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DISEASES AS IDEAL FORMS:
Platonic Medicine
by Elisabeth Carmack, N.D.
It is well known that Plato tended to objectify ideas, ideal forms, as things that
actually existed in a pure world of forms. There one could find the perfect horse, the perfect rose, perfect justice and so on. This was how he explained our
mysterious ability to see something imperfect in this world and somehow know that it is imperfect – that it ought to be different in ways we somehow seem to
know even though we have never reflected on the matter before, and that if the thing were so changed it would thereby approach perfection more closely.
 If you never saw a horse before, but came across a
three-legged one, you would most likely think it should have four legs, even though you had never seen a four-legged horse. More subtle examples abound: how do we know that some act
of injustice is unjust if we have never run across it before and never considered the definition of justice before. How do we somehow know that if it were done in such a
different way it would be a perfectly just act? How do we just seem to know that such a shape is a triangle, even though it is somewhat different from any other
triangle we have ever see? Whence this ability, which often seems entirely beyond our training, education or experience?
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Plato
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Plato, speaking through and with Socrates in the Dialogues, thought that we must
be remembering from past exposure to the ideal forms, in a prior existence in the world of pure forms. There we experienced universal ideas, such as perfect beauty,
which we remember, or can call to mind with the right stimulus. This is sometimes called Plato's Theory of Ideas.
No one still believes in such a world of pure forms, separated from particular,
individual beings. It seems almost a silly notion now, one no sensible person holds – except, of all places, in the world of modern, high-tech medicine. That world is
populated by ideal forms, beings without substance that nevertheless attack us, gnaw away at us, cause us pain, grow into great lumps in and on us, and even kill us. These beings
are mysterious. They normally cannot be seen, but they leave tracks, trails of blood and tiny clues that we have been visited by them. These beings are called diseases.
"The temptation to objectify diseases and their varieties has always been particularly strong for
doctors, as Sir H. Cohen pointed out in Philosophy, 1952. 'Only in recent times', he wrote, 'has it
been widely recognized that, however convenient may be a category of "diseases", they still have no  separate self-subsistence but are simply abstractions from experience.' Most of us still speak of influenza or malaria as a thing, yet we have never met a
disease, only sick people; and no two of them repeat the same symptoms exactly. Cohen himself attributed the common mode of thought to a survival
from the days when disease was explained as embodied in an evil spirit. 'Even when the spectral origin of the disease was forgotten, the idea of the
disease as a clinical entity, a substantial essence with an independent existence, persisted.' The belief, as he remarked, can, by imposing an undue
rigidity of treatment, be the reverse of beneficial to the patient. The same fallacy was pointed out much earlier by the French medical writer Cabanis, quoted by Grote, Plato, III, 524n." [from Socrates,
W.K.C. Guthrie, Cambridge U. Press, 1971, p. 121]
A sick person walks into the doctor's office. "I have sniffles and a runny nose, doctor." Doctor: "A
slight temperature – I think you have the flu. Nurse, give her a shot of flu medicine." But it turns out
she is allergic to a certain pollen then about. Magnify the case. Make it have to do with the dreaded
"C" word – cancer. We cannot see cancer, we can only see certain effects – cells wildly multiplying in
harmful patterns. But the cells are not cancer – they are defective cells. They did not cause this problem. We are faced with a mystery. After spending billions upon billions looking for a way to stop
this dreaded disease, we still do not really know what "it" is, nor what causes "it". We cannot cure "it".
However, we think that perhaps we ought to shoot it somehow, so we aim deadly radiation at it, and inject deadly toxins into our bodies to search out and destroy it. We too often use these techniques
willy-nilly on nearly anyone who is experiencing similar symptoms – they too "have cancer".
In fact, what they all have is a lack of normal, good health, they are experiencing dis-ease. They are
not healthy. They do not have some unwelcome guest come to reside in their bodies called cancer. They cannot "get rid of it." There is no "it".
Platonic medicine is the misuse of analogy – thinking of diseases as "enemies," as "it" attacking us,
raising money to "fight" disease X,Y or Z – it is practicing magic without a license. Unfortunately it's
not illegal. But practicing holistic medicine, aimed at the restoration of health to the whole body, aiding
one's own body to regain a healthy state – that often is illegal. That we do call practicing medicine,
but since it often cannot be done with a license it is illegal. As Sir Cohen observed, this philosophical
error has consequences: by fighting an illusory disease, instead of aiding an unhealty person to regain health, the treatment can be the "reverse of beneficial."
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