause, at least in the first stages, and thus most cures are simple, so simple that they are generally ignored.” – A New Theory of Cure.
Can this be true? The book A New Theory of Cure explores cure from several angles. What are the most common illnesses? Probably minor injuries. This post looks at injury illnesses – and the trivial nature of most cures. The next post looks at infectious illnesses – and we can easily see that most infectious illnesses too are easily cured.
“Most injuries* are trivial, cured without access to a doctor – it has always been so.” – A New Theory of Cure
Think about it. We get a minor cut, maybe a paper cut. It heals, cured. We get a small or large bruise. It heals. Cured. We burn our finger on the stove – and unless it is serious, we lick our finger and it heals. When cut is larger, we might apply an bandage, perhaps an antibiotic. And it heals. Cured. Most injuries are minor, cured without even consulting a doctor, much less any medical treatment. Someone who suffers serious a serious cut or burn needs medical attention, but most burns are not serious. Small injuries (and our communities) teach us to avoid more dangerous ones. We only seek medical attention when the cut is so serious that we need stitches.
When we think of diseases – we might not think about injuries. But, the emergency entrance is the busiest place in a hospital, and most hospital and medical clinic admissions are injuries. In war and in peace, most illnesses are injuries, many self-inflicted, most easily cured. The World Health Organization maintains disease codes, and tracks disease statistics for injuries worldwide. Injuries are diseases.
However, once an injury is diagnosed and documented as a disease – in medical theory (or the absence of medical theory), it can’t be cured. Cured is not medically defined for injuries – no matter how trivial, or how serious they might be. A doctor might say “all better“, or “you’ve recovered“, but only rarely, if at all, “you’re cured.“
Although we have no medical or scientific studies of ALL injuries, this graph is a useful representation of the frequency of different severity levels of injuries.
We might get hundreds of minor cuts and bruises, without ever seeing a doctor, for every broken bone or severe injury. It is also likely that most moderate injuries, like many minor bone fractures, are never diagnosed, much less treated by a doctor, much less cured. We often minimize our own injuries and illnesses – and in most cases, we survive, our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities step up to cure them. Note: In the new theory of cure, injuries – not the patient – are cured.
A few illnesses are actually healthy. That might seem counter-intuitive, but it’s not hard to think of a few examples. When we are about six years old, our teeth fall out, our gums open up, sometimes even minor bleeding, as our adult teeth grow. When we go back farther, it’s common for babies to cry a lot when baby teeth start to push through the gums. We just don’t call “teething” and injury. But it breaks the skin, and the skin heals. Healthily.
The pain of minor injuries is often a healthy lesson. When we get a minor burn, we learn to not touch the stove. Most burns are minor. It’s harder to get a serious burn. Our communities protect us in many ways. In addition, to live well, we need to take risks – we need small injuries, for the health of it. We cannot excel without risk, without injury.
Body, Mind, Spirits, Communities
It’s not just physical injuries that are easily cured. Even the proverbial “whack on the the head” might be an injury in the short term, healthy in the long term.
As with physical injuries, we often suffer minor injuries to our mind or to our spirits. However, modern medicines treat the body – most illnesses in our minds and spirits are simply ignored, even by psychologists. Most are cured naturally, easily, and the cures are ignored.
In addition to physical symptoms like hangovers and loss of sleep, we might suffer from minor anxiety, depression, psychosis, or attention deficits due to stress, lack of sleep, or overuse of drugs from alcohol and caffeine to more powerful medical and recreational products. We withdraw from our communities, often avoiding those that might even support or cure us. In most cases, the cure comes easily when we address the cause – intentionally or not. Most mental injuries are minor, easily cured.
However, if a disease is diagnosed, a cure becomes theoretically impossible. Cured is not defined medically for depression, psychosis, attention deficit disorder – not defined for any diagnosable mental disorder.
Curing Injuries?
Our current medical systems treat injuries. The word cure is. rarely used. We get a cavity or perhaps a broken tooth. The dentist repairs it with a filling, but doesn’t say “cure“. We get a cut that requires stitches. A doctor or nurse sews the skin together – and it heals. The word cure is rarely, if ever, used.
Patients with serious injuries are often patched up at the hospital and sent home to recover. Even in cases where medical assistance – physical rehabilitation – is required and fully or partially successful, the word cure is not used. At home recovery is rarely tracked, unless it fails. When the injury or injuries are healed – cured – the doctor might not see the patient until the next visit. Many patients don’t have a family doctor – and never return after a cure. Like minor injuries, the cure is forgotten. Not documented. Not studied.
Cures are not Studied
We have hundreds of cases of injures for every one that is treated by a doctor. Most are cured – out of sight of medical practice and medical theory. Hippocrates said “What cannot be cured by medicaments is cured by the knife, what the knife cannot cure is cured with the searing iron, and whatever this cannot cure must be considered incurable.” Nonsense. Most illnesses are easily cured by our healthy bodies, minds, spirits, and communities – outside of the sight of medical doctors and researchers.
What happens when an Injury is Cured?
The cure is ignored. It makes no difference if the cure was caused by a doctor, a nurse, an alternative medical practitioner, a grandmother, or the patient. We ignore cures of injures – and get on with life.
In modern medical theory cured is defined for an infectious disease cured by an approved medicine that kills the infectious agent, or a surgery that removes it. All other diseases – including all injuries – can be considered incurable due to an absence of a definition, much less a test of CURED.
Most cures are easy, trivial – and ignored. This is true for all types of diseases, not just injuries. Modern medicine suffers from cure denial.
When we fail to study the easiest, the simplest, the most trivial cures, we view many curable conditions as incurable. Today, we have no scientific studies of healing – the curing of injuries. They are not medical cures.
Health is whole. An illness is a hole in health. A cure fills the hole.
It’s time to study cure.
The book A New Theory of Cure explores the concepts of cure, beginning with elementary illnesses, easily cured, which when uncured can grow to more complex and compound illnesses, more difficult to cure.
* In the book A New Theory of Cure, and in this post, I take care to distinguish between illness, disease, and sickness.
an illness is what the patient has
a disease is what the doctor diagnoses
a sickness is what the patient’s community sees (every patient lives in many communities with potentially many different views).
