Whether you like it or not, there comes at a time when you must stay home, laying in bed, getting ill. Or maybe you must stay home because you don't want to get infected with the dangerous viruses outside your home. Inside your home, feeling ill or feeling healthy, you will still feel safe.
How if you need something from outside? Let's say you need some food and drink supplies. You can ask somebody to help you. I am sure that you have somebody close, somebody that you know, whether they are your relatives, neighbors, or friends. I think they will be ready to help you if they know your condition. But if you are the type of person who is independent and who doesn't want to disturb others, going out to buy what you need from the neighborhood is still fine as long as you minimize physical contacts with others.
Then, how if you want to see a doctor? You need to consult with him. You need some medicine from him to cure your illness. You desperately want to get better. Surely, you will choose your favorite doctor to consult with. The problem is whether or not that doctor is purely intending to cure you. Or he is just being a doctor for the sake of business.
Frankly speaking, I don't trust doctors. It's not because I have trust issues. It's not also because I understand medical things. I don't understand at all. It's just because in order to be called doctors, they must spend a lot of money for the study to get that title. They will, of course, spend a lot of money to get the profession. Furthermore, when at last they are called as doctors, they must have spent a lot of money too, for the clinic that they own. And there it is, the clinic that they own to make a very good living.
There are some good doctors, however, who are really respecting their oath to help patients no matter what condition will happen to those doctors. As doctors, of course they know how to protect themselves from being infected with their patients' disease. They know the worst risk of being infected with very dangerous viruses from their patients: death.
Those good doctors, I bet, also really understand what Hippocrates meant in his saying: "It is more important to know what sort of person has a disease than to know what sort of disease a person has." To make it clearer, they probably will give their patient this question: "What sort of person are you to have this disease?" With a little bit of dialog with the patient, they can reveal what kind of person that patient is; the depressed, the all-food lover, the heavy drinker, the temperamental, the worrier, or so many other kinds. They are trying to understand the patient before they make a decision about what medication they will give the patient.
If ordinary people like me also understand this quote from Hippocrates, I guess we will know how to cure our own disease, or at least ease the pain of that disease. Therefore, when my stomach starts to act up painfully, I don't try to find the medicine to cure that ache. I just recall my memory about what I have eaten or drunk or thought about. That's it. So I know what kind of person I am to 'deserve' that disease. I am so careless in choosing what to eat or drink. Or I am so overwhelmedly busy thinking about some problems. So, to ease the pain of my stomach, I just try to relax, not letting the gastric acid come up. Then I will be just fine.
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