The age of reason

Blowing hot and cold in the cancer clinic – the downside of traditional and complementary medicine. THE patient with nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) related the history of her illness. A year ago, she had a nosebleed. She could feel that her neck glands were hard and swollen. She sought help from a traditional Chinese sinseh. She was told it was all due to “heatiness”. She was happy as her world view was reinforced. She was given some herbal concoction to “cool” her down. Things waned and waxed for some time but eventually she got worse. The nosebleed persisted and soon her hearing was affected. Being “politically and culturally correct”, she then sought the help of a traditional Malay medicine man. He told her that her problems were due to “wind” (angin). More herbs were prescribed and duly ingested. Nine months on and the... [read full story]