2010: Will irony will show us the way?
Meditating on the decade that was, the words of the poet W.H. Auden came to mind:
The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.
Alas ‘the error bred in the bone’ is in no danger of being cured – least of all by the medical profession. Increased regulations, pressure on doctors to conform, comply and worship at the altar of the religion of Scientism and vicious attacks on independent thinking in medicine (eg on doctors using homeopathy) have dealt a blow to those most noble of virtues to be found in doctors – discretion, conscience and love.
But there is always hope as Auden points out later in the same poem:
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
I love the phrase ‘ironic points of light’. Perhaps irony will be the road to freedom in the decade to come. In the year to come I intend to use the tool of irony extensively in this column and will certainly write more about my great passion in medicine – Provocative Therapy. However the detractors of homeopathy can ‘rest’ assured that the Pie Man remains on Red Alert to refresh the memory of those who persist in using evidence based medicine as a blunt instrument to attack homeopathy and CAM exclusively. So David Colquhoun, Ben Goldacre, Tracey Brown, Andy Lewis, Michael Baum, Simon Singh et al and particularly Edzard Ernst (who incidentally shares my love of Autogenic Therapy – more about that later in the year) can look forward to my congratulations if (post – O’Brien) they can still get their opinions (based on the politics of scientism and the philosophy of naïve realism) published in reputable medical journals and other media. But for me irony* will be the way.
*Irony is one of the most misused words in the language. For a good working definition I turn to the King of English himself, H.M. Fowler: “any definition of irony—though hundreds might be given, and very few of them would be accepted—must include this, that the surface meaning and the underlying meaning of what is said are not the same.” (from The King’s English)
And with that I wish you all a very Happy New Year and I’m not being ironical – not yet.
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Comments
and Happy New Year to u2 XtalDave It would be a poor doctor indeed who used irony to treat syphilis. All medical interventions have their place including penicillin, homeopathy, humour and irony. When using irony (and homeopathy for that matter) you do need to get the patient’s explicit permission. This is vital.
Good to see you use the word ‘chortle’. It was the one among many neologisms created by Lewis Carroll in Jabberwocky in Alice through the Looking Glass. A blend of snort and chuckle that made it into the dictionaries.
I’m confused. So your use of Homoeopathy is Ironic?
*chortle*
Happy new year.