paging dr. neil
Alternate title: “There’s a bad kind of crazy in the air”.
BALTIMORE – At one of the nation’s top trauma hospitals, a nurse circles a patient’s bed, humming and waving her arms as if shooing evil spirits. Another woman rubs a quartz bowl with a wand, making tunes that mix with the beeping monitors and hissing respirator keeping the man alive.
They are doing Reiki therapy, which claims to heal through invisible energy fields. The anesthesia chief, Dr. Richard Dutton, calls it “mystical mumbo jumbo.” Still, he’s a fan.
“It’s self-hypnosis” that can help patients relax, he said. “If you tell yourself you have less pain, you actually do have less pain.”
Alternative medicine has become mainstream. It is finding wider acceptance by doctors, insurers and hospitals like the shock trauma center at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Consumer spending on it in some cases rivals that of traditional health care.
O what a time to be alive…
06.08.2009 @ 10:00
This story reminds me of a dark period of my life where I battled a debilitating addiction to placebos.
06.09.2009 @ 18:24
I had half a dozen smartassed comments to make, and yet none of them could stand next to emawkc’s gem. I salute you.