Now I know my friends out there… You’ll quickly think “Lost knowledge? Who cares about making chariots, airing the bed with coal fire bedwarmers or blood-letting any more?” What is a spittoon for? You mightn’t even remember! But don’t be so hasty. Lost knowledge can be very valuable. We should try to hang on to some of it.
Isn’t the current crisis in medicine partly about lost knowledge? Once upon a time, doctors, healers, nurses all had really cool traditional knowledge that helped a lot. Nurse Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910) famously discovered the healing power of fresh air and sunlight against microbes. Today it is scientifically recognized as the “Nightingale Effect”. Still ignored by hospitals and “trained” physicians. OK it wasn’t high tech, “evidence-based” and advanced. But how valuable does that vaunted “scientific” stuff seem to us, today? It’s lost its lustre!
“The lady with the lamp”. Florence Nightingale has featured on big and small screens, played by talents as diverse as British film star Anna Neagle and Charlie’s Angels actor Jaclyn Smith. There have been stage plays and radio plays; an asteroid, a Dutch airplane and a US Navy ship named after her; she’s been on stamps across the world and carried her lamp on British ten pound notes from 1975 until 1994. [no-one seems to know the copyright of this lovely image]
“The lady with the lamp”. Florence Nightingale has featured on big and small screens, played by talents as diverse as British film star Anna Neagle and Charlie’s Angels actor Jaclyn Smith. There have been stage plays and radio plays; an asteroid, a Dutch airplane and a US Navy ship named after her; she’s been on stamps across the world and carried her lamp on British ten pound notes from 1975 until 1994. [no-one seems to know the copyright of this lovely image]
Instead, there is a natural swing back to some of the more traditional remedies. If you read my recent notes about the herb Nigella, which grows abundantly in the garden in any temperate or northern climate, you’ll think of it as more powerful than just about any pharmaceutical.
We value herbs and, ironically, so does the pharmaceutical industry, which constantly tries to grab and patent natural substances for a profit. But the healing power of love and belonging? Family and friendship? I don’t think these are even on their radar. In fact anyone aching for love in their life is clearly depressed and should be prescribed anti-depressants. Ha!
Advancing Medicine
In the 1970s – 1990s I was part of a movement, if we can call it that, that was discovering important new truths about health. Chief tool in the armory was realizing that the environment can make a person ill… any person. Bad foods, chemicals, molds and electrical fields have their negative effects. This wasn’t acceptable to doctors, then or now, who view a sick patient as someone “busted”. It was a crocked patient, was the kind of thinking we met often.
In fact most patients recovered very quickly, once you found the correct cause and put them on the right path, so it was not down to the patient at all, but medical ignorance.
We called ourselves clinical ecologists at the time, a term I found very satisfying. Trouble is, soon every Tom, Dick and Harry was on the bandwagon. They were not calling themselves doctors but “clinical ecologists”, so it was not illegal. It’s a bit like today’s internet situation, where endless nobodies set themselves up, without any clinical experience or expertise, and can make large amounts of money blathering as health experts! (I’m sure you can think of quite a few famous examples current on the Net).
In 1994, I wrote this in my book Healing Your Life:
It is often said that there is nothing truly new under the sun. That being the case, all of Supernoetics® is derivative of something or other.
However, we seem to have quite a few ideas on board that nobody so far has articulated properly, so maybe the old saw isn’t entirely true after all.
But in addition to seemingly new ideas, there is plenty of data extant which has not been evaluated properly and brought into practical use. You could consider this a kind of “lost” knowledge. Somebody had the idea but never saw what to do with it or where is might lead. In other words, they missed its true importance.
My own medical career and the international impact it made in the 1980s, was partly centered around the rediscovery of simple “lost” medical wisdom.
Modern doctors had become so absorbed in drug-based treatments, certain very important basics such as good diet and the rest, had become lost in the repertoire of chemical cures. Yet remarkable results were easily obtained by asking patients to change their eating habits, improve their lifestyle and de-pollute their personal environment (The Allergy Handbook, Thorsons, London 1988).
All through history, truth has been contacted and then lost sight of. It takes someone later to come around and unearth what was missed.
If it seems strange to you that data can be “lost” in such a way, a very simple example will make this clear. Certain Ancient Greeks, notably Aristarchus, had a theory that the Earth rotated round the Sun but this idea was labelled “fake news” and dumped in favor of the Earth-centered universe. The real truth had to be re-discovered centuries later by a new investigator (Nicholas Copernicus); and a very valuable “new” truth it became.
Rediscovery
Such lost knowledge needs to be rediscovered and can be just as valuable as entirely innovative ideas, which is the craze today. People are rushing, rushing, rushing into innovation. Anything new is good, anything with a slight patina is “old” (I’m being ironic). It’s like a flock of starlings, racing over the ground in a rush to find seeds and food and leaving most of it behind!
In truth there is a lot to be said for gathering together all the workable data (new and old) into one useful body of knowledge and making sure it all correlates and makes sense.
In that way, my own Supernoetics® powerful research program has been looking at fields as diverse as sex, education, personal growth, business studies, enhancing intelligence, ethics, and issues pertaining to the meaning of life, such as personal such as personal or biological immortality and the nature of consciousness.
Beyond Supernoetics®
OK, a bit of a ramble, perhaps. But you know me!
I have this VAST collections of writings on what we may jokingly call “life, the universe and everything”! I ended up with the overall name Supernoetics, which me extra-brilliant philosophy of the mind and spirit. I am currently forming a movement around some of these writings and I hope you will join us. Our first task is to find a mutually-agreeable term to cover ourselves. If you have any ideas, send ‘em in!
Otherwise, I can’t think how to end, except maybe offer you a book published some while ago, called “The Life and Living Toolbook.” It puts together some of my core ideas, like thought structures, the constellation of accord, the emotional ladder, and so forth. It’s all about the power of knowledge, which is what the launch of my ministry stands for!
For the first edition I chose of typewriter script which seems to me to have an immediacy that is exciting and unusual.
To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor
