1. My Path to the Understanding of Man¶
Where does disease come from? This is a question that every patient plagued by complaints asks themselves. During my medical studies in Freiburg and my specialist training, I was able to acquire broad specialist knowledge from the literature and from experienced doctors and therefore thought I knew the answer to the question. Very soon, however, I came across a patient for whose problem I had no satisfactory solution.
Case 1
My patient was an elderly gentleman with a complaint that had been bothering him for some time. His ears kept "blocking". He came to see me to get rid of this burden. It was easy for me to make the diagnosis. It was a functional disorder of the ventilation of the middle ear, the eustachian tube between the throat and middle ear. According to conventional medicine, the cause is a lack of fluid in the patient's circulation. I therefore advised him to drink more and believed that I had helped him in this way.
However, the patient came back a few weeks later: "Doctor, I must be drinking three liters of water a day now, but my ears are still blocking." As a doctor, I could have advised him to drink even more. I could also have referred to the patient's age and explained his illness as a common symptom of old age. But would I have found the real cause of the illness?
With my specialist knowledge, I could name symptoms and make diagnoses, but I didn't know the answer to why my patient was ill. As a doctor, however, I wanted to be able to say with a clear conscience what the cause of my patients' illness was so that I could permanently resolve their symptoms. I no longer wanted to leave my patients alone with their questions, I wanted to give them answers that I could understand myself.
My name is Dr. Horst Müller. I have been practicing as an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist in Weinheim for 20 years now. It is important to me to get to the bottom of the cause of a disease, because just treating the symptoms is not enough for me. Here is a simple example: the cause of mold in the home can be explained, because mold is caused by moisture. If a specialist only recommends a mold removal agent to remedy the situation, but does not eliminate the cause, this would not be acceptable. This is because the mold remover would not eliminate the moisture. Dehumidifiers would not be a solution either, but merely symptomatic treatment as long as the cause of the damp has not been eliminated. Only when the cause of the damp has been identified and eliminated is the mold growth really combated.
In many professions, the specialists are experts in their field. A car mechanic knows every single part of the vehicle. An architect is familiar with the properties of the building materials used. But the doctor often does not really know the person and therefore cannot go into the cause of an illness. Unfortunately, in most cases medicine is unable to explain the cause of a patient's illness, simply because it is unknown. This lack of knowledge is due to the fact that the human being is far too rarely viewed as a complete being in medicine.
In the doctor's office, I found myself confronted with the whole person. The "nose" or "ear" suddenly became a person with questions. I was well trained in symptom recognition during my training and was able to examine 70 patients within five hours. If the first patient had come back to me after examining the 69 other cases, I wouldn't have recognized him as a person. But I would have noticed from his nose that I had already seen him once today. This situation with unanswered questions depressed me because, figuratively speaking, I didn't want to sell mold remedies without knowing why the wall was getting damp.
To find out the cause of the illness, I didn't look in books or on the Internet, but asked the patients themselves. Since talking to 70 patients in five hours is a bit short, it became necessary for me to take more time for my patients to listen to them.
The first step was to create a timeline of my patients' medical history. I noted all major and minor complaints and illnesses, including operations and births.
Taking a medical history is a common procedure in medicine. If you really want to get to know patients, you need some time for this. I still do these intake interviews today and some patients are surprised that they have to answer so many questions at the ENT specialist. I then explain that I need an overall picture of the patient and don't just look at the one symptom they present to me with. I need to know the whole person with all their illnesses.
As a counterpoint to the illnesses and medical interventions, I have placed the patient's life story alongside them. The most important aspects are the closest relationships and the events they have lived through. These are the most important things for the person on a mental level. So, I included the relationships with the parents, the parents with each other, the spouse, the children, etc. I also added events such as marriage, divorce, the death of close relatives, the professional situation, major changes such as job changes and relocations. Significant life events such as severe trauma, e.g. experiences of violence and abuse, are also important. I have compared all these points on the timeline with the physical complaints.
After comparing this data, I realized that nothing matched my patients' symptoms better than their "mental history". This was also the case with the patient with the blocked ears. It was not the physical influences that triggered the complaints and dysfunctions. I realized that there must be a direct connection between what the person had experienced and their physical complaints.
So, was it a thought that caused the ear to block and not a lack of fluids? To find out, I had to look into something that is often only marginally examined in conventional medicine: human thought, or rather, thoughts and their role in humans.
Therefore, I had to ask myself: What are thoughts? Where do they come from? And more importantly, where do they begin? After all, thoughts have to come from somewhere and have a beginning.
After many medical histories and life stories of my patients - there are now tens of thousands of them - I have come to realize what the cause of human illness is.