New Medicine v. Old Medicine

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http://www.healthresourcespress.com/health_resources_press_story/new_books_old_b\

ooks_2.htm

When I returned home in the early 1980's from my freshman year at osteopathic

medical school I was very anxious to begin building a collection in my new

profession, osteopathy. At this point osteopathic literature in the form of

books and journals had been issued for close to one hundred years. Yet, when I

went to major east coast libraries almost none of them had any of this material.

Even the New Jersey School of Osteopathic Medicine (University of Medicine and

Dentistry of NJ) had less than 30 titles on osteopathy in its library and many

of these were just old directories of doctors. I was astounded. So I called the

NJ Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons and asked what the old

doctors did with their books and journals when they retired. They said that

there was no formal program to deal with these materials. Most were simply

discarded. The medical librarians with whom I spoke almost uniformly told me

that no one was interested in this old stuff. " It's just junk. We certainly

don't have room for this old stuff especially when space is limited for all the

new material coming out in medicine. Anyway, the history of medicine people tell

us that they're not interested in us collecting any of this, " one librarian

informed me. The accessions librarian at the time for the medical library (which

was charged by the state to supply books for the DO, MD and dental schools) told

me that old books are worthless in medicine. The medical paradigm apparently was

(and still is) that new is better and that anything old is simply " outdated " and

therefore useless.

I tried to explain that natural medicine works with a knowledge of natural

healing that rests on a philosophy of natural healing agents (plants, diet,

water, natural forces, manipulation of the body, homeopathy, acupuncture points,

etc.) that builds on the past and is rooted in a good understanding of what past

healers and physicians have learned. The librarians looked at me like I was from

Mars.