Your Healer Within: A Unified Field Theory for Healthcare - Hardcover

James McGovern; Rene McGovern

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 158736199X ISBN 13: 9781587361999

Publisher: Fenestra Books, 2003

Synopsis

This book provides a way to understand both ancient and modern approaches to healthcare. It explains, for instance, how our emotions and beliefs can affect our bodily functioning and hence our internal healing mechanisms. In this book, the latest related scientific findings are included to show that the systems of the body, mind, and spirit interact. This book develops a set of principles as part of a unified field theory which provides a basis for general understanding and treatment. Healthcare insights are gathered from a wide number of people including Hippocrates, Galen, Rush, Virchow, Pasteur, Darwin, Still, Selye, Korr, Brody, Weil, Benson, Engel, and Koenig. This book explains many of the similarities among Ayurvedics, Buddhism, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy, Chiropractic, Naturopathy, Allopathic Medicine, and Osteopathic Medicine. It also evaluates specific treatments such as support networks, music therapy, pet therapy, comic relief, and relaxation therapy. Summary models such as Engel's biopsychosocial model and the cognitive-behavioral model are compared with an all-inclusive unified field theory of healthcare based on the works of Aristotle, Still, and Einstein.

About this title

About the Author:

James J. McGovern, Ph.D., is the president of A. T. Still University, which includes the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine, the international School of Health Management, the Arizona School of Dentistry & Oral Health, and the Arizona School of Health Sciences. He was previously a physics professor, a member of the clergy, associate director of two state boards of higher education, director of the Office of Health Finance for the State of Illinois, and a vice president at the Medical College of Virginia and at Case Western Reserve University. He is the husband of Rene. Rene J. McGovern, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Neurobehavioral Science at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine of A. T. Still University, and adjunct assistant professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Psychology at Case Western Reserve University. She has lectured and published on different aspects of the interactions of the mind, body, and spirit and is presently the director of the 1.67-million-dollar Elderlynk Project, which provides a rural mental health model for elderly care in ten counties.

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Preface

Through the centuries, physicians, scientists, philosophers, and thinkers of all kinds have pondered the body’s amazing healing ability. Some have sought to go beyond the physical to examine the mental and spiritual aspects of healing. This book unites the collected wisdom of many ages, cultures, and fields of study with modern research findings. In most cases, theorists provide insights in their original words so that their messages would not be misinterpreted. Ultimately, this book pursues a set of principles that can provide an overall context for different approaches to healthcare.

The motivation for this book began with the extraordinary writings of Andrew Taylor Still, M.D., D.O., the founder of the osteopathic medical profession. In his numerous papers, articles, and books, Still promoted a revolutionary holistic approach to healthcare. His basic concepts are still valid today and are the key to coordinating the various approaches to healthcare. We shall see how his concepts answer the questions of who, what, how, and why in healthcare analysis and treatment.

Today, the osteopathic profession has grown to include twenty osteopathic medical schools. The increasing popularity of these schools is attributed to their emphasis on treating the whole person: body, mind, and spirit. Apparently, today’s applicants know enough psychology or have enough experience to understand that healing, and hence medical education, should involve the interactions of the body, mind, and spirit.

How did a country doctor, practicing in the heartland of America in the second half of the nineteenth century, develop such a comprehensive treatment system? Our only clue is that he continuously asked for medical books and claimed that he read everything on healthcare from the early Greeks to his own times. In investigating Still’s philosophy, it is curious that he seemed to derive lessons that differed from the traditional interpretations of some great medical philosophers. This sparked an investigation into some of the original works of Hippocrates, Galen, Virchow, Pasteur, Darwin, and others. Not only was Still accurate, but the popular explanations of these same items seemed to have missed the essential points.

This book is about understanding, sometimes for the first time, the true meaning behind some of mankind’s outstanding medical discoveries. It is also about one of the greatest syntheses of medical history, where Andrew Still integrated some of these past insights into fundamental principles.

This book examines findings from several fields of study, including recent research, in order to provide an overview of healthcare approaches from Ayurvedics and Buddhism to approaches like the Relaxation Response and Naturopathy. Such coordination has been increasingly sought as physicians and others trained in traditional medicine have found themselves limited in their response to patients who have turned to herbs, meditation, and other Eastern or alternative approaches to care. Therefore, this book should prove helpful to health professionals and people in general who are searching for a basic, overall understanding of healthcare.

The book follows an inductive process of seeking generalities among several cases. It gradually unfolds key insights and allows readers time to arrange them in their own way. As people put relationships together in their own ways, their brains form linkages that can be used to recall, rearrange, and derive further relationships. While learning is an individual process, we shall see that the laws of nature, including those about the human body, mind, and spirit, are interrelated. We shall also see that these relationships are elusive.

We are about to begin a quest together across the findings of several centuries. The people referenced are among the finest intellects in the history of mankind. While they have made definite contributions to our final model, the various healthcare approaches (Ayurvedics, Chinese Medicine, Naturopathy, etc.) and the various treatments (group networks, pet therapy, relaxation, etc.) discussed are not individually significant. These were chosen among many possibilities to illustrate how our model and theory could be universally used.

Today, large numbers of self-help and health-improvement books are published every month. This book can provide a unifying context for the various approaches and treatments. Also, this book should be personally useful. As such, this book may be read for both personal improvement and the improvement of others.

Let us begin, keeping an eye open for useful analogies that Thoreau said are as close as we can get to truth.

James McGovern, Ph.D.
Rene McGovern, Ph.D.
Kirksville, Missouri

About this edition

• Publisher: Fenestra Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 158736199X
• ISBN 13: 9781587361999
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192