Posted: Nov 10, 2021 4:40 pm
Alan C wrote:SO is currently skimming through an audiobook with the above title written by a Dr Navaz Habib. He's going into reasonable detail at times but at the start he made a reference to 'allopathic' medicine. Perhaps I'm wrong but I thought that was a bit of a flag, I understood that to be what alt-med types call actual medicine. Also it seems he's a chiropractor.
Has anyone heard of him?
Without knowing much about the guy, it's hard to say.
You're right that in certain circumstances, that's a red flag that you're dealing with one of those types. The suggestion that there are equal alternatives which just so happen to be entirely woo-based.
But in other cultural and social contexts, it has other more reasonable meanings. For example, in much of South and South East Asia, there are the obvious wooey cultural and religious traditions of treating afflictions, but also a tradition at least as old which is concerned with treatments, ointments, salves, foods etc., which is considered 'allopathy' or some local variation thereof (bear in mind that Sanskrit language and culture permeated much of S.E. Asia like Roman Latin did in Europe). Basically, its best translation in that restricted context would just be 'medicine' of the apply to your body or consume to effect the treatment.
Of course, that's not to say it doesn't have a spotty past (like alchemy to chemistry) in which prevailing religious, philosophical and social mores distort the enterprise and inject superfluous beliefs, and can often still today be comprised of a bunch of old garbled nonsense too, but the principle meaning is essentially of an empirical nature: eat this - are you feeling better?
I don't know if that's what Dr. Habib is drawing on here, or whether he's just a purveyor of l'eau de snake skin.